Why DEI Matters in Compliance – Expert Perspectives

Whether you're a compliance professional, an HR specialist, or simply interested in the evolving landscape of workplace culture, our latest Compliance Conversations episode offers valuable takeaways for everyone.

We invited Kyle Manwaring, a DEI professional, for a great conversation about the possibilities at the intersection of DEI initiatives, compliance, and organizational culture.

Tune in to our new episode, “Exploring Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Compliance,” to learn more about:

• The fundamentals of DEI and its various components.
• The importance of DEI for organizations, both ethically and financially.
• Strategies for fostering a more inclusive and equitable work environment.
• The role of executives in championing DEI efforts.

If you’d like to go one step further, Kyle shared some helpful DEI resources that offer a great place to start or continue your DEI journey:

• Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg
• Pew Research Study on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Workplace
• “The Five Stages of DEI Maturity” by Ella F. Washington for Harvard Business Review

Episode Transcript

CJ: Hello everyone! Welcome to another episode of Compliance Conversations. I'm CJ Wolf with Healthicity and I have a wonderful guest today, Kyle Manwaring. Kyle, welcome!  

Kyle: Hey, thanks for having me.  

CJ: Yeah, it's good to have you. You're joining us from kind of the Midwest or slightly East Coast, aren't you?  

Kyle: Correct, yep! The Northeast Ohio area.  

CJ: Sweet. Well, excellent. We're glad to have you today. Today's topic everyone is going to be DEI in a lot of organizations, there's we get lots of questions about DEI and how it might relate to compliance and just what is it and how can it help organizations and those sorts of things. And so, Kyle has a lot of experience there and some great ideas and we'll jump into that as soon as we let Kyle introduce himself a little bit. Kyle, feel free to share what you'd like to share about yourself professionally, personally, or whatever you feel comfortable sharing.  

Kyle: That's awesome. Yeah, I'm excited to be here. I currently am in the HR sort of DEI space and it's kind of been a conglomeration of things that have brought me to this point. I come kind of from a background in communications, sort of a marketing, advertising edge, and also education as well. I was a social studies middle school teacher. I also have a little bit of experience in higher ED.  

And what kind of brought me here to where I'm at in HR, specifically with the focus on the DEI, is that I noticed kind of throughout different organizations that I've been a part of both as members and then also as employees in various companies or nonprofits, I've always found myself very passionate about DEI, about inclusion, making sure that the organization is kind of maximizing, capitalizing on its potential by ensuring that its members its employees are included, are equipped with the things, the tools that they need to be successful in their roles.  

And so that's kind of what led me here to where I am. I love DEI. I love sports. And you know, I love the intersection of DEI and the work, kind of what we'll talk about today in various aspects of life, education, sports, athletics, government as well. So, I'm excited to be here and share a little bit about DEI, and how I think, and why I think it's important. And how it can be really helpful in organizations across the board.  

CJ: Yeah, perfect. Well, thank you for that introduction. So, let's jump right in. Can you first tell us what DEI stands for, right? And just describe what it is. Let's kind of give us kind of some level setting for some folks that might be brand new to it.  

Kyle: Yeah, of course. That's a great place to start. Kind of the area of DEI actually has gone through a lot of change over the last couple of decades and it can be very confusing because a lot of the terms that we use in DEI, we use kind of interchangeably, when in reality they mean a few different things. And so just as a definition point DEI is any policy or practice designed to make people of various backgrounds feel welcome and ensure that they have support to perform to the fullest of their abilities in the workplace or in any given organization that they are a part of. It stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion. And again, those 3 words are ones that sometimes we use interchangeably within the field and outside of the field when in reality they mean a lot of different things.  

DEI was kind of started as a result of a lot of civil rights laws that were passed to ensure that there was diversity in the workplace, ensuring that, you know, in the hiring process, in decisions and promotions, that members of protected classes of different races of genders and sex were ensured the same protections and the same representation within their organization.  

Since kind of that focus of diversity early on, it's really broadened out quite a bit to focus on inclusion kind of the ability for employees or members of an organization to feel like they belong, to be able to contribute, to make a difference within their organizations.  

Recently there's also been a huge emphasis on belonging. And that's something where a lot of ERGs, Employee Resource Groups, or leadership development comes in and kind of a sense of the employees being able to feel like they're important, like they're valued like they can bring their whole self to work, to their organization and contribute in an honest and authentic way.  

And then one other thing that recently kind of at the forefront of DEI today is a focus on equity and justice specifically, making sure that organizations, companies that their systems, their frameworks, are made in an equitable, fair way. Where all employees, regardless of their background, are equipped with tools to be able to succeed and accomplish their roles within that given organization.  

So that's kind of where DEI has been kind of where it's at right now. And again, for outsiders that don't have a lot of experience here, there can be a lot of confusion and overlap of all the words and so it's important to kind of just lay that out there.  

CJ: Yeah, it probably varies a little bit from organization to organization. Like maybe depending on what their mission is as an organization. And I envision that these organizations can kind of put their stamp and their theme in their kind of flavor if you will kind of on this on this whole area too depending what they want to accomplish.  

Kyle: Yeah, correct! A lot of organizations, and companies today use words like belonging. They use words like culture and people. So, it's actually becoming, and a lot of organizations less common to hear DEI and more common to hear like; "It's a department of people and culture, or it's there's a vice president of people and culture, or a lot of it is just under HR." So, yeah, it's important to realize that in different organizations terms might be different, but at the end of the day, kind of the goals are shaped from similar places.  

CJ: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And the fact that you mentioned kind of belonging. I've seen working with clients across the country, predominantly in compliance roles we often will piggyback on culture surveys. Most organizations are doing like some sort of annual cultural survey and they often include questions and ideas about how comfortable do you feel here? Do you feel valued? Do you feel important? And those surveys nowadays have been going on for multiple years, and so you can use them as a benchmark, and then to each year or whatever cycle you do these surveys, you can see how the organization is improving towards their goals, whatever those may be.  

And from a compliance perspective, we're often tacking on, you know maybe some questions that that we feel are important because those surveys themselves have become so valuable.  

Kyle: Yeah, incredibly important.  

CJ: Yeah. Well, that's a good background. So why would you say DEI is important for an organization and what value might it even bring to an organization?  

Kyle: Yeah, this is an area that I'm really passionate about. I fully believe that organizations, again regardless of what the organization is, can use DEI to maximize and capitalize on their potential. Research and a lot of studies show that it brings in a lot more money, right? Having diversity of thought at all levels of an organization and its, but especially in governing boards and in levels where the big decisions are made increased diversity of background, diversity of thought really help maximize the earning potential and how much money these companies and organizations make. 

It also helps avoid costly litigation, there are a lot of laws that are set up for protected classes to ensure that they are treated fairly and equitably by their employers throughout the hiring and employment process and a lot of companies lose a lot of money every year from lawsuits and from other litigation that comes.  

Innovation is increased, right? Having different thoughts, different backgrounds helps, different problems be solved in different ways. You have different perspectives, you're able to listen to different voices. At all levels across the board.  

And something that's huge, DEI it's something that companies are aware of. Organizations are aware of, which also means that employees are aware of that and a huge benefit of DEI is that it enhances and boosts the company's reputation. Employees want generally to work for companies, for organizations that are equitable, that are fair and that are, you know, innovative and diverse and creative in their thought and a huge way to accomplish that is by ensuring your DEI strategy, your DEI directives, and programs, your training, your hiring process, you know, every step along the way really is diverse and inclusive so that you're able to kind of capitalize on a lot of these different benefits.  

You know, I could go on all day about the benefits of why DEI is incredibly important for organizations. What value it brings. The key really from my perspective as an HR person working in DEI is to get buy-in onto these programs and to help other people see why it's important and see why it can benefit them and help them in their roles and in their companies.  

CJ: And I can imagine that, just as somebody who over the last 25 years has worked in organizations in healthcare predominantly where we see turnover and it's expensive, I mean it's expensive to invest in bringing people in. It's an investment of time and commitment for the applicant, for the organization and if it turns out not to be a good fit, it's like all that investment and time it kind of feels wasted and then you have to start over and then you never really get into the flow of what you're trying to do as an organization cause you're so busy dealing with turnover people not feeling comfortable and it's better to be kind of transparent and upfront so that you can get people matched and feeling like they're comfortable. And so, you don't have to go through that process over and over and over again.  

Kyle: Correct! And that's really where inclusion and belonging come in huge because you want employees to buy in, right? You want them to buy into your company, to your organization, you want them to feel comfortable, feel like again they can bring their whole selves to work.  

And you know from an HR background like that turnover word always kind of brings up a lot of emotions, cause by far the hugest chunk of HR budget generally goes to hiring and to turnover. And there are studies, there is quite a bit of research out there that shows that companies that are leading in the DEI field are kind of setting a good example with these sorts of initiatives, are able to hold on to their employees longer and then at the end of the day, spend less money on turnover and recruiting and hiring, right? and so  

CJ: Yeah, exactly! And if any of those studies are like top of mind for you and easy to find maybe, it might be cool to include one or two of those in the show notes later, because I think it's really interesting. And probably like you said, most HR departments probably have that research at the tip of their fingers anyway.  

Kyle: Yeah!  

CJ: What surprises me though, is like, you know, I'm a little older I've been in the workforce for a long time and just in my lifetime, just in about 25 years of full-time work and I can only imagine for those who've been working for 30 and 40 years, they've probably seen huge improvement in this area.  

But I still and it kind of blows my mind, I still see as I'm working with clients, I still see cultures that like seem like they're 50 years old.  

So, I'll give you 2 examples. So, in the engineering space, it's pretty much male male-dominated type of field. And females that are in engineering are often looked down on or they're not included, it might not be a conscious decision. But there's this sometimes unconscious bias that makes them feel excluded, and they probably are actually being excluded, even if it's not a conscious decision.  

And on the flip side, I work a lot in healthcare and so, not so much today, but I but years past, you know, the nursing field was a female dominate type of profession and males that we're getting into it were, you know either ridiculed or other things like that. So just from you know just from a gender and sex standpoint, it seems like that's one class that I think DEI would try to address, right?  

Kyle: Yeah, completely! And that's a specific area that I'm actually incredibly passionate about. There's a really great book called; Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg. Sheryl Sandberg has been, you know, a C-Suite employee at lots of big companies, a really, really well-known famous businesswoman and a lot of her research and study focuses on what exactly you're talking about, gender and sex within the workplace bias. A lot of it has to do with unconscious bias, exactly like you're talking about, not realizing that lots of times we as individuals, we as organizations or systems might not treat people equitably, might not treat men and women equitably.  

And it shows that across the board in most industries, women are vastly underrepresented still to this day, in leadership positions or in governing councils where decisions are made. And there are lots of reasons for that. One thing or lots of reasons that can be addressed, I'm sorry. One thing specifically that I'll kind of point out something that I love specifically from that book Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg. She talks a lot about companies, and organizations and their mentorship styles, how they mentor different leaders, right? We talked about wanting to minimize turnover and a big part of that is making sure you maximize leadership development within your organization.  

CJ: Right! 

Kyle: Something that studies have shown is that across the board, men generally are more hesitant to take on men to be mentors for female employees, and her studies and her passion is kind of promoting that and saying; "No, that's not okay," like as a society, we don't have to sexualize everything and assume that just because a man and a woman are working close together, that there's questionable things going on!  

CJ: Right! 

Kyle: Because what happens if that system is perpetuated its men take on the mentorship role for other men and then down the road, that's when we continue to see, you know, a lack of representation. And so, something I'm passionate about is really I'm encouraging and promoting mentorship programs and leadership development for everyone within the company, but specifically for women because lots of times that's just looked over in organizations. And that simple act can then steps down the road, even generations down the road, can make a huge difference in organizations.  

CJ: Yeah, that's such a great example. Let's talk some more about some of these topics. We'll take a quick break though, and then then we'll come back and keep diving in a little bit deeper.  

Welcome back everyone from the break. We're here with Kyle Manwaring talking about DEI and the importance that has for organizations, their productivity, financial performance, overall kind of culture, and belonging.  

And Kyle, I wanted to maybe shift gears a little bit. A lot of our audience is made up of compliance professionals and largely in healthcare. But you know compliance professionals are familiar with laws and regulations and that's kind of the message that they are often focused on.  

Are you aware of what kind of laws there might be related to DEI and maybe talk about kind of these mandatory DEI, addressing DI issues mandatorily from like a regulatory or legal perspective versus kind of the voluntary perspective of trying to create a culture?  

Kyle: Yeah, of course! A lot of the current DEI fields within HR within companies kind of stems from some of these laws and the biggest one that we talk a lot about in HR and when you talk about employment law is the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ensuring that all employees and applicants, so even applicants in the process of applying, interviewing are free from discrimination, specifically based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin.  

And so, while like these DEI initiatives, a lot of them aren't specifically to address these legal things, but in a roundabout way, they really do and they help ensure that discrimination really is minimized within an organization. That same Civil Rights Act, there's been amendments and executive orders since then, establishing, you know, protections for women who are pregnant for different gender identities, for sexual orientation, for adults older than the age of 40, for neurodivergent individuals, for individuals with disabilities.  

And a lot of these laws are really complex, hard to understand and they really can just be avoided by ensuring that your systems are equitable. The organization, federal organization that oversees all of this is the EEOC, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. And that's kind of where employees or members of organizations can go make complaints if they feel like they've been discriminated against, in any point of the process, right? Of applying to a position and being employed in a position.  

So, there's a lot there, right? Coming from an HR background, I think legal teams probably understand a lot of these laws, a lot more than HR folks do. But it is important to be aware of them to avoid, you know, costly legal cases that could come against you if you are at any point purposely not hiring someone because of their age or because of disabilities that they have. There has to be more going on than that.  

CJ: Yeah! And you kind of mentioned employees or applicants could file complaints with the EEOC and on the compliance front, we spend a lot of time and money, and effort in making a hotline or kind of a speak-up culture where we even have policies where there's no retaliation allowed if somebody brings forth the complaint in good faith.  

And of course, we're seeking from a compliance perspective, we're seeking a kind of hotline issues that deal with the organization might be breaking laws like HIPAA or billing, or those sorts of things, but in those hotlines that, in my experience, a vast majority. Because of the entire employee population is aware of the hotline. We get a lot of what we call HR issues reported through that hotline and so we have to work closely with HR to make sure that, you know, cause if it's a complaint about sexual harassment or something like that, most organizations let HR and legal deal with that as opposed to the compliance department but the intake of the issue is coming to us and so for our compliance folks out there, I think this is a really good topic because you just need to be aware that not everything that comes into your hotline is usually addressed by compliance, it might be addressed by HR and those sorts of things.  

Have you seen those types of complaints come in through hotlines and see that HR or others like legal kind of address those concerns?  

Kyle: Yeah! No, for sure. That's where a lot of a lot of the DEI focus kind of with problems comes in, right? A lot of the reactionary work of DEI comes from those complaints, and it's interesting a lot of DEI and my opinion is all of the DEI should be very data-driven.  

And you talked about earlier like about surveys, compliance surveys within organizations. And there's research that suggests that lots of times, specifically when we ask questions about DEI about do they feel included at work? Do they feel like they can bring their whole selves to work? Even if like protections in the survey and the data collection are made to make it anonymous or whatnot. Lots of times there's still inaccurate or inauthentic, you know, reporting there. Meaning that what you just brought up at a hotline, or like a third party or in this situation, legally with, like the EEOC, those third parties are incredibly important for monitoring and for giving employees and members of organizations an outlet to go and make complaints where they don't feel like there's a worry of facing backlash or retaliatory action.  

And so, I think that's something incredibly important to be aware of, not just for DEI, but for all areas within organizations to make sure that you're giving employees, just like with this hotline safe places to go and either get help or report or just become more comfortable at work.  

CJ: Yeah, exactly! And you know, it goes beyond even compliance and DEI like you're saying just developing a speak-up culture one where people feel safe to speak up. I mean it can even go as far as you know the quality of this product is not good because XYZ is happening on the manufacturing line or just a general culture of being able to speak up versus we just take messages from the top down. This is really interesting, I bet there's a lot of more formal training in DEI. What kind of training or schooling exists in preparing professionals for maybe a career in DEI?  

Kyle: Yeah, there's a lot of certificates and additional trainings that individuals can get. Most people that work in a DEI space either get a degree or a background in human resources or business administration because there is so much more overlap with DEI and HR and kind of that admin side, a lot of it depends kind of on the size of an organization. Smaller organizations, obviously, lots of roles are lumped together where HR teams will also be dealing with a lot of DEI initiatives. A lot of those complaints and stuff generally across the board are dealt with HR.  

The part of DEI that I kind of like is within bigger organizations when there's separate departments or separate areas positioned specifically for DEI that can kind of be a little bit more proactive instead of reactive within organizations and crafting strategy, crafting long-term strategy for companies to maximize on DEI. So, along that route, there's lots of training. There's lots of certificates that individuals can get and DEI is changing so much it changes, even from when I've started here and in various roles. Like it changes all the time and it's important to be aware of that and jump on that when industry changes come.  

CJ: Yeah, that makes sense. So, within an organization, where is DEI usually housed? Meaning like, where is it placed? Is it in HR or is it a standalone department? I'm sure it varies a little bit, but what's a little bit about the structure and the governments of DEI?  

Kyle: Yeah! So exactly like you said, it depends quite a bit, but typically it's housed and funded through HR through human Resources. And usually, the head of DEI directly reports to the CEO, right? Oftentimes there's a CHRO or a CPO or VP of people and culture, right? Talking about again, that culture, people belonging focused a lot of companies and organizations kind of try to go.  

So generally, it's housed within HR, but it's incredibly important across the board within DEI, it's commonly understood and accepted that executive-level leaders, you know, whatever those positions are called in various organizations, whether they be CEO or Governing Council or President, Vice President, executives need to be involved. They need to be the ones that are ultimately approving decisions related to DEI because when you take a step back and think about DEI initiatives, specifically a lot with like the litigation side of things, you want to make sure that you're being careful and that the executives are fully on board with what you're doing.  

So it's kind of a controversial take, lots of times within organizations, it's solely within HR. It's becoming more common for DEI to kind of be a separate thing that works in tandem with HR. But at the end of the day, I don't think there's a huge difference as long, again as top leaders buy in that they're on board with what you do and that they're fully involved with decisions with the understanding of what's going on within DEI.  

CJ: And I can imagine, so kind of beyond and this may be a less important reason to have DEI, but it might get the attention of executives, of course, you want to just do it because it's the right thing and you want people to be happy at work and that sort of thing. But you know, a lot of for-profit companies are looking at the bottom line as they should, they have shareholders publicly traded and my suspicion is that there's probably a lot of, like, social. I know on front of people buying stock and investing in companies, a lot of times, portfolios want to know what's your DIE strategy, right? Like how are you, how are you dealing with these kinds of issues because these are important to our investors as well.  

Kyle: Yeah! Yeah, it's huge in HR and DEI we talk a lot about making sure that you get buy-in from executives and also from shareholders, making sure that you provide them with concrete data, concrete reasoning, rationale, not just, you know, coming at it from, "This is probably going to make you more money," because it probably will, but also you know, "This is the ethical thing to do. This is the right thing to do." And kind of a mixture of those, right? It depends on organizations, but hopefully a good mixture of those really helps DEI succeed and flourish within organizations.  

CJ: Maybe one of my last questions as we're getting a little bit closer towards the end, but how could DEI professionals and compliance professionals work collaboratively, do you think?  

Kyle: Yeah, I think that's a great question. And again, my background doesn't come a lot from healthcare compliance, but I can talk a little bit to ways in which DEI is successful within organizations. And I think that there's a lot of overlap there within compliance.  

When we talk about creating DEI initiatives or strategy or programs, it's all about getting individuals to buy in, not just executives, but also all employees. A lot of DEI focuses on employee training, on educating employees on unconscious bias or on fairness and equitable equity within systems. And a lot of times, that's not the most comfortable thing for employees or for executives for anyone, right?  

And so it's important to get buy-in and to really help individuals within organizations see that the goal with DEI is really to help individuals be successful. Lots of times there can be like some controversy within DEI and specifically like ERGs, for example, Employee Resource Groups specifically for let's say for women. Lots of times people on the outside can look at that and say; "That's not fair, that women are getting this special treatment, that women have these extra resources." But hopefully, with DEI, we're able to educate and help individuals see that lots of times, those extra resources are needed so that these individuals can be at somewhat of a level playing fields can be equipped with some of the same resources and potential that everyone else is within an organization.  

And when you're able to paint kind of DEI initiatives from this is fair, this is about encouraging success within organizations. You get a lot more buy-in. And so, I think maybe there's like a parallel there with compliance of, you know, kind of making it not just this boring thing that people are like; "Oh! this training again. This thing that we have to do every year and we just dread it!"  

But making it more engaging, making it more like, "No, this has real impact. This makes real changes within organizations and within individuals." And hopefully kind of approaching it from that more optimistic perspective helps it be more successful.  

CJ: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and you've kind of mentioned this throughout the podcast today is kind of data-driven. I think that's really important to kind of, of course, these can be emotional issues. They can be emotionally charged because they hit at the core of what humans are and we don't want to ignore that emotional aspect but to make sound logical decisions data is really important too.   

Kyle: Yeah, it is.  

CJ: Well, Kyle, this has been fascinating. We have maybe another minute or two if you have any last-minute thoughts or kind of parting words of wisdom for us. It's been fascinating to learn from someone like you that kind of does this for a living and I'm sure our listeners are also finding it really valuable, but any last-minute thoughts?  

Kyle: Yeah, I think just in line with what you just brought up about data, I think with data within DEA, within organizations just across the board, if companies are not capitalizing on their data right now, they're going to get left behind with the way that the industries are going right now, especially with DEA. 

So, like capitalize on that, ensure that you have really good statisticians, really good people to analyze that data within organizations, so you don't get left behind. 

And just one other thing, I think companies and organizations, they should make a plan and they should be engaged in this because the trajectory of society and of industries across the board are promoting and encouraging organizations to be more equitable and more inclusive. 
Most companies, most organizations, already do things like this and they should keep it up. And. And if organizations don't, they really should because that's the way things are nowadays and it's going to become increasingly so that way in the future. 

CJ: Yeah, I think that's good insight that, I mean in the longevity of business and industry, it hasn't been on the map long term, right? But maybe the last decade or so and like you said, it's really just increasing and it's really where almost every organization is headed, you're going to probably be left behind if you're not on this path as.  

Kyle: Yeah, correct!  

CJ: Well, great, Kyle! Thank you so much for your time and your expertise. It's been a real pleasure.  

Kyle: Thank you!  

CJ: And thank you to all our listeners for listening to another episode of Compliance Conversations. If you like these podcast episodes, we encourage you to share them with friends to subscribe and like and spread the word. And as always, if you have topics or issues that you would like us to discuss or you know of guests that might be good guests for this audience, please reach out to us. Have a great day, everyone!