“One of the beauties of civil service is that the community is happy to tell you where the gap lies,” said Dana Brown with a knowing smile. “So, the city of Los Angeles has certainly risen to the occasion,” added Brown, general manager of the City of Los Angeles Personnel Department. 

Brown spoke at the beginning of a panel discussion on improving the talent pipeline to tap a larger, more diverse cohort of potential workers, part of From Day One’s recent conference in Los Angeles. Panelist Adam Gefkovicz, co-founder and co-CEO of Untapped, a recruiting platform with an emphasis on diversity, said he poses two questions to prospective clients: “No. 1, can you identify the composition of your pipeline? And then no. 2, can you figure out where there’s a discrepancy and ultimately improve those?” In his work of consulting with hundreds of companies, Gefkovicz found that most companies are still answering the first question.

A factor that’s revolutionizing the talent search is artificial intelligence (AI). Mary Burke, the SVP and head of HR for Experian consumer services, said  that Experian utilizes AI to screen descriptions to ensure inclusive language. At the hiring stage, Burke explained that it could be as simple as “making sure that your interview slate is diverse.” Otherwise, you might “have an all-male candidate interview slate, which inadvertently creates bias in how you select candidates.” Flexibility is also key to opening up the possibilties, she added. “We don’t require anybody to come to the office. We go where the talent is, and that does open up accessibility, especially as we try to hire more people with disabilities.”

Yet AI has drawn increasing scrutiny for its flaws in diverse hiring, said Lauren Ptak, chief marketing officer for the New York University Tandon School of Engineering. When AI is trained on historical data sets, they will have reflected biases. Ptak has been working to offset this. “We consulted with the city of New York on a law going into effect in 2023, where employers cannot employ technology that does not go through annual bias audits.” As technology is implemented for greater ease and efficiency, Ptak asserted that we should ensure that it’s not intentionally being used to perpetuate bias. 

One of the more powerful ways to attract new talent is to make the corporate culture well-known for its spirit of inclusion. Kelly McCulloch, global chief people officer for Taco Bell, decided to take a novel approach to inclusion as part of the company’s celebration of its 60th birthday: she hired Disney Imagineering to bring fresh perspective. McCulloch expressed the importance of making everyone feel included through setting up incubator sessions fielded by a Disney Imagineer. “It’s pretty cool for people just to feel like they’re part of something bigger and helping to solve the big challenge,” she said.

Once talent is brought aboard, the issue becomes retention. The city of LA’s Brown offered the analogy that inclusivity could act as a party. “We do a lot of employee outreach, a lot of surveys and sessions where employees are telling us if they want to dance and or how they want to dance,” she said. Employee engagement can be as simple as outreach. “We have used those relationships to also fashion programs that are beneficial to the employees in Los Angeles, so that those who want to dance, can.”

At Experian, diversity is embedded into promotion. “We look at promotion rates on women and underrepresented communities’ survey results. We break down sentiment by each underrepresented community, making sure all our leadership programs have diverse representation,” said Burke. This holistic approach looks at inclusivity across all stages of employment. Among other initiatives, Experian has also employed a membership program that includes training. “It doesn’t have to be HR’s job. There’s a lot of passion around this around the organizations.”

Throughout the panel, Gefkovicz noted that diversity could not just be one person’s job, but an organization-wide effort. Too many companies hire a diversity recruiter and assume their work is done, he said. “For literally every single person at the company, it has to be within their top three priorities, from the VP of engineering to the head of sales to the folks on the ground.” Other opportunities could be launching a recent-graduate or internship program. “And if you’re doing that while inviting people to dance, you’re going to build an incredible, inclusive, and diverse company.”

Gefkovicz also pointed out that the future workforce, Generation Z, has rigorous standards for diversity in the workplace. “Two-thirds of the 1,000 Gen Z candidates we interviewed would reject their dream job if the company had a poor [diversity, inclusion, and belonging] reputation. That’s a big difference.”

Maddie Connors is a comedian and writer based in Los Angeles who has written for the New York Times, Vanity Fair, and W magazine. She currently hosts a stand-up show called Icons Only at the Elysian theater and her stand-up has been featured in the Los Angeles Times.