<p><b>The talent market has shifted, and people aren't going to get any less diverse.</b> There's no place for the 'if you don't look like me, sound like me, act like me, I'm not going to hire you,' attitudes of yesterday. <br /><br />How can HR pros shift their own thinking as well as help their business leaders and people managers leave assumptions and stereotypes at the door, allowing them to get in the headspace to have those conversations? It starts with asking yourself and others, "What is your intent?" </p><p>Grab your beverage of choice and stay a while. We're over here having a conversation on the kinds of conversations<em> that put the human back into human resources</em>. </p><p><br /><b>Key episode takeaway:</b> "D & I is a journey. Once you step foot in that journey, you're always going to be on it because you're always going to be learning more about people." <br /><br />---<br /><b>EARN SHRM RECERTIFICATION PDCs FOR LISTENING</b><br />Honest HR podcast episodes will help you build your competencies while you earn professional development credits (PDCs) toward your SHRM-CP/SHRM-SCP recertification! All you have to do is listen to a full mini-series to earn PDCs! All relevant details, including the Activity IDs, are provided during the podcast recording itself.<br /><br />The Honest HR podcast is only one of SHRM's podcast offerings. And currently, it is the only one approved for recertification PDCs.<br />---<br /><b>This episode is Part 3 of a three-part series. </b>When you listen to all parts of the series, you are eligible to receive PDCs for your participation.</p>
The talent market has shifted, and people aren't going to get any less diverse. There's no place for the 'if you don't look like me, sound like me, act like me, I'm not going to hire you,' attitudes of yesterday.
How can HR pros shift their own thinking as well as help their business leaders and people managers leave assumptions and stereotypes at the door, allowing them to get in the headspace to have those conversations? It starts with asking yourself and others, "What is your intent?"
Grab your beverage of choice and stay a while. We're over here having a conversation on the kinds of conversations that put the human back into human resources.
Key episode takeaway: "D & I is a journey. Once you step foot in that journey, you're always going to be on it because you're always going to be learning more about people."
---
EARN SHRM RECERTIFICATION PDCs FOR LISTENING
Honest HR podcast episodes will help you build your competencies while you earn professional development credits (PDCs) toward your SHRM-CP/SHRM-SCP recertification! All you have to do is listen to a full mini-series to earn PDCs! All relevant details, including the Activity IDs, are provided during the podcast recording itself.
The Honest HR podcast is only one of SHRM's podcast offerings. And currently, it is the only one approved for recertification PDCs.
---
This episode is Part 3 of a three-part series. When you listen to all parts of the series, you are eligible to receive PDCs for your participation.
Speaker 1:
Hey everybody. And welcome back to Honest HR. I am your host Callie Zippel field service director with SHRM. Happy to be here. This is our mini series, number four on diversity and inclusion. And I'm happy to say that this is our final episode in that mini series. So thank you so much. If you've already listened to the other episodes in this mini series. We are happy that you've come back around for this final episode and I'm excited to talk with my guest Clint. Clint and I are going to be talking about the idea of getting comfortable with uncomfortable conversations.
This is a big part about diversity and how we can make sure that we're creating an environment that allows for people to be quote unquote their real and true selves. And the only way we can really do that is everybody within our organization, whether we're HR or business leaders or what have you, that we're comfortable having these types of conversations because it's our job and duty to do so. So Clint, welcome. Give us a little bit of background, tell us about yourself, what you're doing and then we'll jump right into our topic and questions.
Speaker 2:
Yeah. Well, Callie, thank you very much for having me and I really do appreciate it. And it's an honor to be able to talk to you about this, something I'm very passionate about and learning every day about. So thank you very much for having me. So to say a little bit about myself, I have a very strange background. A lot of people have mentioned to me that I should write a book just because I've had a very diverse background when it comes the work. I've been everything from a international fashion model to a...
Speaker 1:
What? I might need to know more about that, but keep going.
Speaker 2:
Yeah. To a ranch wrangler on a dude ranch in Colorado and I found my way into human resources after graduating from Bible college with a degree in ministry and I was working for a church. And church was of course not nonprofit so I could only do so much and wasn't making money. And so I needed to make some money. And so I had gone to this temporary staffing agency and applied with them, took the testing, found out I could type anywhere from 70 to 80 words a minute. This hospital that was being built from the ground up, it was a specialty hospital that reached out and said, Hey, we just need somebody to come in and type our policies and procedures and HR. And before you knew it, HR kind of found me.
And so from there, I just, I grew a great passion for human resources 18 years ago. And I've continued that passion because I love people. I'm driven by people, I'm driven every day by people and how to work with them, interact with them, manage them, lead them, consult with them and just be with them. So I started out in healthcare and I went from healthcare and went into industrial manufacturing and also into the military, joining the air force. Stuck with the human resources role, did training and development. My focus is always in recruiting and talent acquisition. Was involved in three startups and then also went into an active duty position with the air force as an HR personnel or personnel as they called it in the military, as a personnel supervisor to connect a duty role in Hawaii. Was there for a couple of years and then found my way back here to the Midwest here in the Kansas city area and stumbled upon staffing and recruiting agency franchise work.
My husband and I actually owned our own franchise for a bit of time and recently closed that last year and went back into implementing sourcing program strategy and also acquisition strategies for organizations. And so I think one of the things that brought me to the point that I am now is I got a chance to really see how the talent market was shifting and how I was involved in that shift in the sense that I saw how recruiters and how hiring managers were treating the candidate base. There wasn't any sort of inclusion and it was all based on if you didn't think like me, look like me, talk like me, walk like me, I just wasn't going to hire you.
And so I saw that a lot and it was definitely what I did not want to be when it come to being a recruiter and an HR leader. And I was like, I want to have this as a relationship builder and this is what I'm going to grow from is understanding how I put the human really in the human resources piece. And so that's a little bit about myself, my husband and I, we live here in the Olathe, the Kansas city area. We've got two dogs, Luca and Leo and honestly, in my spare time, what I love to do is take some time away and not do anything and maybe have a little wine tasting to go along with it.
Speaker 1:
Are you a rather white wine fan?
Speaker 2:
I'm a white, I am a white. And my husband's red, but I'm a white wine drinker. So give me a chardonnay and Napa Valley any day. And I'm good.
Speaker 1:
Well, I'm worse than Chardonnay. I am a Mascato all the way like sweet, sweet, sweet wine is my thing.
Speaker 2:
There you go. There you go.
Speaker 1:
Well, I got to tell you, I would read the book if you ever get around to writing it. I would definitely read it.
Speaker 2:
Okay.
Speaker 1:
So thank you so much.
Speaker 2:
Still, more to come on that then.
Speaker 1:
Good, good. Thank you though, for sharing your background, helping us understand why you do HR, why you're passionate about it and specifically why you're passionate about this topic. I think diversity and inclusion is something that we all know about, but might not practice in reality. So since this mini series is really all about D&I, diversity and inclusion, I think one of the things HR professionals struggle with is being ready and truly in the right head space to lean into diversity and or inclusion, depending on where you're at in your strategy here within their organizations. So how can we help both our HR colleagues and then our business leaders understand that D&I, diversity and inclusion is truly everyone's job. I've heard Johnny C. Taylor, our CEO and president say this numerous times. So how can we really aid this shift in thinking?
Speaker 2:
Sure. Diversity and inclusion, there just isn't a silver bullet just with recruiting these days. There isn't a silver bullet to find candidate cause we're all fighting to get the good quality talent. And it's the same with diversity and inclusion. Diversity and inclusion is going to be tailored to each organization, each culture, all of that. But what the foundation of it starts from is really in the relationships that you have with individuals. And I think for myself and what I've gone to other chapters and spoke on and other organizations is what it starts is within our assumptions, the assumptions that we place on other individuals, stereotypes. And a lot of it comes from the stereotypes that I have had placed on me. And even the stereotypes that I have placed on other individuals.
So you have this implicit bias and also unconscious bias, but the implicit bias piece, we're really being able to truly understand where that comes from, how we need to hold ourselves accountable to it and identify it, understanding our blind spots, all those things. But it really is in the relationship building that we have. And when I started to have the conversations with individuals. It really started with my friends, I had a very good, diverse group of friends and I had always treated them like everyone else. And I was one of those people that would say things like, well, I don't see color, or I don't see race, you're just my friend you're this and that. And so what I started to do is I would text a friend, call a friend and say, Hey, can you go have a drink with me or can we meet for coffee? I just want to ask you a few things if you're okay with that and just talk with you. And of course they'd be like, is everything okay? And I'm like, no, no, everything's fine. I just want to have this conversation.
Speaker 1:
That Was the first thing I thought of though, when you said that. If I got a call like that, I'd be like, what's wrong? What's wrong? What's going on?
Speaker 2:
What's wrong? What is the emergency? I'm on my way. And I'm like, no, no, no, everything's fine. I just need an honest conversation and I know you'll be honest with me. And so I reached out to a friend of mine and we went and we sat down and we started talking. She was like, "All right, what's this all about boo?" And I said, I just want to know, I said, you're a beautiful woman of color. And I said, do you prefer black or do you prefer African American? And this was several years ago. And she goes, "Thank you for asking." And we started to talk. And what she talked to me about was what she preferred, her culture, her history, where she came from. And when I was able to break that boundary of what I was going to be uncomfortable in this conversation, she found it very comforting.
She found it very comforting in the fact that I was reaching across this gap, asking her this question and being able to talk to her. And then it led into me understanding from her the struggles that she has, what she faces in society, some of the stereotypes and the assumptions that get placed on her. And in turn, she started to really talk to me and she goes, "Well, can I ask you a question?" And I said, sure. She goes, "You are part of the LGBT community?" I said, yes. And she goes, "You prefer gay or queer? What do you prefer?: She goes, "I hear different things. What is it that you prefer?" So her and I got into the conversation about that. It was all the intent of how I set and approached her and how she approached me and how we just sat and had a good conversation.
And what I've been able to do is carry that also over into our organizations, by being able to humble myself before individuals. If there's an assumption that I see that I'm placing or something that I don't know or something that I don't understand, that I can sit and have the conversation as like, Hey, are you being treated like this because of this? Do you feel that way? Is there something I can help you with? How can we mitigate through this and how can we get through it together? And I think when you can break those barriers, because sometimes a lot of times in human resources, as human resource resources professionals, leaders, consultants, we don't want to open up that Pandora's box.
But what happens is sometimes that Pandora's box gets so full. It just bursts open and then you are so reactive because you did not take those proactive measures in those right conversations instead of the reactive conversations, the reactive, comfortable, or turning into a comfortable conversation with someone before it blows up. And that's what I saw that I've done in the conversations that I've had with individuals and the relationship building that I've made. I've been able to look through and see that when I start asking about cultures, their preference, it shows respect and they open up about it. And I really am living a value by that.
Speaker 1:
So let me ask you a question as it relates to sort of us. And I love that that's something that I very much need to work on. I don't know if I've ever had a conversation like that. And I can imagine how empowering that is for the individual that you're having that conversation with. But my question is, how can we help our business leaders or our people managers be comfortable having those similar conversations? Because I would imagine that would feel as uncomfortable, if not more uncomfortable for them that it might feel for us from an HR perspective.
Speaker 2:
Sure. And I talk on this training that I do called, are you an all assuming or all inclusive employer? And I think what it starts at is understanding like these are probably going to be some of the reactions that you are going to get. But truly the foundation of how you approach this and how you're hiring managers can really go to approach this is being able to say, what is your intent? What is the setting like, are you just passing them in the hallway and saying like, Hey, do you prefer to be called this or this? No, that's not how it's done. You really want to have a good setting to be able to ensure that you have the right intent, that you have the right conversation piece that is going to be there. And it is, but for someone who maybe is not so relational driven, they more than likely aren't necessarily a people person.
But if you truly are a leader and you are working with people, you need to be able to understand, have these conversations. And so having the right training in place of understanding uncomfortable conversation pieces, uncomfortable situations that you're going to be involved in, how to have the right intentional conversation, how to have the right tone in all of that, the right setting is really going to help them understand where to go from. And they've been doing something as far as... I remember whenever I started with the hospital, we had those cheesy VHS videotapes that we did for our sensitivity training. And even something as simple that we've done in some role playing is implementing that, do a role play, do a script, do different role plays that have come up in conversations and how you can kind of work through those as hiring managers. It really helps to have that role playing piece as well.
And I know that whenever I've done the all inclusive or all assuming employer, we've had people get up and we've said, okay, this is Clint, Clint's a white male, blah, blah, blah. And then you go to the next, one's like, here's the scenario. And you allow the HR leader from the crowd to come up and say, how would you work through this conversation and the end goal being, Clint being comfortable enough to come to you whenever it is a proactive measure, say, Hey, this is being said, I'm not comfortable or I'm working with an individual in my department that I'm not really understanding why they can't work the same speed or is it something to do with culture? Is it something that I'm getting and being able to have those conversation pieces? So role playing is very important in that regard.
Speaker 1:
Yeah. I like that. A couple of things resonated with me just now. And this resonates with me in almost every conversation I have about these sorts of topics, but it always comes back to manager training for me. I shouldn't say always, but a lot of times when we're trying to implement things and our organizations are thinking of doing things differently, we have to get the training right at every level. So I really agree with and can't imagine doing any sort of implementation or thinking differently without that training piece behind it. And then I think the other thing, it sounds like to me is that it has to be driven also by a culture.
Speaker 2:
It really does.
Speaker 1:
Yeah. If you don't have the culture to support this sort of environment, then it might very well fail.
Speaker 2:
And you also have to understand that with the culture, so let's say leadership comes in tomorrow and they're like, we need a DNI initiative. A lot of times that DNI initiative is going to be brought back to the business side of things that they can get clients that's going to be better networking to build on their bottom line, all those things. So we need a DNI in effort, but the DNI piece, it's a journey. And it's just like that Pandora's box once you open it, there's ongoing training, there's ongoing in-service. Once you step foot into that journey of understanding what diversity and inclusion is supposed to be, you're always going to be on it. And that's part of that relationship building. The relationship that I have with people today is going to be different than the relationships that I have next year, because I'm learning more about people.
And so it is that ongoing training. And it's even the understanding of like my understanding of diversity and inclusion is probably not the same as another member of our hiring manager staff. It's going to be very different. But having the understanding of where people are on the journey is very important as HR leaders so that we know like, okay, Bill, over here isn't getting it. But Carl over here is and those names are totally made up. But being able to say, but how do you kind of mitigate through that? How do you work to get them at the same level? And it goes back to our value system, what our culture is and what the outlook is for our organization and be able to align to that. It's an ongoing journey. It really is.
Speaker 1:
Yep. Absolutely. So let's shift gears a tiny bit. Although I think this question really is a great segue from everything we've been talking about so far. But part of HR, the biggest part of HR, almost everything that has to do with HR is related to people. And we've all heard the phrase I got into HR because I like people. But the reality is sometimes that working with people is tough. It's not all rainbows and butterflies, so to speak. And I say that in quotes.
Speaker 2:
Right.
Speaker 1:
But how can we make sure that everybody within our organization, HR, people managers, business leaders, are ready to deal with people and not just deal with people, but recognize when people aren't presenting their best selves at work. How can we work through that?
Speaker 2:
Well, it's not easy. I think for anybody it's not easy. I have a friend of mine who has a department and she's a leader of the department and she's got 27 different languages in her area. And I talked to her about it and it's not easy. She works hard. Now she's got great retention. She's got great loyalty, but it's not easy. One culture might be frustrated with the other. There's assumptions, there's stereotypes made, there's comments that are made. But instead of her taken that opportunity to be like, it's all an HR issue. It's all an HR issue. It's just go to human resources, human resources. What she's able to do is she can sit and know when it's not ready to go to HR.
And again, that went back to the training that she's had to be able to say, how can I work out in the understanding of how one culture can understand the next culture? Let's talk about this. And she brings it back to the relationship building. So it is not rainbows and butterflies at all. It is daily, but that area she's developed a culture of inclusion. She has no problem recruiting people because people pretty much just want to go to her. She's created that loyalty base and at the same time, the results of her product, which she has, she's one of the leading as far as in the business. And so she's got to be doing something right. And so it isn't easy and I do, I hear human resources, practitioners, consultants, leaders, going into this, into HR all the time.
And I hear it from, I mentor two students and I hear both of them they're all the time saying, oh, I love people, that's why we do it. It's like, you're going to not love people.
Speaker 1:
Not at least every day, right? Every day, all the time, it's just not realistic.
Speaker 2:
Yeah. You're going to not love people at some point, mark my words. And so hence the reason why I need to take some wine trips to Napa, but it is difficult. And I think we need to understand what those difficulties are going to be. And even being able to understand those with our hiring managers and have that empathy there was... And so there was something, whenever we had our franchise, our values were kindness, empathy and advocacy. We knew that the kindness was going to be approachable, how we really started building the relationship and then the empathy piece, being able to see where people are coming from.
And then also the advocacy is, how you really are a consultant for that individual and how you're advocating for them and listening to them and what they're going through. It is never in the workforce that we're in right now. Everybody is just so different. And we want individuals to come to work with their authentic selves. Again, when you open up that box, it's like, well, what does that authenticity mean? Does that mean Clint come to work tomorrow with his green hair and his piercings everywhere and tattoo showing and all this and not wearing the appropriate dress code, all those things. And it's like, that's not necessarily what it means, but it means the authenticity of what somebody brings as far as not being able to be scared.
If I say that I'm a white gay male and I'm married and I have a husband, it's being able to say those things, that in the conversation that you're sitting in. And you can hear in the lunchroom, a group of colleagues talking about their spouses and you bring up your spouse, not being held back, the culture, being able to allow you to share like, oh, my husband and I went on a trip as well. And so when you talk about the rainbows and butterflies and people being able to be their authentic selves, it's allowing them to be included in on the conversation. It's not going to a drastic measure and saying like, well, this... And we're in the clubbing outfits into work that you would go out to the nightclubs like, well, this is all me, you hired me, this is all me.
No, that's not what we want. We want your real self, we want your real skill, we want your knowledge. We want your imagination, we want your creativity, we want those things. That's the authentic self that we want you to bring along with your self as far as what you're what your beliefs are, what your values are, bring those to the table. And when you start getting just a cluster of that, it's very overwhelming is very overwhelming. But when you're driven by the passion of what diversity and inclusion is, it doesn't seem as much.
Speaker 1:
Now. And I think one of the concerns I think some organizations have is that when they... This can be a HR initiative all day long, but HR isn't in front of our employees a hundred percent of the time. So it's our frontline managers that we worry about, are they going to be ready or are they going to be able to recognize when somebody isn't presenting their best selves? So it comes back to, we just said this like five minutes ago, manager training. And there has to be some sort of appetite for everybody in our organization to be ready for this. So I couldn't agree more. And when I have conversations with students too and I ask why are you getting into HR? And their answer is because I like people. I'm like, if you sit in an interview and you tell that to another HR person, they're going to turn off their ears right away because they know that being in HR is a lot more than just liking people. So I completely agree with everything that you just shared.
Speaker 2:
Yeah. And when my managers, they'll have a question or they'll do something where it might be a little bit of a red flag, or even a major red flag. You don't pounce on them. You have to understand what the whole situation is. I came across this situation when I had a client and we had two associates that were out to work. It was an industrial manufacturer, they ran 24/7. And I got a phone call from my client, the general manager who said, "Hey, these two folks aren't working out. They're late, constantly." And boy, I was mad. These associates that I've worked with, that I found, they were making a slick pad.
And so I had their time sheet, I already talked to these individuals about them being late, all these things. And so I went out there, but there was something that clicked when I was on the drive out to client to go talk to them because we were looking to just terminate them because they had a policy in regards to the number of times that you could be late, all that and I was heading out there. I got out there and the first thing I opened up and I started talking to the gentleman and I said, I go, Hey, we've talked about this, you're late. What is going on? And I knew on the drive over there and I was like, I have to just be able to open up the conversation, have him trust me. Maybe there is something that is there that I'm just not finding out about.
The other conversation with the general manager is he would say, he is like, they're both really good workers. He goes, that's what's so sad. So that was a key part. So I get there and I'm talking to him, was like, okay, so what is going on? And it turned out his shift, when he would get off work, he had to go straight home and he had to switch cars with his significant other. And he had to be there to watch the baby so that his significant other could take that same car and head into make her shift. And because of the distance and everything, the logistics of it, they were always 15 minutes late. But my assumption was they were lazy. My assumption was they just weren't being productive. My assumption was that they were not doing the job. And that was the general manager's assumption.
But when we sat down and had the conversation, instead of it being about a policy and we put the human into it, we sat and we talked to them. We understand like, okay, we need to work something out here. We need to see if there's something else that we could do. We were able to help them in and accommodate. And we moved forward with even a lot of the other shifts. If somebody, if there were some situation that they had, they were able to talk to the general manager or the frontline supervisors to be able to say, this is the issue that I'm having in my schedule. Cause we had to also go back and understand that the area that we're in that particular market at that particular pay it wasn't going to be part of households. It was a socioeconomic inclusion.
There weren't going to be households that had two cars, they were going to be having to decide between, do I put gas in the car to get to work or do I buy food from my family? Those were the conversations that we were having. So then we implemented a training program to talk about just that when we instituted the next surge cycle, when they were going through their big hiring.
Speaker 1:
That's so interesting. And I think back to the policies and things like that we have in place and how single minded we can be, we have the policy printed off and it's sitting right in front of us and that's what we use to guide our conversations and while that's a great place to start, we lose the human in the conversation, I think sometimes. And we all have policies that we have to follow so I can appreciate that. Absolutely. I'm guilty of that if guilty is the right word. But having conversations, even at the beginning, when they get their first attendance point, if that's the sort of thing that you're tracking, being ready to have those conversations immediately to sort of mitigate the problem before it gets to a elevation of termination, I think is a really, really important thing for us to consider as well.
Speaker 2:
Well, policy and procedures definitely want to make sure that they're in alignment with the organizational structure, the values, the culture. We want to make sure those... But there are a lot of times in the course of 18 years that I've seen that policies have been out there to make it convenient. Hmm. So you can just put the policy out there and it's like, okay, so here's what you need to do. Here's this and that. And so you provide all these things as far as a step by step procedure and the policy and what it is. And it's like some policies that I've seen have been out there to make it more convenient to make it to where it's less of a human management piece. Like, well, if people just follow this, I don't have to necessarily manage that.
Speaker 1:
And they don't have to think about it. Right?
Speaker 2:
Right.
Speaker 1:
They don't have to put any critical thinking behind it. They just follow the policy.
Speaker 2:
You just sit there and you throw the manual and say it's in our policy. Sometimes and I have conversations with hiring managers and the decision makers and they'll say that. They'll say it's our policy. And I sometimes wonder, why did you want this leadership role? Did you not know that you would be working with people? And I always want to ask them that, and that's always a conversation when we get into it. And so if you're not in this for the relationship building, and then you sit back and you wonder like, where's my turnover? Why can't I get people to come in here and work for me? All these things.
That is where that self accountability of your implicit bias, understanding yourself, that's where it's going to start. And that's where it needs to start. And then you have those training pieces from there. But it's interesting how there's such a huge dichotomy, even in the workforce, these days of people who are on board with this diversity and inclusion and you have others that just aren't. They aren't buying into it. And those are the ones that are struggling because they cannot find or keep talent.
Speaker 1:
Well, if you look back over the years, we've become much more diverse than we ever have been before. And I imagine that that's only going to continue. We're certainly not getting less diverse. I'll say that.
Speaker 2:
No, not at all, not at all. Because our communities, they're embracing it. Our communities are embracing it. They're bringing it. I mean, here in the Kansas City area, we have the diversity and inclusion consortium. It's a region wide, I'm very involved in that. We have a lot of diversity and inclusion initiatives here in the Kansas City area and it's wonderful. And so it drives your communities in a more positive culture. It drives your organizations in a more positive light. It is a real driving force. And I hope that there are more out there that are catching on board. But also being able to go back to... I know it's difficult for HR leaders, a lot of times to break through that barrier to leadership, to get them to understand the why in it, but it is long term conversations that you really have to have.
Speaker 1:
Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for your time today Clint. I think my biggest takeaway is that I can sit here and say all day that I am ready for D&I. But the question that stands out for me as a result of our conversation today is, I could be ready for it, but am I really ready to have those difficult conversations and put myself in an uncomfortable situation to make somebody else feel a little bit more comfortable? And that's certainly something that I'm going to work to get better at. So is there anything else you wanted to share with our listeners before we wrap up?
Speaker 2:
Just find that friend that you've always wanted to really start it. Find that friend that you have a good relationship with and just see about having an uncomfortable conversation with them and what you might want to see. And kind of do that role playing piece with ha... Call that friend, call that friend and have that conversation and let it start there. Just don't show up for work one day and think that like, I'm going to start having these uncomfortable conversations. That's certainly not the way to go.
Speaker 1:
Oh my gosh. And you know what? It's funny that you say that because I'm imagining that being a thing and I'm like, gees, I don't know if I can just turn it on like that tomorrow.
Speaker 2:
Right. Just like I listen to this podcast and they're telling me, I have to go in here and talk to you about this. So please don't do that. This is truly a relationship, conversational piece, it takes time. And it wasn't until probably about five years ago that I really got on board with the D&I initiative. And I was like, I'm going... And it's every day I learned something. I learned something more and it's in the right networking, the colleagues and the friends that I circle myself with. But it's an everyday journey. And it's a lot of fun. It really is. It's a lot of fun to me.
Speaker 1:
Well, good. And since this is your passion and since this is something that's fun for you, if we have any listeners out there who want to connect and maybe continue the conversation with you, how can they reach out?
Speaker 2:
For sure. And so on LinkedIn, it is Clinton Shane Bradley. I kind of self-proclaimed myself as the talent acquisition evangelist on LinkedIn. And then also on my Twitter, it's at @ClintonShaneKC.
Speaker 1:
Wonderful. And again, thank you for your time today Clint. I'm so happy that we were able to have this conversation, I certainly learned quite a bit. So for those who might want to connect with me again, my name's Callie Zippel your host of Honest HR. You can find me on LinkedIn, you can also find me on Twitter and Instagram at SHRMCallieZ. Thank you as always for listening to our podcast and we will be back again next time for a new mini series.
This episode is part three of mini series four and it's the final episode in the mini series. If you haven't done so already, please go back and listen to part one of this mini series featuring Jerry New York and part two of this mini series featuring Alexis Figli. Once you've listened to all parts of the mini series, you can enter the SHRM Professional Development or PDC code into your SHRM recertification profile. The code you'll need is 21-E9DX3. That's 21-E as in echo, nine, D as in Delta, X as in x-ray, three. Thanks for being SHRM certified and as always for listening to our Honest HR podcast.