Welcome to Crazy and the King!!
Aug. 4, 2022

The CATK Interview: Judy Julius

The CATK Interview: Judy Julius

Fresh off her appearance at NILG 2022, Join Julie and Torin in welcoming Judy Julius to the show!

Fresh off her appearance at NILG 2022, Join Julie and Torin in welcoming Judy Julius to the show! Ever wonder why Affirmative Action should matter to your DEIB program and goals, Judy Julius helps CATK listeners understand the undervalued yet incredibly powerful relationship between corporate DEIB leaders and the fearsome (yet, mostly loveable) legal department.

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Cred:

Production and Music: DJ Cellz

Transcript

[music]

0:00:01.0 Announcer: We've been about this work, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belonging. Shared through the voices of a white woman and a black man, we bring lived experiences. We have pursued the D&I progress for most of our professional lives. We use Crazy and The King to cover news, tips from colleagues, and host incredible guests. Listeners count on Julie and I to transparently drive the conversation. We thank you for rocking with us. Check it. Julie, kick of the show.

[applause]

0:00:39.8 Julie: Welcome, welcome, welcome to Crazy and The King, summer 2022.

0:00:43.8 Torin: Looking good, feeling good. Let me just say this to you. This is getting ready to be a little bit of a brag. I just want you to know that given the fact that we have spent the last two plus years in hibernation, in COVID, pandemic posture, my posture absolutely was impacted. But I have slimmed down a little bit. I don't know if I'm like beach ready, but let me just say that my posture is a little bit different as we are ending the summer, and I feel good about that. And part of the reason why I feel good is because earlier in the summer, I absolutely went and did my check-up. So for all of the men that are out there, make sure you get your annual check-up in, stop being afraid of going to the doctor. Do the things that the doctor does or ask that you do, but make sure you feel better. Listen, I'm not trying to be in a GQ magazine, although I look incredibly good in a suit. That's not why I'm doing it. I just wanna feel good, and I feel good about myself and the summer. How about you, J?

0:01:58.7 Julie: Yeah. No, I'm loving life right now. And I will say, 'cause I can see you on camera every week and our listeners can't, you have slimmed down substantially. You're always rocking a good suit. But I can tell you're taking better care of yourself. And I'm gonna put what you just said on record and play it for my husband, like six times a year, so he also...

0:02:16.9 Torin: Just six? Just six?

0:02:19.0 Julie: Okay.

0:02:19.7 Torin: And he's a former drill sergeant. For those that don't know, Chad is a former drill sergeant. So he always stays fit and he even gets mad when he hears that you went and snuck off and went to McDonald's and stuff like that.

0:02:33.2 Julie: Oh, he does. I get so much shit. I'm like, "Hey, you don't need to listen to this week's episode, babe." And he always goes, "Why?"

[laughter]

0:02:40.7 Torin: Hey, so tell me something, J. Are you an Apple or Android type of gal?

0:02:48.0 Julie: So, much to the sugaring of my husband, still, I am an Apple user except for my computer. Everything else is Apple. How about you?

0:02:56.9 Torin: Everything else?

0:02:57.3 Julie: Everything else.

0:02:58.3 Torin: All right. So we're just gonna pretend like everything is Apple, because I pulled a web page a few months back that actually highlighted a few numbers. And today's show is all about numbers. And the page was from Apple's website on their inclusion and diversity. And what I like is... Well, I'll just be real basic about it. I loved the color scheme, the graphics. I loved the way that they laid out the information. I love how they open it. They said, "How we come together is how we change the world. How we come together is how we change the world." And one of the things that stood out for me was just the way that they broke down the numbers. Like did you take a peek at the page on your non-Apple computer device?

0:03:49.3 Julie: [chuckle] I did, I did. I looked at apple.com/diversity, and I loved it. I love data. You know that, right? And I think one number that stood out for me, is potentially the most impactful anyway, is an 89% increase in the number of female employees globally between 2014 and 2021. 89% globally. And when we talk about the fact that women move economies, that's pretty amazing.

0:04:22.6 Torin: Yeah, you're absolutely right. And the page, just for our listeners, and again, you'll have a chance to click on it when you look down in the show notes. And Julie actually mentioned the URL a moment ago, but the numbers are as of December of 2021. So even though they're almost a year old, they're still pretty relevant and they are accurate. And what we did see, like Julie said, was an increase or a lift in representation in women, Black and Brown employees. But what we continue to see whenever these numbers come out is a failure to highlight how we are doing in terms of people with disabilities. And I gotta admit to you, J, as much as I love Apple products and many of my friends, family also feel the same about their products, the organization. And they don't do this blindly. We certainly have some critique of Apple as an organization, but as it relates to this specific piece, this URL, I was disappointed to not see a breakdown of people with disabilities in any of the categories.

0:05:39.8 Julie: Yeah. And I think what you see here, we've talked about this with Microsoft before. Microsoft is doing an exceptional job. And I would say Apple, especially from an iPhone perspective, is doing an exceptional job of thinking about their consumers and the way that we use, need, accessible technology. I don't know if you watch TikTok videos on Apple hacks. And they're almost always... Or iPhone hacks. They're almost always accessibility tricks. People are using them because they're good for all of us, but they were built with the intention of providing more accessibility. And what we see here, as we see every time we do a sort of an employer brand assessment for a company around talent with disabilities, is you talk about people with disabilities as your consumers or as the charitable community that you give to. And we entirely skip over the conversation about the talent that we bring to your workforce every single day, right?

0:06:40.1 Julie: We know that a quarter of women under the age of 50 have a disability. We know that 70% of them are hidden. We know that Black and Brown employees have disabilities, and a good portion of those are gonna be hidden. And until we start to shift that conversation, that is a talent value proposition, companies will always forget us. And I don't think that this is... I wanna go with this is not intentional, but the longer it goes and the more I have to say it, until we see representation for people with disabilities on your fucking inclusion and diversity pages, in what you report out, in what you share, in part of your talent acquisition strategy. What you do from a consumer perspective, it just isn't good enough. It's not good enough. I wanna see as an Apple product purchaser and owner and devotee, seeing them understanding that I have a value beyond my dollar, I have a value in what I can bring to their organization.

0:07:45.3 Torin: Yeah. Towards the end of the report... And all of that, duly noted. Julie, duly noted. Towards the end of the report, they did also share some additional stats. One of which that jumped out for me was their stat around leadership representation and I thought that that was a good topical look as well. 47% of open roles that needed to be filled were filled by women, 34% of open R&D roles, leadership roles were filled by women globally, and then the last number that I put out, 59% of open leadership roles filled by women from underrepresented communities here in the United States. And so again, I do... I give them a solid B, maybe even a B plus-ish if you will, because I appreciated a bit more granularity in their numbers.

0:08:38.3 Torin: They actually went back and they put a sliding scale which shows you how they've progressed over the last seven years. Which reminds me, Julie, the fact that they put that graph down at the bottom from 2014 or so up until now, think critically. It was Pinterest in 2013 that released the first sort of representation report and that's kind of what kicked off this conversation around diversity and inclusion in Silicon Valley in the tech community. And so the fact that Apple went back and put up their numbers from 2014, '15, '16 all the way up until now, it says two things. Number 1, listen clearly, that they've always had the data, and that most of these organizations have the data. And the fact that they are unwilling to share it is a plausible deniability.

0:09:44.9 Julie: Yeah.

0:09:45.1 Torin: So I want you as a listener to know that if Apple can show you the data for almost the last decade, every other organization is probably in the same boat. That's Number 1 and Number 2, if your organization is not able to share the data, then you need to challenge them to do a better job of capturing it.

0:10:11.1 Julie: Yes, absolutely. And I'm so excited because our guest today is going to tell us why they have that data and why it's so important and how we're having these transparency conversations now. So let's jump to a quick commercial break and then welcome our guest,  Judy Julius.

[music]

0:10:32.2 Torin: Awesome. So our guest today is  Julius, founder of EEO Consulting.  has over 40 years of EEO and affirmative action experience, including 13 years of corporate HR experience with companies like McDonnell Douglas Boeing and the Bunge Corporation. I wonder if that's really like the one that puts people up on top of these crazy contraptions and drops them down in crazy locations where their heart is swinging some place still a year later. Anyway, that's not part of the introduction. This allows her to bring a practical approach to the preparation of AAP or Affirmative Action Planning. , welcome to Crazy and The King.

0:11:20.6  JUDY: Thank you, thank you. I've got my latte here. I grabbed my latte, make sure I was ready to go for this conversation. All good.

0:11:28.4 Torin: All right. So wait a minute. Is it really the bungee jump, Bungee Corporation? Is that the one?

0:11:33.7 JUDY: It is not. It is Bunge with a hard G. All right?

0:11:37.5 Torin: Bunge. Okay.

0:11:39.7 JUDY: Bunge, hard G. So they have...

0:11:40.8 Torin: So tell us about Bunge.

0:11:43.6 JUDY: Bunge is one of the largest privately held companies in the United States. I joined them when they moved from New York to St. Louis as far as their headquarters. I'm located here in St. Louis. And they have grain elevators throughout the country, and they have food processing plants throughout the country. So Bunge is into food.

0:12:07.9 Torin: J, have you ever heard of the Bunge Corporation?

0:12:11.5 Julie: No sir, not once.

0:12:14.6 Torin: One reason why we record is because... , I've often said this and Julie and I, we interchange when we say this, part of our recording is historic. We get to capture history and the footprints of how we walk through certain years and when we go back and listen, in addition to our being critical of how we might have sounded four years ago to now. But it's a reference point for us and we're always learning, and thank you for that introduction to the show. So a lot of our listeners are in their own way, , they're focused on creating systemic change regarding D&I, DEIB, I&D or whichever acronym they are using inside of their organization. They're focused on creating systemic change. So let's just start at the very basics. When I say AAP or an Affirmative Action Plan... And there may be a couple of other... The very basic questions, because Julie and I have not had this conversation before. What is an Affirmative Action Plan?

0:13:33.9 JUDY: So an Affirmative Action... You said you like numbers, you said that you like data, right? So an Affirmative Action Program is all about data. It is all about collecting data on hires, promotions, terminations, on women, on minorities, on people with disabilities and protected veterans. It is all data-driven, and it is really an internal audit. Now, there are regulations that guide Affirmative Action Programs, and those are put out by the office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs. So in order to have an AAP, you need to be a federal contractor or a subcontractor. And so there are regulations, Executive Order 11246, the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Act as amended and the Rehab Act, which was out a lot sooner than ADA. So all of those regulations are what we follow when we put together an affirmative Action Program.

0:14:35.5 JUDY: One of the things that we measure is how is the company doing in terms of females and minorities compared to where they recruit. So do they have parity in terms of females and minorities, say for management or professionals or technicians, craft workers. It gets very detailed and you can get, depending on what your jobs are, there's data out there that matches up with the jobs that you fill and you calculate your own availability analysis to determine how many women and minorities are out there. And then you look at your workforce to see if there is parity or not. And if there's not, then you set some goals and try to reach those goals and have good faith efforts in place to try to reach those goals in the next year.

0:15:24.8 Torin: All right. First Crazy and The King fastball. This is gonna be a fastball, not a curve ball.

0:15:30.4 JUDY: Okay.

0:15:30.5 Torin: Well, maybe a curve ball and not a fastball.

0:15:34.2 JUDY: I'm ready.

0:15:34.4 Torin: And I'm literally doing this on the fly. I'm not trying to be the word police. And I'm not trying to be ageist in this question.

0:15:48.4 JUDY: Okay.

0:15:48.8 Torin: But you've used the word minorities four or five times. Are you using the word minority because it's the word that is attached to the work that you do? Are you using the word minority because it is embedded in your lexicon? Why does  use the word minority? Because it's like fingers on a chalkboard for me.

0:16:17.1 JUDY: Oh, I'm so sorry.

0:16:18.3 Torin: No, no. But I'm being graphic just because I wanna make a point. I'm cool with it. I get it. I'm only being radiographic to make a point. But why are we using it? Is it industry language? Is it how we have been socialized and it's part of our narrative? Talk to that question.

0:16:39.8 JUDY: So it's in the regulations. It's as simple as that. So when we talk about minorities for affirmative action purposes, we're talking about people of color. All right? So white women are not minorities. White men are not minorities. We're talking about people of color. So we've got several categories, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Pacific Islanders, two or more races. And then you're... Native Americans. So we've got six categories for persons of color.

0:17:17.5 Torin: Hey, J, mark this on the podcast. Thank you so much for the explanation. See, this is beautiful. Julie mark this on the podcast because I am going to make sure that I send our good friend, Keith Sonderling a message. And I am going to challenge him to challenge them to refrain or edit the use of the word minority in our Federal regulation, because it just... It's something about that word that already sets the stage for a lack of disparity, if you will. Okay. J, take it over.

0:18:00.5 Julie: So, I have to tell you , just to make you feel better. Torin has trained me as he does on many a thing about never saying the word minority and I have fully removed it from my lexicon. I know why you use it, because my background is also in compliance, and so it was trained into my brain. And when we started the pod, he was like, "Nope. Nope. Nope." I always generally say underrepresented talent pool, underrepresented individuals.

0:18:27.4 JUDY: Yeah.

0:18:27.5 Julie: Okay. So I love compliance, says like no one ever, but I do. And you do.

0:18:36.9 JUDY: I do. It's my jam.

0:18:37.6 Julie: And a lot of people, especially like our audiences is gonna be DEI people or people that really care about having more diversity and equity in their communities. And so when they hear the word affirmative action and compliance, a lot of times they go, "Oh, no, I don't know. No, no, no, no, that's not it." And one of the things that I love to say is that Affirmative Action Plans or Affirmative Action Reporting is a result, it's the measure of the effectiveness of our DEI programs. And so tell us, how should DEI leaders look at their compliance departments and think, "How do I create alliances here that help us drive actual equity forward?"

0:19:30.2 JUDY: I'm so glad you asked that. Because a lot of times the compliance folks are over here doing their thing, right? And the diversity folks are over here doing their thing. And there's been, I think sometimes consciously a wall between the diversity folks and the compliance folks. Right? We need to tear that wall down because what's happening sometimes, not always, but what's happening sometimes is on the diversity side of things there's a tendency to pull numbers out of thin air, right? That we wanna increase the Blacks in management by 20% by 2025, right? They come out with these numbers. Nobody knows where they got these numbers, right? And so that can end folks up in a court of law where they are trying to defend these diversity benchmarks that they've set that they have pulled out of thin air. One thing that we do not do on the affirmative action side of the house is we do not pull numbers out of thin air. There is Census data, there is the American Community Survey data.

0:20:43.9 JUDY: It just got updated this year, and so there is data out there that drives the affirmative action program, and it is available by your metro areas, by your state, by national, by all your EEO-1 categories, from service workers up to senior management, it's available by industries. So there's a lot of data that is available and that is used every single day by the affirmative action folks, and even our buddy, Craig Leen, who was in charge of OFCCP for the last four years before Jenny Yang got in there has said he doesn't know. Nobody really knows where some of these DEI numbers come from, and a best practice is for companies who happen to be federal contractors, 'cause again, you only needed to fear federal contractors or subcontractor, which most companies are, especially the big ones. So the best practice really is for the DEI folks to use those affirmative action goals as their data metric for diversity.

0:21:51.6 Torin: So, , let me stay there for just a moment, because you actually raised a really good point. Diversity benchmarking, saying that we want 25% of our new hires to be from some particular community, and you said something, where did that number come from? Can you talk about that just a little bit more? I'm not asking you to give up your secret sauce, but why is that problematic when some people say, well I don't wanna have a target because that's discrimination or a goal. I'm sorry, I don't wanna have a goal. I don't wanna be measured by having to hit that 25%. Maybe having a target is a little bit better. At least it's something to shoot for, and it's not really how I'm being measured. But why is how we get to whatever that number is problematic if it's not rooted in some of this data that you mentioned?

0:22:53.5 JUDY: Because it's called a quota, alright? So if you're pulling numbers out of thin air, then that becomes a quota, and that's illegal. So you've gotta be very careful to not set up programs that have quotas because that will land you in a court of law trying to defend those quotas. That's why the affirmative action program is never based on quotas. It is always based on data, based on the best data that's available.

0:23:28.2 Torin: So then why... I'm sorry, J, this is fascinating for me, but why only federal? Why have we been unable... Why have we been unable to leverage what I believe to be something that is fair, that should be uniform and could probably help all organizations do a better job of chasing and navigating their journey of diversity? Why haven't we been able to legislate that across business period, yet you got folks down in Texas that can legislate, if you do certain things, then we're not going to do business with you?

0:24:05.7 JUDY: Right. So the regulations that we follow are simply an executive order. They're an executive order that was signed by the President in 1965, right? So another president can come in and rescind that, so there's that, but in the meantime... So hopefully, that doesn't happen because I've got a few more years till I retire, right? I gotta keep doing this shit a few more years until I retire, but in the meantime, there is no reason why the diversity folks can't use the data. I think sometimes they don't know that it's out there and sometimes it's because those functions have been siloed. You got your diversity folks over here, you got your compliance folks over here. They don't talk to each other, they don't have lunch together, they don't have beers together.

0:24:58.4 JUDY: So get those two folks together and use the tools that we have on the affirmative action side. There is so much data and I see so much positive change when we can really deliver the data to our HR folks and the CEOs in a way that tells them what they're doing well and where they need to focus, whether it's on internal development, whether it's on casting a bigger net, whether it's on high turnover, whether it's on opening their eyes to hiring people with disabilities and how that's great for their workforce, or really engaging with not just the vets, but their spouses. When we can have good conversations that are data-driven and get that information to the CEOs and to the diversity side of the house, then we can move the ball forward.

0:25:56.2 Julie: See, and this is what I love. A few months ago, Torin, you and I had a discussion on a piece that Tim Sackett put out, and he said, DEIB people aren't driving change because they're too worried about what to do for the Taco Bar. You remember that? And this is what's so interesting because the reason this data is collected is because of Executive Order 11246 and that has created the stage I think personally, for why we're here today as DEIB leaders, because back in the 60s, I think, right? Or 70s that was signed and federal contractors and sub-contractors... And let me reiterate, the US government is the biggest buyer of goods and services on the planet, so Pepsi is a federal contractor, Apple is a federal contractor, everybody is a prime or sub-contractor. So we started to collect this data and started to learn what our corporations look like in contrast to what our communities look like and started to drive change.

0:27:15.1 Julie: Now, where I wanna push back a little bit with you, , is data always tells the story of what we're doing. What I don't want and probably my biggest pet peeve with compliance and with sort of DEI programs in general is that I don't wanna get reliant on the... On the community data in a way that it gives companies an out. I'm sorry, I can't hire female managers in Columbus, Indiana, because there just aren't according to the Census data. Okay, there aren't right now, but you are still as a company doing business with the federal government. You have the honor and the privilege to do business with the federal government. You need to start creating proactive talent pipelines so that... You can't hire female managers in Columbus, Indiana right now, but if you start building programs and you start building and investing in your communities to build talent then you can do that. And I think too often when I... And not you, but too often when I talk to compliance folks, they're like, "Don't exist. Can't do it." And to me, what compliance folks should be saying is, "Doesn't exist right now. How do we go build it?"

0:28:38.4 JUDY: Exactly.

0:28:40.9 Julie: And that's where D&I and compliance can come together to say, it's not an excuse to not have people in roles. It is our responsibility to figure out how we get there.

0:28:52.1 JUDY: Right.

0:28:55.7 Julie: And too often, whenever we start a new big program with a company, the compliance people come in, they have a freak out. I tell them that everything's going to be okay, 'cause it always is. We've got our clients through multiple audits, and then they start to understand how valuable this is to them, and the DEI people, I think, are just still in the infancy of understanding how important you are to us.

0:29:26.3 JUDY: Yeah, I'm so glad you're talking about investing in the community because that's really where it is. When I got my start at McDonnell Douglas, right, McDonnell Douglas was one of the first companies to have AAPs, and they had internships, and they had co-ops, and I was one of the co-ops. And so they got women and people of color into jobs, getting training or on-the-job experience paid internships, not any of this bullshit with free internships. Quit that. Quit having free internships. You want these folks to learn how to do things for you, pay them, pay them. So one of the... One of our clients last year asked me what is the top thing that they can be doing to support affirmative action? My answer, invest in your inner city schools, invest in your inner city schools. Put the money there. You got the money. Put it into the schools.

0:30:26.5 JUDY: I don't know how it works in other parts of the country, but in St. Louis, the schools are based on property taxes. It sucks. It's ridiculous. It needs to change. So the schools in the better neighborhoods are better, the schools and the housing markets that are lower-end have more schools. We put in lotteries that was supposed to go to the schools. It has... We should have the best schools in the world based on all this lottery money that's coming in, right, but we don't. So invest in the schools, invest in apprenticeships. The baby boomers are all getting ready to retire, right? We're all getting ready to... We found that out with the pandemic, mass resignations. Everybody's going, "I'm not working at home. I'm not doing this anymore. This is bullshit. I'm out of here." Right? "I'm retiring." So have we had enough babies to replace all these folks? No, we have not.

0:31:18.9 JUDY: So we're gonna have to use every tool in the toolbox to fill these jobs and it's gonna have to start with the middle schools and the high schools and the trade schools, and not everybody needs a degree. And EEOC and OFCCP are out there saying, put in your hat on this whole degree stuff and I have a degree so I get it, but the first thing that they asked me to do out of college was to write an affirmative action program, and they didn't teach me that in college, right? So pieces of paper are nice, but they're not required for everything. Start investing in the community and get people of color and women into the jobs. Maybe they're already represented enough to meet your goals, but you can do more. You can go beyond compliance. Nobody said you can't go beyond compliance, right?

0:32:15.9 Julie: Right.

0:32:16.0 Torin: Hey , I wanna continue to dig into that treasure trove of knowledge that you are holding on to. You actually did a webinar back in December of last year and you, in that webinar, were discussing new Census tables. What about the new Census tables do HR and D&I practitioners need to know and is there a suppression of data that is or is not happening in this new process?

0:32:52.4 JUDY: So yeah, this is my thing, the census data, I don't have... All these folks have all this fancy ass software to do all of their goals and census data, and I don't. I like to say that we bake bread by hand over here. I'm a numbers person, I'm a numbers geek. And so I started digging into the new census data, and when I say new for census data, what we're actually talking about, Torin, is from 2014 to 2018. So before that, before last year, when everybody was updating their goals, they were using data from 2006 to 2010, that's how old the data was that we were using in 2020 and 2021. It's ridiculous. So I jumped down the new stuff, and what has happened with the new data is that it was aggregated. We used to have 488 different codes, so you could find welders, you could find tool and dye makers, you could find plastic workers. Alright?

0:33:54.3 JUDY: And now they have combined a bunch of the data, and it's my understanding in talking with the census folks over the last year, that that has been combined because of the cost of space on the server, so... It's ridiculous, it's ridiculous. So... But the worst example of combining data is combining flight attendants with pilot. What? How is this even possible that we've combined flight attendants with pilots. So there's been a lot of aggregation in the data, but that doesn't mean that you should throw it out. It's still... There's a lot of good data in there, and it is... At first, they suppress the data or different metro areas, including Washington, DC. Boy, that gets some people's attention, right? So then they updated it and they came out with more data, they stopped... I know you had said the word suppressed, they did, they suppressed the data for 60 metro areas, so we're all scrambling around going to county data and adding up county data to try to get to what we needed to.

0:35:05.9 JUDY: They released that last December, so now we have everything that we need, we have 237 codes. The data is from 2014 to 2018. And here's a fun fact, the new data, next data won't come out until 2031. 2031, so you better get used to the data that is out there, because it's the only data that we're gonna have at this level, at the level that you can find mechanical engineers compared to civil engineers. So this is really the detailed stuff. You can also find it for the DEI side of the house, the folks on that side of the silo, you can find it by EEO category, so the bigger the data, the better the data. When you get into these small rural areas, all of a sudden it'll say that you got 40% of the tool and dye makers are women or whatever. No, that's just... I don't believe that data.

0:36:07.8 Julie: Let's clarify that really quick, , because you said something that could have just slipped by. So if I'm correct, they put job categories together, including pilots and flight attendants, so now when you as a practitioner are looking to see, does American Airlines, Delta whatever have enough female pilots and is it reflective of the community of pilots together? It probably looks like there is, because flight attendants who are heavily female and pilots who are heavily male, massive pay scale difference, are now one category. Is that right?

0:36:53.4 JUDY: So that is right. And so that is why in the webinar that I did, I gave everybody some better data on the pilot, 'cause there is better data out there. So if there's some data that you don't like, you gotta poke around... And it's not really that hard to find, because you just Google it, you Google "pilot data", and so then all of a sudden you're at the pilotinstitute.com, and you find out Women in Aviation statistics, then you use that instead, right? So you've gotta know that the key is you have to know when the data is crap so that you don't use it. You've gotta use the good data, throw out the crappy data, and there's many... And in my webinar, I teach people how to be careful because if you just let the software program suck in your codes and spit out your goals and you don't know where it's coming from, then is it reasonable and attainable? And that's where we're trying to get to with goals, we're trying to make sure that they're reasonable and attainable. USA Today published numbers in May of 2021 about how many persons of color were pilots. So we know that only 3.4% of the pilots are black, we know that only 2.2% of pilots are Asian, so we know this because there are some other sources of data out there.

0:38:31.3 Julie: And one other piece I'm really interested in with the census is usually they do what's called the American Community Survey. And in that survey, I learn a lot about what the disability community looks like, at least in the way the government breaks it down, and we use that a lot in talking about how we get talent in the door, and teaching people leaders about that. Is that gonna come out this year? Is there going to be an American Community Survey for this census period?

0:39:11.2 JUDY: So as far as affirmative action programs go, those regulations changed in 2014, and the disability community really advocated for goals by job groups. So not an overall benchmark, because they don't wanna be pigeon-holed into some sheltered workshop kind of job, and they don't wanna be pigeon-holed into entry-level jobs. So what every affirmative action plan includes is a 7% goal at each level of the organization, from the top to the bottom. And so, as you and I talked about the other day, what gets measured gets done. And so, the regs came out in '65, and we didn't start measuring the progress with people with disabilities or protected veterans until 2014. Before that, it was all about accessibility and outreach, that's all it was. And now we're starting to measure things, and now we're starting to see results. So there are other sources, and OFCCP has instructed companies on some other sources that they can use for that data locally. But quite frankly, anybody who's doing affirmative action programs is using that 7% goal.

0:40:33.7 Julie: Okay. Yeah, And I was... I happened to be...

0:40:36.7 JUDY: And some people... Some folks are blowing it away.

0:40:39.5 Julie: Yeah.

0:40:41.2 JUDY: But part of the problem with that part of the regulations is that the employees who have disabilities, especially hidden disabilities, don't like checking that box. They just don't wanna do it. So a lot of what we do is try to engage and inform and train the employees on what the definitions are, what the ADAAA definitions are, which are very broad. They include everything from a history of cancer, to diabetes, to ADD. They're very broad. And so part of it is educating people on not only what the definition is, but that it's not gonna be used against them.

0:41:22.0 Julie: Or you hire Disability Solutions, quick plug to help you build self-ID programs and self-disclosure programs. We love those. They're awesome. You have to gain the trust of the people that work for you. You have to learn, teach them that they'll be protected and that there are advantages to being your authentic self at work and checking that box. Sorry. Done with the plug. Go ahead, Torin.

0:41:46.7 Torin: No, it's a positive contribution to how we started the show. Because again, I was... I shared my thoughts around this reporting or the lack of reporting around people with disabilities, but in that moment, I also could have made mention to the fact that we could do a better job of encouraging that self-disclosure, if you will. So I appreciate you bringing this in and allowing it to be sort of a thread back to the top of the show. So before we...

0:42:18.0 JUDY: It starts from the top. It starts from the top. I just wanna add that.

0:42:20.7 Torin: Absolutely. Absolutely.

0:42:22.9 JUDY: If you wanna encourage people to self-ID, get the letter out there from the CEO. October is Disability Awareness Month. It's a great time to show support of these programs, and with some communication from the top. We've had employees who've written back to the CEO to say, "I've never worked at a company that recognizes the importance of people with disabilities. My son has autism, and this is great to work at a company that really embraces all of us with all of our ability." So, yeah. Sorry.

0:43:02.0 Torin: No, good stuff. So before we close out, I think J has a question. Are we good on the pay equity piece or do you want... Or you wanna just have  briefly touch on that, Julie?

0:43:16.0 Julie: Yeah, I mean, if we can. We're talking about pay equity and transparency all the time, and really the OFCCP has helped to shift that conversation full force, front and center, as well as the EEOC. We have a new director at the OFCCP, Jenny Yang, who actually came from the EEOC. Where do you see OFCCP taking this critical issue of equity and transparency?

0:43:38.1 JUDY: So it's really interesting having Jenny over at OFCCP from EEOC. So here's a fun fact, EEOC, in 2021, got $484 million for victims of discrimination. OFCCP, in that same time frame, got $26 million, only 5% of what the EEOC does. So now, you got a new sheriff in town. You've got Jenny Yang over there from EEOC going, "I know how to get money. [laughter] I know how to get some things done." And one of the first directives, the first directive that she put out was about pay equity and making sure that the federal contractors know that when you get an audit, that you're expected to show us your self-audit. An AAP is just a self-audit, and so you're supposed to show us your self-audit, and quit saying that it's attorney-client privilege, we don't buy that bullshit anymore. So we wanna see what's going on.

0:44:45.6 JUDY: At the EEOC, with the annual reporting, the E01 reports back in 2018, they collected compensation data that is being studied to see... The part about compensation it's that it's hard to have a one-size-fits-all measurement. And so when they get this data, they don't always know what to do with it. So right now, the National Academy of Science is studying that data to see if it's gonna give false negatives or false positives on who has problems and who doesn't. So it's going to see... We gotta wait and see what Jenny does over here. I'm expecting her to be tough on pay. And about half of the money that they get right now, in terms of settlements with federal contractors is around pay equity. So the other half is around applicants, but they are definitely gonna focus on it. And the second order that she put out, the second directive was to say, "Y'all aren't getting to all these damn extensions on when you give us the data. When we get to an audit, we want the data." 'cause she's gonna go in quick. She's not gonna fiddle around with this stuff for eight, 10 years.

0:46:04.5 Julie: Love it.

0:46:05.7 JUDY: So things are gonna move faster.

0:46:10.1 Julie: Excellent.

0:46:10.8 JUDY: It'll be interesting to see what Jenny does.

0:46:12.6 Julie: So  Julius, you can check more or find  at eeo-consulting.net. Hit her website for tools and opportunities to have her help you construct a data narrative to drive forward your DEIB initiatives. , thank you so much for joining us.

0:46:35.2 Torin: And one more time, that's eeo-consulting.net. , you actually, you raised some really, really good issues and I'm glad we had the conversation, and I'm sure that Julie and I will most likely have you back. Enjoy the rest of the summer.

0:46:55.1 JUDY: Thank you. You too.

0:46:56.5 Torin: Awesome. This weekend on Her Voice segment, we are amplifying women that are making moves. In the spirit of our conversation with , we wanna give you all some homework. Number one, we want you to find the women inside of your organization that are curating and housing the company data. Now, I'm not suggesting that men are not curating and housing it, but I want you to go have a conversation with the women that are curating and housing that data and just spend 10 minutes with them. Better understand what it is that the organization is doing to really look at the different stratas, the dimensions, the intersections of how women are showing up inside of the organization. Number two, be the woman inside of your organization that is helping to curate that data to challenge how we are compiling that data and how we are depicting that in terms of a narrative or story on our website. And then be the woman who supports other women inside of the organization, other women and others that will remember the impact that you helped to make because we told different and better stories. J, you have any name drops?

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0:48:16.0 Julie: Nope. Just to  for joining us, that was a fantastic conversation. Thank you again.

0:48:22.3 Torin: Our guest earlier this month was Mr. Chris DeSantis, author, speaker and consultant. We talked about organizational behavior practices and the other focused approach as well as his book. If you missed that episode and any other episode, remember you can always find them at crazyandtheking.com, and you can find Julie and I, or listen to Julie and I on iTunes and Spotify and wherever else you can grab a good podcast. Listen, we want you to also find your voice. Be a better human. Build better culture, better workplaces, and better teams. For now, J and I are ghosts.

0:49:00.1 Julie: See you.

[applause]

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Judy JuliusProfile Photo

Judy Julius

Owner/Consultant

Judy Julius has been writing affirmative action programs for over 40 years. She started at the IT division of McDonnell Douglas in 1981. She moved to their Automated Microbiology manufacturing division in 1983. In 1990 she became the Corporate EEO Officer for Bunge Corporation’s grain elevators and food processing facilities. She started her business in 1993 where her team prepares over 100 plans each year in 35 states and multiple industries. Judy has been using the new census data since it was released in February 2021 and talking with folks at the census bureau since before its release. Judy regularly conducts webinars are training sessions on all things Affirmative Action.