Impact Roundtable—Purpose Driving Performance
Ruth Umoh: Welcome everyone. I'm Ruth Umoh, leadership editor at FORTUNE. Thank you all for joining us this afternoon and so great to see some familiar faces. Today we're here to discuss, purpose-driven performance with a great group of discussion leaders. We do have featured speakers. However, I do want everyone to keep in mind that this is meant to be a group discussion. It's meant to be interactive and really a mindshare among participants. We have 60 minutes to discuss and I don't want us all to stare at each other blankly for 60 minutes. Again, it is not a particularly fruitful use of our time, so please do keep that in mind. We're looking forward to incorporating as many voices as possible this afternoon. A friendly reminder that this discussion is on-the-record and we can only have about three or four microphones on at a time.
If you are not speaking, please do make sure to turn them off. When you are speaking. Please provide your name and your company prior to asking your question or sharing your statement. I'd also like to thank TriNet for hosting today's very, very timely discussion. And so without further ado, I'd like to welcome our three speakers. First we have Michelle Weese, executive vice president, Corporate Affairs, Bristol Myers Squibb. Tina Hrevus, principal Managing Partners Office at Edward Jones. And Samantha Wellington, executive vice president, Business Affairs, chief legal officer and secretary at TriNet. Welcome to all of you and welcome to our attendees. Thanks so much for joining us.
Let's jump right into the conversation at hand. As you all know, ESG as a phrase, as a concept has led to a bit of confusion so to speak. The E, the S and the G all mean different things. They're lumped together, which some critics argue hinders their efficacy and it's led to a bit of a rating divergence of subjective metrics based on patchy, sometimes arbitrary data. So I want to kick things off by hearing from each of our speakers on how their companies defined ESG. Are you focusing primarily on climates, on DEI? Confluence of the three? Michelle, let's start with you, followed by Tina and Samantha.
Michelle Weese: So I have to figure, I feel like I'm at the UN. Make sure I'm hitting the right button without having the reverberation of the feedback. I mean, given that Bristol Myers Squibb is a biopharma company, our natural inclination is to move more towards the S with patients, because truly the welfare and access of medicines for people is something that is a north star for us. I have to say, just from my background, I've been in CPG for 30 years. I moved into pharma and it's a huge difference going from selling M&Ms and dog food to actually meeting patients and their families, because the purpose and the social part of what we lean into comes to life every day. When I meet patients and they talk about... So one of our largest franchises is oncology and there's not many people that I meet, in fact, in this room, how many of you have either friends or family or know somebody that's been touched by cancer?
So it's a common thing, but everybody has a different experience with it. And so when I meet these patients and their families, you want to give them hope, you want to give them more time. That's what most people are talking about. They want to see the graduation, they want to get to the next birthday. They're just trying to make that anniversary. And so when I think about the S in our ESG, it is a natural human reaction to want to grant that in any way possible, to give people extra time to really experience whatever it is that they want to get to. So for us, leaning into our purpose for any disease area is certainly something that is resonating with all of our people. And so, that's something that makes it easy to fold into the business strategy.
Tina Hrevus: Ready for me to go? Okay. So a little bit of context about Edward Jones. We are a financial services firm. We're celebrating 100 years this year of helping investors turn their life goals into financial goals. And so we are very purpose oriented as well. It's interesting that three little letters, ESG, could create so much anxiety and angst and the impact that that can have on your dialogue and your debate can be pretty divisive. And so, we have actually made the decision at Edward Jones, we don't use ESG, we frame up those. The framework for us is our purpose. To partner for positive impact, to improve the lives of clients and colleagues and together better communities and society. And we've honed in on three very specific areas where we believe that we can make the most impact in the world. Those are advancing inclusive growth, partnering for lasting financial strength and promoting healthier futures.
Now, if you were to lay an ESG framework over those three purpose impact areas, they would match almost perfectly. And each initiative within those three purpose impact areas could be tied directly to an ESG framework. But we've made that framework really authentic to us based on the feedback we've gotten from our stakeholders, our clients, our colleagues and our communities. And the output of our materiality assessment showed us what was most important to them and that's how we built our purpose impact areas. So in terms of if we were to put that into, were to reframe that as ESG, Michelle, like you, we are further advanced on the social aspect of it, because of the business that we're in, right? Financial services, helping investors turn their life plans into financial goals and their life plans into financial plans, and the necessity for us to really make a difference in the lives of our colleagues so that they can make that meaningful difference for our clients.
Ruth: Yeah. To piggyback off of that, you made an interesting point that you shy away from the phrase ESG. Is that because it's too broad, because it's too antagonistic in terms of branding or something else?
Tina: I think it's more to the branding point, Ruth. I've sat on Zoom screens and when you say the words, you can almost see a physical reaction from people. And so we've mitigated that by making it our own. So it is more around mitigating the anti-ESG sentiment and making it authentic to Edward Jones.
Ruth: Yes, we will be digging into that shortly, please.
Samantha Wellington: May I ask a question?
Ruth: Of course. I'm sorry.
Do you think that's partly because you're in the financial services sector and so therefore so much of the early like anti ESG sentiment comes from that concept around are you in investing somewhere that is my money going to the right place versus a different type of business that may be…
Tina: So that's super interesting because we put ESG into two buckets. One is the investor piece of it, so what are the sustainability investing choices that we're offering to our clients? And that's something we have on the shelf. We have those products on the shelf. They are for clients who want to make those choices. We're not necessarily driving investors to those choices, but then we have our institutional ESG. What do we do for ourselves, our colleagues, our communities to grow our impact? And so we keep those relatively separate. But I think you're right. I think, and in fact when we say ESG, it can be confusing because people don't know if we're talking about sustainable investing or our own ESG practices.
Samantha: And I had that reaction because TriNet, we support small and medium size businesses across the country. So our mission, we are very purpose driven as well. And I think that's interesting that we're all here talking about… I mean well done putting together a panel of people that talk about purpose-driven performance. But I like we are super purpose-driven and we are very much about powering small businesses, using our scale to enable their growth by enabling their people. And so, we likewise have a natural bent into S, because it's what we do when we're enabling people who work for the businesses we support.
But I think what's interesting about what you're saying there is we almost have the opposite reaction with our customer base, because they're small businesses and they haven't necessarily connected yet with the larger kind of institutional anti-ESG feeling that might exist. And so we've very much lent into, we build a program around what we were doing already. So what are we looking in your business? What are you already doing? And how do you then build a framework around that and then keep getting better each year and trying very hard not to care at all about ISS and what it might think about us. But rather being leaning into the work that we're already doing and why it's important to our customers and then doubling down on the stuff that works with them.
Tina: So that's of the authenticity of it. You make it your own and you build on your own strengths and I think that's critical to making progress. Yeah.
Ruth: Thank you for that. I want to zoom in and focus on the S and ESG. I think many of us often frame that or term that as DEI, although I'd argue it's far broader than that. But for the purpose of this conversation, I'll use a term DEI and the S interchangeably. We've all read the countless McKenzie studies tie in diversity to innovation to corporate competitiveness. How are you all aligning your DEI efforts with your business strategy and really embedded it to the very fabric of the organization?
Tina: Happy to go.
Ruth: Sure.
Tina: So for us, DEI goes way back. Our founder’s son Ted Jones, identified an underserved community in small rural Midwestern towns. And so inclusion was part of the DNA of the organization. In 1994, our managing partner, that's our equivalent to a CEO at the time, John Bachman said, "I can foresee the day when 50% of our sales force is women and 50% is men." Clearly, we still have progress to make on that front. Right? And the way in which we've done it, we've done it twofold. First is after the murder of George Floyd, we made a five-point commitment to our colleagues. And one of those was around diverse representation focused on women and people of color. So we have the traditional targets and goals and objectives that I think most of us probably have. But this year we've introduced something that I think is kind of interesting. I'd love others' perspective on it. Is a DEI accountability scorecard.
And it's a three-part scorecard. It is our diverse representation goals, which you would expect to be on a scorecard. But there are two other components of it that I think might be unique and different. One is inclusive leadership and the second is continuous learning. So on continuous learning, we're measuring our leaders' participation and engagement in learning opportunities in acumen building that we provide to them. So not just training, but things like our courageous conversations, which are when we bring associates together to have a confidential, private, but very intimate conversation on a variety of issues. In fact, there was one today on Native American and indigenous people conversation. So we measure that and we keep track of it and we score it. The third part is the inclusive leadership, which is a three-part measure around engagement scores of our team. So kind of a traditional measure again, but also feedback.
So performance feedback. And we actually seek feedback on our leaders from their peers, from their leaders and from their teams on whether they're creating a place of belonging in an inclusive environment. And the third piece of that then is community impact. And so we look at where our leaders are participating outside in their communities and where they're participating internally in things like leading business resource groups. So that's a three-part measure. It's brand new. We're testing it this year. Hope to roll it out more broadly next year. And we'll be tying incentives, rewards and recognition to that as well. So making that systematic and building that accountability into the system is what has helped us advance our commitment to DEI.
Ruth: Piggybacking off of that, you said you're going to be... Well you answered part one of my question, which is obviously you have the diversity scorecard, you have these success metrics. So then what do you do with this. In terms of those incentives and rewards, what does that entail? In more concrete terms what does that look like?
Tina: We're still working through the details of that, but you could imagine executive compensation being tied to that. Yeah.
Samantha Wellington: So our corporate MBOs have a similar tie in so far as the corporate bonus pool for the entire set of TriNet colleagues. A third of the corporate MBOs is tied to exactly the sort of work that you are talking about. And one of the things that we found really impactful is ensuring that it's then built into... It's not just part of the corporate scorecard, it's not just part of how we determine that. It's also then intentionally built into the template that you give to a manager when people are doing self-assessments. So how does the work that I do tie into the corporate values, tie into these things that we say is important at TriNet? But then also prompting managers to do the same thing so that you’re getting continuous feedback through that cycle.
Tina: Right. So we hold our leaders accountable for the same thing. Our DEI team has also this year met with each of us twice a year to go over our scorecard results, and they come with proactive ideas. If we're needing to make progress somewhere, they have very specific suggestions and ideas for us. So those leader resources are important as well.
Michelle: And I think what I've witnessed, I guess, from many of the conversations that I've had with some of you actually in this room, is that you do have to measure it and you do have to hold people accountable. And it all goes down to even things like slates. In our company, you can't have a slate unless there is full representation. There's gender, there's race and ethnicity. So you can't move forward with a candidate unless you can prove that the slate has been fair and just. So you know have to ensure that it starts with the very actions that bring those people in. And then it all starts at the top with your leadership. And so everyone has to really emulate and show the deep conviction and belief that we have in inclusion and diversity.
And then I also, just to be a little bit provocative, it goes beyond gender and race, because you don't get the innovation without diversity of thought, which can sometimes be really hard. Because people's values and the way that they feel about certain topics may be different than some of the people in the room. So I find that it can be really challenging to be accepting of some of those ideas as well. But if you're really going to live into it, I mean obviously you wouldn't want to have to participate in anything that's egregious. But people having different traditions or thinking from different industries that are coming into your own company need to be embraced as well. And I know that can be uncomfortable.
Samantha: Which is why I think actually you mentioned this idea of courageous conversations and continuous learning and helping people through that. I think to buy into the idea of requiring a slate, you have to understand why the organization thinks that's important. And I think part of how you do that is through continuous learning programs that help people do that. And also, I mean having this reflection on the fact that, as everyone's remote and we are working from home and we work inside of our own little... We become our own echo chambers, unintentionally perhaps, but we become our own echo chambers.
The roles of our schools and our churches and our whatever else aren't necessarily doing that job of teaching us how to have disagreement without constructive disagreement. And so I think the corporations really have a strong role to play in helping people understand how to understand a different perspective and in certain circumstances agree to disagree and move on. I'm not sure that agreeing to disagree as a thing, but anyway, in some circumstances not appropriate. But in others it's actually the thing that gets... We say that diversity is going to get you to a better decision. It's only going to get you to a better decision if you let the different ideas out and know how to engage with them in a constructive way.
Tina: The diversity of thought and experiences, to me, the greatest benefit and value of DEI. I mean when you can make a decision with the perspectives of dozens of different people with different life experiences, you get better decisions. And to your point, Samantha, about enabling and empowering the right conversations and constructive conversations, you also then create psychological safety and you can create a speak up environment and you get people talking in ways that they would never have talked, I would argue pre-pandemic because the pandemic has required more empathetic leadership, more vulnerability and that I think is also contributing to creating a place of belonging and inclusion.
Ruth: Tina, you absolutely hit the nail on the head. And Michelle, I'm actually going to circle back shortly to your statement on it, ensuring that we have an environment that really encompasses all sides, all thoughts. I think we've seen a lot of discussion around that, certainly in the wake of the Supreme Court's revocation of Roe v. Wade. So we will shortly touch on that. I do want to go back to data and metrics. To you all's point, a number of companies are linking executive compensation to ESG performance, not only executive compensation, managers at large. How are you all weighing the different ESG factors? Is there one aspect that carries more gravitas than others?
Samantha: So for us it's social. It's the social element. We refer to it as colleague engagement and then action taking inside of the organization. It's like the macro and then that's broken down into the various different social elements. There's also, we and I know there's some debate as to whether or not security and privacy and those things belong in governance or belong in social. We have them in social, it's where we see they belong. And partly because of the services that we provide and the work that we do. And so that also forms part of the metrics that we're using. And depending on where you sit in the organization, you are more tied to a subset of that. But it all feeds up into that corporate goal that exists.
Ruth: And while there are incentives and rewards for that, are there consequences? I'm just thinking about sales more broadly, right? Let's say Apple's chief sales officer has targets to hit, doesn't hit them, he's out of there or she's out of there. What are the consequences? Why aren't we talking about that more?
Samantha: I love that you're asking this question. I don't know how many public companies we've got in the room, but for public companies we are having a lot of conversation about clawbacks and that sort of thing In terms of your exec comp policies. We've been working through how do more broadly apply that across the organization so that if you are not acting in the manner that we expect, not so much just a policy violation because that's one thing that sits in BC and E, that's a thing. But if you're not actually living up to the corporate standards that we expect you to live up to, that that actually then does have a negative impact on your compensation. Now whether how that is reflected is we use a rating scale of one through five rating scale, and it may shift your rating if you don't have engagement in that particular element.
Michelle: That's pretty standard. I think most people have both the positive and the negatives, and it's reflected in the individual performance and the team performance on what you show and how you behave.
Ruth: Yeah.
Tina: Ours is similar. We are a privately owned company, so we have a different set of challenges and opportunities, but we frame our measures through what we call our purpose impact measures. And we have measures for each of our key stakeholder groups, so clients, colleagues and communities. And for clients, we focus on client confidence and we have a couple of measures related to goals and achieving their goals, that really demonstrate that they are on track to achieve what's most important to them. For our colleagues, we think about commitment to colleagues. And so, we look at things like engagement, connection to purpose. 90% of our colleagues are inspired by our purpose. And then for our communities we look at community impact. We currently measure that through our reputation score, but we're in the process of developing something that will be a total social impact measure that enables us to have a more authentic measure of our impact in communities.
Ruth: Before I move on to the next segment of our conversation, I want to open the floor to our attendees. Any similar accountability metrics you're using? Any key learnings you want to share, you have to offer? Anyone? All right, well keep thinking, please. We want to hear from all of you. The purpose of today's discussion is again to explore ESGs role in the future of work. Millennials, Gen Zers, they're flooding the workplace. Well, I'd actually say that millennials are hitting 40 now, the older millennials. So they've been in the workplace for quite some time and they're transforming the ways in which we work, prioritizing purpose in their careers. We've talked extensively about that and we'll dig into that more. Sustainability, diversity, mental health support. The list goes on. Tina, how are you taking this into account? And then for the broader group, how are you really integrating ESG and talent management and workforce innovation?
Tina: So Ruth, I would say we're integrating purpose across the whole spectrum from talent attraction and hiring to onboarding and development and mobility. We recently took a purpose lens, for example, to our recruiting material and started integrating our purpose messages and our purpose impact areas into our recruiting material, into our interview guides. And we're already attracting like-minded talent, but that really reinforces their decision and enables us to attract even more great talent. Something we also do is provide the opportunity for talent to connect their personal purpose to our professional purpose. And often as part of onboarding, teams will share their purpose statements and update those in on my team. We have a mural board with all of our purpose statements and when we have a new associate join, we go through a process to invite them to do the same. So we're building it through the lifecycle of our talent and helping them connect their purpose to our purpose, helping them see themselves in what they bring to work because we know that those are the attributes that are so important to not only the new workforce but the future workforce as well.
Michelle: Yeah, I think that connecting the workforce with their purpose and that of the company is really key. So one of the traditions that we have when we have new recruits is you fill out a form. And it was so funny because when I saw this question I was like, what do they mean? Because it says, “Who are you working for?” I'm like, "Didn't I just join BMS? what do they mean?" But it's actually given the four therapeutic areas. Is there someone who you are dedicating your time for? So my mother is a breast cancer survivor, and so I filled out my form, I am working for my mother. And that's like on your desk. It's your mantra. It's what you talk about when you meet people. A traditional question is who are you working for? We also have fundraisers that traditionally connect our own personal missions of who you're working for.
So we have a bike ride and we divide up into teams and it's coast to coast for cancer. So we start on the West Coast and we take these teams and teams basically bike for three days, and they pass the torch from team to team. They end at the beaches in New Jersey near Princeton where we're based. But as they ride across, they write on the backs of their uniforms who they're riding for, and that's who they're raising money for. And it's an amazing thing to see people's personal connections drive that purpose. There was actually on our sales team, there was a person who was still working incredibly but was diagnosed with cancer and this woman's entire team decided that they were going to ride for her. So they all put her name on their backs and she stood and watched them all get on their bikes with her name on their backs and they were like, “We’re riding for you.”
And she was like, "Holy cow." She just lost it. But that's the kind of dedication and support that those kind of personal purposes give you. And when you share that with your friends and family, it tells you what kind of company you're really working for. And it's not just about the patients themselves. What I think some people forget is that being a caregiver for a patient is equally as hard.
I mean I know that from my own personal, I had to go do the chemo treatments with my mom or if you have a heart patient and you're having to do regular upkeep, that kind of stress on a caregiver is just as important as the patients. And so, we have programs for people in our company that actually connect you with other caregivers, so you can share when your mother or your father or your relative says, “I can't do this anymore.” That sinking feeling is hard to bear by yourself. And so, we bring groups together within the company and we all lean on each other and share that kind of support. And that makes your employee experience even stronger because, it brings that company purpose forward to make it even more personal.
Samantha: I love that so hard. We work for and on behalf of entrepreneurs. So generally speaking, everyone knows a small business owner, everyone's got an aunt who ran a beauty shop or whatever. Everyone knows a small business owner. And so we have a similar connection but we don't have people write it down when they come into the company. And I want to do that. That will be awesome.
Ruth: That would be really cool.
Samantha: Yes. Ideas coming out of this round table.
Ruth: So what are you doing in your respective work organization?
Samantha: Oh, other than not doing that?
Ruth: Yes.
Samantha: So we built our ESG practice. I mentioned earlier we talk of what we were already doing because a lot of what we do is already motivated towards helping our customers and from a social bent in particular. But how we built purpose across the organization. For this, I mean, we didn't have a budget. We didn't have a team. We didn't have anything. We just had Samantha who decided it was a good plan and we should probably go do something about it. And so we built a team across the organization that was made up of people who wanted to tell the company's story. So people who wanted to be a part of going out into the world and saying, this is the company that I work for and this is the good stuff that we do for and on behalf of our customers, and then also on behalf of the colleagues who work for us.
And we've found that that was super engaging across the company. The second year that we started, we had the ESG program. We are beating volunteers off with a stick because we had so many people who wanted to be a part of telling the story, and frankly so many great ideas came out of it as well. So payroll is part of what we do. Believe it or not, there are a whole bunch of people out there who still get paper checks. They still receive paper checks, because disadvantaged banking is a thing. Not everyone has a bank account.
And so we launched a program this year that was devoted to giving people access to pay cards or some other method of accessing their pay, that didn't involve, A, draws attention to the fact that underrepresented banking is a thing and not everyone has a bank account, but also removed paper checks, which is cool. That's a way for us in our organization to lean into the E part, which isn't quite as logical for a company like ours. But it was a way for people to feel like they were connected to a purpose and actually doing something and helping our customers understand why it was important.
Ruth: To your point, I think when you really personalize that, why it certainly helps to build employer branding. Let me ask you all this though. The last two years we've seen tectonic shifts just in terms of the way we work. Number of companies have shifted to fully remote offices, remote first offices. How do you create this shared purpose, this shared mission when you very well might have had employees who have never stepped foot in an office? How do you build that and get them all galvanized around that shared purpose remotely?
Samantha: I think you mentioned it earlier, the idea that empathetic leadership has become far more important and impactful. Not more important, it's always been important, but I think, as leaders, we were put into a situation where we saw people in their bedrooms and we saw their kid crying and we saw what they were dealing with in their personal lives, which I think creates more empathy in leadership. And so I think listening and actually then hearing what's coming back at you is how you build a sense of connection to the mission, right? Because if I'm truly listening to you and I'm hearing what you're saying to me, and I actually care about working out how to connect you to the mission, then I'm going to work out how to do that, right? I'm going to hear what you have to say and I'm going to be engaged with you as a human and try and do that. And I think leaders have become hopefully better at it, but certainly more attuned to the fact that it's necessary in order to build that sense of shared purpose across an organization.
Ruth: I agree with you and I hear what you're saying. Certainly, we're seeing more empathetic leadership. Do you think that automatically bleeds into creating a workforce that's galvanized around a shared purpose of the organization? And then how do you as an employer ensure that that bleeds across a geographically dispersed workforce?
Tina: I think that's a really good question and I think about that. So empathetic leadership is key. I think there's some other components to leading a remote workforce in a way that they feel a part of the firm's purpose. And I'll just share as part of our centennial, we've had, gosh, nine celebrations in different cities across the country and these are not cake and coffee receptions. These are huge parties. And I cannot tell you how many people I have met who have joined Edward Jones since the pandemic and this was the first time they have seen a human Edward Jones person in person. And they tell their stories to me and despite never having met someone in person, they have adopted and experienced the culture of Edward Jones. And I think that is partly the leadership that they are getting, the empathetic leadership that they're getting. We provide lots and lots of resources to our leaders to enable them to lead remote teams because most never did that pre-pandemic.
A couple of other things I think that are really important to that include communication. It has to be more communication, clearer communication, more authentic and vulnerable communication. A lot of our teams do a morning daily scrum, you may do the same as well. Fifteen minutes on the Zoom screen, catch up with each other and then you're off to the races. I think also flexibility, autonomy and choice. And so, we've not mandated any specific work arrangements for our associates. They have three choices. Campus-based, home-based or hybrid. And the feedback that we get on that is particularly when you hear about other places that are mandating return to office, three, four, five days a week, the flexibility helps create that connection to purpose and it helps build the trust. Trusted relationships that you need to have with your colleagues.
And then the third thing is we talk about our office as a tool. It's not a place to come and see or be seen. It is a tool just like Zoom is a tool or a whiteboard is a tool. We encourage the use of our office as a tool when face-to-face togetherness would be beneficial to the outcome for intense planning, team building, those sorts of things. And we've empowered our headquarters leaders who are on campus to bring their remote teams in at their discretion. And so again, we get back into flexibility, choice and autonomy and trying to build the right balance of in-person experiences and remote experiences.
Ruth: And at Bristol Myers Squibb, I'm assuming, well certainly during the pandemic you weren't having these philanthropic bike rides. What are you all doing there?
Michelle: Well, I mean over the last three years things have just changed so much and the definition of leadership and how you build teams and bring people together has inherently changed. And so, the empathy and the understanding that you need to lead today versus before, I think makes a huge difference. And so, when we talk about bringing people together, whether you're in person or whether you are hybrid or whether you are fully remote, it is that purpose and people telling their stories and connecting and having those stories be relevant in helping people. We've proven over two and a half years that you can work remotely, and there is still a sense of connection by the conversations that you have. And so it really is ensuring that the interactions that you have are relevant and meaningful no matter what the topics are. And that still creates a bond in how people gather. And so I think that we've proven across the world that we can connect now more than ever.
Ruth: I want to throw that same question out to the broader group. How are you all getting that ESG buy-in from your workforce? Certainly from middle managers who are torn in a million different directions, they have the day-to-day tasks that they have to deliver on and they're also being asked to care about social governance and DEI and all the priorities that come along with that. So how do you get your middle managers or your larger workforce to really galvanize around that shared admission statement. I'm sure you all have thoughts. We have 30 minutes so, please. And if you could state your name and your employer, please. It looks as though someone is talking.
Jill Vaské: Thank you. There you go. Hello there. My name is Jill Vaské and I'm with Sage Sustainable Electronics. So we're in a unique position because we have, as our business, recycling and refurbishment in a circular economy sort of embedded, but we hire for purpose. So if somebody doesn't recycle or they get a new car every two years, they're not right for us, because we know they'll never execute to the plan and they won't also authentically represent to their teams the goals and values of the company.
Ruth: I have so many questions about that. In practice, what does that look like? I'm interviewing presumably for a job in that organization. You are asking me what? How are you gauging that.
Jill: I'm asking if you recycle. I'm asking you about your life cycle. Do you ever ride a bike? Do you take the bus to work? Those kinds of fundamental questions that test…
Michelle: Don't you find people say yes because that's the socially acceptable answer?
Jill: Well they don't actually always get it. They walk into my lair, if you will. But yeah, that's sort of a litmus test for me. And then how do we get unification across the entire workforce for the goals of the company is we tell them how they're contributing. So specifically, if I'm a person receiving material from our customer and it's mixed electronics, I tell them how every time they do that successfully we're eliminating one device from the landfill or we are securing somebody's personal data by eradicating the data on that hard drive. So we specifically tell them, not just tell them, but write in their job description how what they do aligns to the mission of the company.
Ruth: Very interesting. Anyone else? Thank you for that.
Jill: Sure.
Ruth: If you could please speak in the mic because we are recording, we want the audio to pick up, introduce yourself and state…
Crystal Barnes: Sure. Crystal Barnes, Paramount. And so I agree with that. It's people have to feel personally invested in the ESG journey. A lot of times the ESG group comes in, asks for a ton of data and you never know where it went and what happened to it. And so that piece of the ESG process, that has to be cyclical. Someone gives you data after you produce your report, have that investor call, whatever the case may be, let them know where the data went. Let them understand the role that they play in the ESG story and journey. And it's hard with 30,000 employees, but with each of those conversations it's important that folks understand the role that they play in the ESG process and journey.
Ruth: Very well said. Anyone else? Please…
Kwasi Mitchell: So, Kwasi Mitchell from Deloitte. And for us the challenge, it's been less about getting our mid-level management bought into ESG. It's just been having to be very prescriptive on the expectations that we have of them. And so, the questions that we've had have not been, is this important or why am I doing this? It's been, I do this in the course of my work on a daily basis. And we've been very prescriptive of if you have 15 minutes a week, if you have half an hour, if you have an hour and you want to engage, here's the behaviors that we'd like for you to demonstrate. So it's really been the decoding of, as we've been talking about what does ESG really mean, making that tactical and real and how it translates to their position has been very, very easy to get people on board.
Tina: I'll add another technique we've used. So we communicate clearly the impact that we're having. We call that next level the magic middle. And we've leveraged coalitions within the magic middle. So we've identified influencers across the organization and we cascade information to them and stories to them. And part of their role then is to build their own networks and go out and share their stories and the stories they hear about across the enterprise. And so, we've catalyzed this group of people who really feel the passion and the purpose to go talk about the things that are important to leadership in our organization.
Ruth: I often hear of the frozen middle. The magic middle is a far more positive branding. Anyone else please?
**Soumik Chatterjee:**I could go next. That's working funny. Soumik Chatterjee with Petco. So we've done three things that add in a measure of tacticality that's working. It's not perfect. But one is having a central ESG team that's independently funded in resource. So the trick with that is matrixing across the organization facilitating, but having resources sit at a central place that's independently funded has worked better than relying on other teams and saying, hey, help us because it's for a greater cause. The second thing, as obvious as it sounds, is more discipline, project management, program management of like, here are the tasks. Here's what you'll do as a dependent matrix organization or a function when you are navigating 29,000 people and here's what the central ESG team is going to do. And the central ESG team is part of my broader responsibility.
I do strategy corp dev ventures. And so, one of the things we've had to do as an organization is learn how to navigate large organizations like ours quickly. The third piece is a measurement and reward system that's still evolving. Eventually the plan is you'll have a set of ESG metrics that people get rewarded on. We're not there, but at least having dashboards that give clarity on, we are moving the needle. Here's how other people have contributed and secondary incentive systems to recognize and reward people. So again, journey. It sounds a lot easier when I say it out this way, but it's always the tension of I know you're providing three people or whatever to run this program. I don't have enough. And that's a day-to-day debate. That's a week-to-week debate we go through. But certainly, it's helped having central resourcing and central funding better than what it used to be before.
**Sonali Sharma:**Can everyone hear me? Hi, I'm Sonali Sharma. I work for Johnson & Johnson. So a lot of what you said, Michelle, relate to it. I'll probably give an example of what didn't work. And I think what didn't work in our case for ESG was we've seen the trajectory of corporate responsibility to CSR, to sustainability and now this new kid on the block, ESG. And when we first started to engage a lot of functional leaders, the reaction was, E is everything physical. S is everything living and G is everything structural. So what the hell are you talking about? And I think we lost everybody because we try to make ESG so big and massive and it was really tough to decipher where your materiality assessment for ESG and how does that differ from your corporate strategy and just a well-functioning organization, especially for mature organizations like ours.
So for us, it was really important to really drop the buzzwords including ESG, demystify what ESG is and really speak about what they were already doing and contributing to the ESG agenda versus vice versa of like, okay, we need more from you and what's not working well. So that was a big learning for us, which is a lot of ESG is in the corporate DNA for a lot of organizations. And why are we making it a bolt-on versus a built-in? And that was massive, right? We tried to launch these ESG trainings and let's get our boards competent on these topics and we lost everybody. Because we were trying to make ESG everything and when you stand for everything, you stand for nothing. So that was a big learning for us.
Ruth: With a company that's as large and mature as Johnson & Johnson, how do you globalize your ESG strategy as well? Because I'm assuming that your ESG strategy in the U.S. looks far different than the one in APAC or any other region?
Sonali: It's a great question. To be honest, something I struggle with a lot, because I was sharing with the colleague who was born in Africa, raised in India. And when people talk about DNI, even some of the language we're using here, it doesn't really make sense to a lot of people. So I think for us, it's really important to make sure the materiality assessment is always global. That's just one example. And we don't try to push the same notion of a goal across the globe. We try to customize it. It's something we struggle with. I mean I think the biggest struggle we're facing right now is balancing the tension between where EU CSRD double materiality wants to push you versus sort of the SEC side of really conservative with the risk of liability. How do you balance the two?
So I don't have an answer. I think you have to be inclusive. You have to make sure your strategy is not some of us setting an ivory tower in New Jersey trying to build a global strategy. You need champions in each of the markets. So we have regional sustainability leads, we have sustainability embedded into the commercial agenda for a lot of sponsors. It's not just the ESG and sustainability teams. I think that helps us be rooted and be more inclusive and embrace the local mindset.
Ruth: Before I move on to the next question. There's been this pivotal shift in the last five to 10 years where employees, consumer society at large, are more trusting of corporations than they are lawmakers and they expect companies to wade into the political fray and speak out on social ills. What makes it particularly difficult these days is the potential for legislative backlash. So I'm going to bifurcate this next question and first ask, how do you determine when it makes sense to for you to speak out? I'm going to turn to you because I know TriNet spoke out quite vociferously about the overturning of Roe v. Wade, implemented into your very business strategy and your offerings for customers. So let's talk about it.
Samantha: So at the end of last year, we had developed... And this is in the wake of, you mentioned George Floyd, and there was all of that sort of social unrest and engagement that occurred where people were saying, why don't you have a view on this? I expect you to have an opinion on this. And so, we had developed a policy or a set of guidelines that we've now published on our website, so it's available for everyone. You can go read it and tell me if you like it or not—always taking feedback.
But we developed a set of guidelines that is designed around our mission and our vision and who we say we are for our customers. And so, whether or not we have something to say on a topic has a grid that goes with it that says, do I have something impactful to say? Can I actually change an outcome by saying something? Is it impactful for my colleagues? Is it impactful for my customers? Those sorts of issues. We asked ourselves the question. When Dobbs happened, I mean obviously we've been thinking about it. One of the things we do do, we’re a single employer plan for 600,000 lives across the country. So, one of the things that you do when you come to a PEO is we become the employer or co-employer employees. And that gives you access to our single employer plan.
So it's a matter of extreme relevance to our customers, what is included in their healthcare plans and what access they have to healthcare. So, it was a topic that we knew we needed a position on because if nothing else, we are going to have to do something with our healthcare plans. And so, we made a very intentional decision to not only make statements in respect and create strategies for our internal colleagues and what we were going to do in order to ensure healthcare equity for internal colleagues, but also what we were going to do to ensure healthcare equity for our customers.
Now this is a challenging, like small and medium size businesses exist in every single place across the country. We operate everywhere and there are differing opinions. Not every customer of mine wants to offer access to healthcare and not every customer of mine wanted to provide travel. So we launched two products at the same time. One is called Enrich Access. One is called Enrich Adopt. You can take either or both. You can make the statement that you want to make, but it at least gives you a choice and access. One of the things that small businesses in this country don't necessarily have access to is the freedom that comes with a self-funded single employer plan that large companies are able to run. They're usually operating in off-the-shelf type plans and it makes it very difficult for them to be able to offer any sort of choice in that regard.
So we not only do it very intentionally, we then blanketed the market with choice and privacy, which is our new tagline. And we decided to make it a thing that was very important to us. And there are obviously going to be some customers who choose not to engage with TriNet because of that. But it was an intentional choice because for us it said something very important about who we are and why it's so important that if the role of the employer in the U.S. includes not so much an obligation, but an obligation to provide access to healthcare for your employees. I think it's really important that small businesses have access to the same choices that large employers do. So for us, it was part of who we are. And that's how we make the decision about what do we have a say in and what do we not.
Ruth: Wholeheartedly agree with you. It is one thing, however, to speak out about a societal ill or about social justice and quite another to allocate funds and finances towards said efforts. I'll just use J.P. Morgan as an example. After George Floyd's murder, they committed $30 billion to advance in racial equity. So what is the determining factor between simply speaking out about an issue at large and then actually taking monetary finances and to address and redress some of those concerns? And I'm curious what you're doing over at Bristol Meyers Squibb, because I'm assuming you're looking at things, certainly through health equity lens?
Michelle: I always forget the UN mic. We are absolutely taking health equity into consideration in everything we do, because everybody's health, that's the thing that you can't control. You can't buy your way into something healthy. You can't pay more for better health. And so, it's something that affects everyone. And so, when we stand up for different issues on health, it's really important to understand what the impact of that is. So if you look at Financial Times last weekend, you'll see my boss, the chairman and CEO, standing up for innovation, right? Because regulation in the UK is actually hampering our ability to invest in new innovation to what he calls bring hope to patients. Because while there are great treatments out there, we have to continue to innovate. When you take a look at some of the treatments, we've had so many advances in medicine today. And so, even though HIV used to be part of our portfolio but isn't today, you think about what that was like 20 years ago versus today. It's actually manageable.
And that's because of scientific innovation. So we talk in our company about transforming patients' lives through science. It is that science that allows people to overcome some of those health barriers. For many cancers today, it can be treated chronically. Whereas 20, 30 years ago it was a death wish. It was not necessarily as treatable as it is today. And so, when you think about that and you think about the things that you stand up for, that's definitely one of the things that we take a look at. And while many people don't necessarily think favorably about pharma, because of pricing, a lot of people don't understand that it takes a lot of time and innovation to actually take a look at the development of something that is going to give somebody 5, 10, more years of life.
When you think about it that way, it's actually priceless because it's more time with your friends and family. And so people don't really take into consideration drug pricing until they actually get sick. And then it's all of a sudden like, “Oh, I need that.” But it takes sometimes that for people to understand that you have to stand up for that kind of investment into innovation and do a lot of education on some of these issues to be able to move the ball forward.
Ruth: Yeah. Tina, anything to add before we wrap things up?
Tina: Well, I love the idea of standing up for what you stand for. And one of our purpose impact areas is around advancing inclusive growth. And we know that we need a strong and resilient middle class in order to continue democracy and capitalism. And so, one of the investments that we've been making is in financial literacy and financial education with our friends, EVERFI, at the table. Because we are committed to helping ensure that everyone has an equitable chance at success, regardless of where they start.
And through the integration of purpose and strategy, we've actually provoked our business segments to think about expanding our addressable market from the traditional 250,000 to 5 million to those below 250. And the incredible opportunity that, as we delve into that and find ways to serve that market and in ways that are meaningful for them, but also financially viable for us, and provide the education to help create confidence and wellbeing in the future, I just think that that's how you decide where to make your investments. It's where you can make the biggest difference and what people expect of you and what you're uniquely capable of delivering.
Ruth: Great. Well, I think that's a great place to end. Conversations like this are particularly critical impressions as we see sweeping layoffs, rising inflation, looming recession, just to ensure that ESG is in place on the back burner amid periods of economic downturn. Thank you again to TriNet for hosting this topical session. This was great.
