E73: Leading with Inclusivity and Intersectionality with Blue Acorn iCi’s Erica Rooney

In this episode, Blue Acorn iCi’s Chief People Officer, Erica Rooney, talks about how companies can create a positive workplace culture, why inclusivity is important for business success, and how to build trust with your employees.

• Who inclusivity is for in the workplace.
• The importance of building trust with new employees.
• How to create a culture of openness and accountability.
• How Covid-19 affected women in the workforce.
• The ways Covid-19 impacted the gender pay gap.
• Why women negotiate their salaries less than men do.
• Why companies need equal pay policies and women in leadership positions.

• Blue Acorn iCi
• StaffGeek 

• LinkedIn

• Lindsay Patton on LinkedIn – www.linkedin.com/in/lindsaypatton/
• Lindsay Patton by Email – lindsay@staffgeek.com

• 01:45 – “I am what I like to call a gender equality crusader, and I am very passionate about bringing more women into positions of power but also keeping them there. And I’m very passionate about that because I’m a woman in a position of power. So I’m very familiar with the hardships and the things that we’re up against that men are not, you know, we walk through the world very differently than men do. We have to lead differently than men do. We cannot act the same way they do in corporate America. It will not get us to the same places. And we also have not caught, society has not caught up to the fact that women are in these positions of power. So there are so many people out there, especially in my generation and in generations before and slightly after me, that we still have these societal expectations that we are running the household full-time, but now we’re also working full-time and that hasn’t caught up yet.”
• 03:47 – “And the truth is, we are burning out. We are expected to take care of the homes, do all of the caregiving. We are now entering into that realm where we have aging parents and young kids. This is known as the sales generation. So even if you don’t have kids, you are still taking care of your ailing parents, perhaps. So there is care taking somewhere, and all of that falls to the women. It doesn’t fall to the men. And so we are having to manage our high power jobs and manage everything else in the home, and the workplace policies and cultures are not caught up with that yet.”
• 25:18 – “When women start new jobs, new careers, we give ourselves this unrealistic expectation of being perfect. Yeah. Case in point, we don’t apply for the jobs unless we meet a hundred percent of the criteria. Okay. Men apply for the jobs like at 64% or something wild like that. You know, they’re just like, yeah, I’m going to throw my name in the hat. So we go into these positions with this unrealistic expectation that we put on ourselves to be perfect, and then we beat ourselves up over it, and then we don’t like to own the mistakes. Right. Whereas men just come charging in with this like, I’m a badass mentality, I’m going to rock it out. We need to harness more of that.”
• 27:47 – “Covid-19 hit, we all thought it was going to be two weeks. It was not two weeks. Yeah. People had to quickly assess their situations and pivot their lives. Do I need to stay home and work with kids? Am I now care-taking for my elderly family that I can’t leave in a care facility? Right. People lost jobs. Most of the people that had to exit the workforce were women. So when that happened, it then effectively switched up the pay gap to then increase to 132 years. So if we now continue with the rate that we are going today, it will be 132 years before we are paid the same as a man. That’s not my lifetime, that’s not my kids’ lifetime. That is, to me, bananas.”
• 29:05 – “We’re busting through the glass ceiling. So for example, women don’t negotiate, okay? Only 26% of women actually negotiate their job offers, if they negotiate at all. And when they negotiate, they ask for less than men. So you’re talking about when a man and a woman, if they both have equal education, equal skills, and they both get offered a job for a hundred thousand dollars and the man negotiates just 5,000 more dollars, that’s it. Over time, we’re talking hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars lost.”