Diversity attracts top talent from all available talent pools: Many organizations continue to recruit from the same talent pools they have always recruited from, and risk missing out on meeting talented people. This is an opportunity for recruiting to find ways to tap into these available talent pools. Some companies have moved to blind interviews where names and addresses, as well as race, ethnicity, and gender markers are removed from resumes. This enables screeners to focus on skills, accomplishments and education rather than other factors. Other organizations are using training programs for hiring managers and leaders to address biases.

As a part of our series about “How Diversity Can Increase a Company’s Bottom Line”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Kevin J. Carrington.

Kevin J. Carrington, Senior Vice President and Senior Consultant at Segal, the benefits and HR consulting firm, helps organizations maximize their HR investments. He is passionate about assessing organizations’ HR landscape and identifying how improvements to organizational diversity, equity and inclusion can help solve critical business challenges. Kevin enjoys advising large organizations on how inviting more women and people of color to a company’s leadership can increase ROI.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive into the main part of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit more. Can you share a bit of your “backstory” with us?

I graduated from the University of Virginia with a B.A. in Economics and significant course work in Computer Science and quickly began my journey to 30+ years of supporting the internal and external DE&I efforts across several organizations. I joined Xerox after graduating and worked there for almost 20 years. During that time I led the Illinois Xerox Business Services office, a multimillion-dollar profit center, as the General Manager with over 750 employees. I was also active as a local and national leader in Xerox’s Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) for Black employees. I helped to found the National Black Employees Association from the 10–12 regional affinity groups already in existence at Xerox (Xerox Corporate Few, Bay Area Black Employees, etc.). After Xerox I joined executive search firm Carrington & Carrington, LLC which specializes in DE&I searches across all industries and positions, and later joined Hewitt Associates, now Aon. There I also helped start up the Multicultural Leadership Advisory Council as a Hewitt Leadership Group member to help provide insight and guidance to Hewitt’s DE&I internal and external client facing strategies.

At Segal I am a member of the company-wide DE&I Steering Committee in addition to my role as Senior Vice President, Senior Consultant, Higher Education Southeast Market Leader, and Federal Government and Government Contractor Practice Leader.

Can you share the funniest or most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? Can you tell us the lesson or take away you took out of that story?

When I first joined an executive search firm, I picked up a search for a Senior Vice President Corporate Controller in Washington D.C. The salary and bonus exceeded $1M which to me was a big role. I reached out to candidates in New York City that were in the finance industry and had the required skills and experiences. I was able to generate interest in the job with the first executive I engaged until he understood the position was located in Washington D.C. He knew the role would be too small, but I thought that $1M+ would be a game changer, until he share that his base was over $1M and with bonuses he exceeded $10M. I was stunned into silence for what felt like forever, but was only 10 seconds before asking “So, who else do you know that might fit our requirements?” He was very nice and did provide a couple of candidates, and I placed the right person for the role, so all’s well that ends well. The lesson that I learned, and still use today, is that regional differences are a bigger predictor of compensation differences for similar jobs than the scope of work or other factors.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you tell us a story about how that was relevant in your own life?

I have two favorite quotes: “Tough times never last, but tough people do,” and “If it is to be, it’s up to me.” Each one has a story. In college I ran track for a Division 1 program while trying to manage the course load at a top-10 university. There was little to no support for a freshman learning to balance school, sports, and all the other distractions and challenges that my newly found independence brought. I clearly tried to have it all my first semester, and to say that was hard is an understatement. The wake-up call came after first semester grades and the conversations from coaches, deans and parents. Though not terrible, my grades were not what I expected or was accustomed to. I then re-focused and realigned my priorities and was able to turn everything around and demonstrated to myself and others that these tough times were behind me.

During these challenging times the quote “If it is to be, it’s up to me,” would have also applied, but I didn’t hear that one till much later in life. One of my kids’ basketball coaches closed every practice session with a group circle to chant “If it is to be, it’s up to me.” That soon became the mantra for my son, and his other siblings that were not even part of the practice. I even found myself thinking during challenging situations, or after receiving a daunting task that “If it is to be, it’s up to me.” This has led to much success, and allowed me to be a better coach and mentor to others.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are?

Many, many people have helped me throughout my career. I’ve been fortunate to have people see potential in me and offer to mentor, or provide opportunities to build new skills, engage in new opportunities for growth and development, and to prepare for future success. I am grateful to some for the “gift” of their honest feedback that allowed me to course correct early, and to others who have helped me to see opportunity — where others see only chaos and disorder — to choose the road less traveled. I am grateful to still others who encouraged risk taking, and for recommending that I develop plan A, B, C, and sometimes D, so that I have options when plan A goes sideways. And to others who helped show me the power of resilience, and the need to take time to recharge when needed. So I can’t identify only one person to be grateful for supporting my career. The concept that it takes a village is probably the most appropriate metaphor for success, but what they may not tell you is that you need to seek out and participate in building your village.

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

Our mission is to “provide trusted advice that improves lives.” This short and concise phrase helps us to stay focused on our clients’ needs and their desire to improve the lives of their people. We have many clients that really count on Segal to help them make several critical business decisions that may determine whether they retain key talent, or even continue to successfully thrive as an organization. This is a tremendous responsibility that we don’t take lightly. We have several clients that have told us they are our partner for life because of the support we provided that saved their company or organization from “certain extinction” or just really bad times.

Are you working on any new or exciting projects now? How do you think that might help people?

We are working on many new and exciting programs, and each is designed to help our client’s specialized needs to directly improve the lives of their people. Some of our new projects include developing more flexible health and welfare programs that allow employees to choose the benefits that are most relevant to them and their family’s needs rather than the standard set of offerings you see in most companies today.

We are working on health and wellness related analytics to help clients to better support employee decision-making to increase their personal health outcomes, which in turn helps them be more productive at work and in their personal lives. We are developing strategies to assist employers in creating hybrid work environments that enable more effective working practices to support the way employees want to work without compromising efficiency, effectiveness, or organization productivity. This helps retain and attract critical talent.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

I have always been committed to seeking out ways to give back, usually through active participation in volunteer organizations that impact my communities. I am the former President of the Washington D.C. National Association of African Americans in Human Resources (NAAAHR) chapter. NAAAHR is focused on providing personal and professional development for African American professionals in HR. My goal was and continues to be on making the workplace better and more inclusive for all. This focus resulted in the creation of a Diversity Summit to create ongoing learning opportunities for HR professionals to begin to incorporate DE&I initiatives in the everyday processes like talent development, succession planning, workforce planning and other critical HR functions, so that it would become a way of doing business and not just a program or a single initiative. This Diversity Summit became an annual event for 6 years, culminating in a NAAAHR National Conference in Washington D.C. It made a difference in the workplaces in the Washington region as evidenced by the feedback and outreach throughout the community. It was gratifying to make such an impact!

Ok. Thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the main part of our interview. This may be obvious to you, but it is not intuitive to many people. Can you articulate to our readers five ways that increased diversity can help a company’s bottom line. (Please share a story or example for each.)

1 . Diversity creates opportunities to increase market share: Women and People of Color are increasingly becoming greater influencers and/or decision makers of buying decisions for more households as education levels rise, and opportunities increase.

“Women make up more than half of the U.S. population, and control or influence 85% of consumer spending” — Source: girlpowermarketing.com.

“POC buying power is growing faster than other populations with growth rates ranging from 48% to 89% and currently represent over $4 trillion in buying power” — Source: Catalyst.org.

2. Diversity attracts top talent from all available talent pools: Many organizations continue to recruit from the same talent pools they have always recruited from, and risk missing out on meeting talented people. This is an opportunity for recruiting to find ways to tap into these available talent pools. Some companies have moved to blind interviews where names and addresses, as well as race, ethnicity, and gender markers are removed from resumes. This enables screeners to focus on skills, accomplishments and education rather than other factors. Other organizations are using training programs for hiring managers and leaders to address biases.

“Women earned nearly 140 master’s degrees last year for every 100 degrees earned by men” — Source: aei.org.

3. Diversity of thought enhances customer satisfaction and reduces the risk of missteps: Having a diverse team will give organizations the opportunity to better relate to, and understand a wider range of audiences and issues. Being able to relate to your audience’s wants, needs and pain points will provide more opportunities to connect with customers and develop long-term relationships. Also, a diverse team increases the opportunity to reach new customers and new demographics within existing customers in ways that might not have been identified without the more diverse support team. And developing deeper and broader relationships provides tremendous opportunities for greater profitability. Greater diversity also decreases the likelihood that an organization will create policies, advertisements or take other significant actions that represent the organization, but could be viewed as culturally insensitive. Just being in the room during these conversations and decisions makes a difference. This one action could also save millions of dollars in cost avoidance.

4. Diverse teams increase opportunities for alignment with customers: Organizations want to do business with organizations they feel are in alignment with them. When they look across the table they want to feel you can understand them and their unique challenges. I’ve had many clients that are very upfront with wanting a diverse team to bring their different points of view as well as the ability to understand a variety of viewpoints during our assessments and data gathering.

5. Diversity drives innovation: It provides an organization with an expanded worldview by increasing understanding and insight to develop new products or services. These diverse viewpoints allow organizations to see, assess and interpret opportunities more effectively.

What advice would you give to other business leaders to help their employees to thrive?

Here are my top seven:

1. Live your values.
2. Inspire others to be better.
3. Hold yourself and others accountable.
4. Seek out the big picture, and help others see it.
5. Communicate often.
6. Build on your strengths.
7. Prioritize what is most important and focus on it.

What advice would you give to other business leaders about how to manage a large team?

Seek out ideas and input from diverse and nonconventional sources, and be intentional about how you build your executive team and those you invite into your inner circle. Those are the influencers that will shape your worldview and the world/culture experienced by those in your organization and diversity will provide balance that will be the currency of the future.

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this 🙂

Former President Barack Obama. The ease, grace and humor that he brought to the office of the Presidency, and his ability to pull people in from diverse communities was remarkable, especially because of how difficult it is to do. He brought the country and the world through some very tough times, and ushered in some difficult conversations that we as a country have long avoided. Yes, it meant many people were going to be uncomfortable having to wander through these essential and difficult conversations, but this is the first step to creating change.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

I encourage you to visit our website at segalco.com and my LinkedIn page.

Thank you for these excellent insights. We wish you continued success in your great work.

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Kevin Carrington of Segal: How Diversity Can Increase a Company’s Bottom Line was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.