Amplifying Diverse Voices at Hearst Television: ERG Business Impact with Elfi Martinez and Yasmine Osborne

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Yasmine Osborne:

We have many, many business units, many of which have their own ERGs for their specific business units and then at Hearst Television we have all these locations as well. So it is a lot of juggling, but at the end of the day, there are things that you can do online and there are things that you can't. As many things as we can do online, we try to do them. We try to invite others. So the way that we're set up is our ERGs are company-wide. When I say company-wide, I mean Hearst Television wide. It's not based on your location, it's just based on which group you either identify with or want to be an ally to and you're able to join no matter what.

Doug Foresta:

The Will To Change is hosted by Jennifer Brown. Jennifer is an award-winning entrepreneur, dynamic speaker, best-selling author and leadership expert on how organizations must evolve their cultures towards a new, more inclusive workplace reality. She's a passionate inclusion and equity advocate, committed to helping leaders foster healthier and therefore more productive workplaces, ultimately driving innovation and business results. Informed by nearly two decades of consulting to Fortune 500 companies, she and her team advise top companies on building cultures of belonging in times of great upheaval and uncertainty and now onto the episode.

Hello and welcome back to The Will To Change. This is Doug Foresta. This episode features a conversation with JBC's Elfi Martinez, and Yasmine Osborne, Director of Diversity Inclusion at Hearst Television Inc and the conversation is on the topic of ERGs. You'll hear about the history of ERGs at Hearst Television, the difference between an affinity group and an ERG, and some of the guardrails that can be put in place to keep ERGs organized and productive. All this and more and now onto the conversation.

Elfi Martinez:

Hello everyone and welcome to the Jennifer Brown Podcast. This is the March 6th episode. I am joined today by Yasmine Osborne, who is going to kind of talk to us about her career in ERGs, especially now with Hearst TB. So my name is Elfi Martinez. I'm a senior, or I used to be a senior director. Now I'm a Vice President at Jennifer Brown Consulting. I've got a background in ERGs as well, so I'm really looking forward to this conversation and Yasmine, why don't I just give you an opportunity, kind of introduce yourself to the folks that are going to be listening to us today.

Yasmine Osborne:

Okay, sure. So my name is Yasmine Osborne. I am currently Director of Diversity and Inclusion or Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. I think my official job title says one or the other for Hearst Television. So Yasmine Osborne, Director of Diversity and Inclusion for Hearst Television. Yes, I've been here about two years, actually it's almost my anniversary, two year anniversary.

Elfi Martinez:

Congratulations.

Yasmine Osborne:

Thank you. I've loved it. It's been wonderful. I come from a long career at the United States Tennis Association. Also, we're building our diversity and inclusion initiatives there, so same work, different company, different industry, but a lot of similarities. So it's been a soft landing and I think that's probably due in large part to the welcoming nature of Hearst and Hearst Television family in general. So really, really enjoying myself.

Elfi Martinez:

Excellent. So I just got notification from Gia asking if we are in the room and so the answer would be, yes. I'm not sure if she was planning to join us, but just a notification. So we have a third person popping up it would be Gia Pendergraph, who is our kind of virtual event producer. So we'll kind of weave her in if we see her popping up. I don't want to surprise you with a third person, so [inaudible 00:03:53] pops in. Absolutely. Okay.

So let's talk a bit about your history, because we're here to talk about ERGs, but I want to check in with you about did you do ERG work with USTA or how did it work? How did you first become aware of ERGs and how did you first get involved?

Yasmine Osborne:

So about, oh gosh, I don't want to say how many years ago. Many, many years ago.

Elfi Martinez:

Once upon a time.

Yasmine Osborne:

Once upon a time. I would say around 2004 the USTA really started to deep dive into diversity and inclusion initiatives by hiring a chief diversity officer and shortly thereafter they started employee resource groups. So I've been involved in employee resource groups in one way or another for quite a few years and I would say for the last five or six years of my career at USTA, I worked very heavily within them being a staff liaison or a part of groups, but they were all led by our diversity and inclusion department.

So I've seen several iterations of employee resource groups, affinity groups, business resource groups, et cetera. So yeah, I would say that was my background and then we launched them here at Hearst Television about six months after I started working here.

Elfi Martinez:

Did you say you launched or relaunched, just want to make sure?

Yasmine Osborne:

We launched them for the first time at Hearst Television.

Elfi Martinez:

Okay. Gotcha. Six months after you arrived.

Yasmine Osborne:

Thereabouts, I think so. My time's all blurry now. Sometime in the last two years. No, they're about a year old.

Elfi Martinez:

Okay. So they are about a year old. Okay. So let's chat a little bit more about the origin of ERGs at Hearst TB. Were they your idea, were they grassroots? What was the origin of the ERGs at the organization?

Yasmine Osborne:

Well, I would love to take credit for it, but that was really silly since we work for Jennifer Brown. We had, before I came on board, we launched a few things to get some ideas about where we needed to go with diversity and inclusion. Hearst Television, it was in the process of really beefing up or building up their attention and focus on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in general and part of that was working with Jennifer Brown, which I think was very helpful and kind of streamlining processes and just giving them great next steps and I'm really grateful because one of those great next steps was to hire me, not me specifically, but to create the position. So thank you Elfi, I'll give you all of that credit.

Elfi Martinez:

Happy to help.

Yasmine Osborne:

So really part of just getting the initiatives off the ground was responding to a staff survey about several different things. One of which was what would be your appetite for employee resource groups, and it was very positive, very positive feedback. So from there, that's the kind of why we decided to launch those and we wanted to get those done pretty quickly. We knew employees were talking, we wanted to give them a space to talk and really just have an organizationally led opportunity to connect, especially because we are laid out all across the company.

So we have 33 stations and television, radio stations, many locations and also we were in the middle of the pandemic. So getting together in person was not an option. These employee resource groups via Zoom and online meetings, if you will, just was a perfect opportunity to connect in a time when people really, really needed to connect.

Elfi Martinez:

Yeah, that's such a great point when we think about how the pandemic really has turned the entire ERG world on its head, because it used to be we all would get together face-to-face and have conversations and now it's different. It's either completely virtual or some sort of hybrid thing and so we're trying to figure out how do we connect in this hybrid world and it's very different than it's used to be.

Yasmine Osborne:

It's different, but we were very lucky because we never had these before. So we were able to launch them right away virtually. So everyone who was a part of employee research group here at Hearst Television is very used to being together online. So I count ourselves very, very lucky to be able to... The timing just worked out really, really well for us. We would've had to be virtual anyway. Fortunately in my last company we had multiple office locations, so I was used to managing ERGs across locations, but we were still figuring it out then. So I think it's been great. Everyone was just, their mindset was Zoom, Teams, whatever your online connection is and I think it's really gone a long way in boosting our membership, honestly.

Elfi Martinez:

Fantastic. So let's talk a bit more about the ERGs at Hearst TV. So who are they and how did they come together? What was the genesis of these groups actually going from kind of idea stage to real life?

Yasmine Osborne:

Well, it all started with our fearless leader, Jordan Wertlieb, he sent to company wide email introducing them and when the leader speaks, people listen. So that was great and it also showed that this was something he cared about. So again, when the leader speaks, people listen and so we had a couple of informational sessions just to get a better idea of what it is that we're talking about and then we just launched them because at the end of the day, you just have to experience it to really get a full understanding of what they're going to be. So we put out some different informational pieces and had a couple of online interest meetings, I guess, if you will and then we launched six ERGs and we looked at that really based on not only the staff survey that had gone out, but also we have a diversity and inclusion advisory group, they're called HTV Ideas and so they were very instrumental in the seamless launch of these groups.

So had a lot of meetings with that group. We tried a lot of different things. We talked about a lot of different options and we decided to launch employee resource groups instead of affinity groups or business resource groups. So we were kind of sitting there in the middle with employee resource groups and we launched six of them. So we launched a group for our Hispanic, Latino, we launched a parents and caregivers, an AAPI group, an LGBTQ plus group, an African-American and Black group, and a group for women and we since renamed those groups to Comunidad, Family, Inspiration, Pride, Umoja and Women.

Elfi Martinez:

Okay, fantastic. Okay, so you have six ERGs and they're launched. Something interesting I want to check in with you, because we know that in the past couple years it's kind of been like an alphabet soup when it comes to how these groups are described. We've heard ERGs and BRGs and BIGs, lots of different things. All right, so we'd love to hear from you when you think about the distinction, for instance, between an affinity group and an ERG, kind of what comes to mind for you? What are the distinctions in your mind?

Yasmine Osborne:

So I see affinity groups, I see it as a journey, a process and I think affinity groups is the early stages. Affinity groups in my mind are more internally facing. You usually need to be identified with that group in order to be part of the group. It's more of a safe space for venting, idea sharing, but it's an... And why I say internally facing, I mean like I said, you're part of the group. It doesn't often include allies. Sometimes affinity groups aren't necessarily organizationally supported by human resources with budgets and co-chairs and things like that, but they'll still have a lot of conversations, still build comradery among staff who maybe need a safe space to feel part of a group to feel seen, to feel valued, et cetera and that feel valued runs through all of the groups, but employee resource groups to me as when you start to face externally a little bit.

I think you start to bring in allies, start to have a little bit more support from the company, maybe some budgets have a lot of organization with co-chairs and executive sponsors and things like that, but you're focused on things like not, but I would say, and you're focused on things like career development and education around culture, things like that and then business resource groups are all of those things, including allies, et cetera, but I would say they focus a little bit more on business initiatives or business imperatives for the company and that's when you see groups, maybe a focus group for a new product or a test group for something, anything.

This is where maybe they have goals and objectives that include metrics for connecting the company to new organizations or promoting job openings, things like that. I think sometimes when you get to that level, you see companies that start paying people because there's a lot of work involved, but to me the biggest difference between employee resource groups and business resource groups is the business resource groups are more solely focused on utilizing the ERGs to increase business revenues at the end of the day, but to promote the business to support the business.

Elfi Martinez:

And so when you think about the future of the ERGs at Hearst TV, do you see them evolving into BRGs or do you see them staying in the ERG kind of framework?

Yasmine Osborne:

I think we'll probably stay for the time being in a little bit of a hybrid. So we do have goals and objectives that each ERG is responsible for managing throughout the year and one of those goals and objectives includes how are you going to give back to the business or what's your contribution to the business results if you will, but instead of looking at things like what are our benefit options and talking to the benefits team about that, we don't do things like that. We're more if there's... We're in the television industry, so if there are stories that are being told and we want everyone to know about them, this is a vehicle to start promoting those stories. If we have stories that might pertain to one of our groups, we want to make sure we share that with news directors and general managers and our news team.

We're looking for additional audiences that we can highlight and highlighting our benefits is a really big thing that we do. So for example, the benefits team has come back to us with some data about who is and who is not utilizing some of our financial opportunities within the company, like the 401(k) Plan, et cetera and if any of those groups match some of the ERGs we have, then maybe we might host a webinar about the benefits or how to be more financially savvy using the opportunities we have here at Hearst Television. Have 401(k) manager come and give a webinar. So it's things like that, utilizing some of the company opportunities that we have.

Elfi Martinez:

Okay. Fantastic and so these six ERGs, did they launch all at once or were they sequential? How did they...

Yasmine Osborne:

We launched them all at once.

Elfi Martinez:

Okay. So let's talk a bit about guardrails because the reality is that ERGs can kind of organically align with the organization. Everybody's moving in the same direction or not, depending on guidelines and support that they get from the organization. So how did Hearst TV put in those guardrails or those pieces in place so that the ERGs can be functional and organized and everybody's kind of moving in the same direction?

Yasmine Osborne:

Yes, this is where I am most grateful for having previous experience with ERGs and many ERGs at once. There were I think eight or nine in my last company. So I've seen them go off the rails, seen them come back on the rails. I've seen plans go out where people are just like, "We can't do this," or budget requests for hundreds of thousands of dollars. So I've seen a lot of different journeys, if you will and before launching, I put in place a pretty... I wouldn't say it's stiff, but a pretty clear plan of what I want the ERGs to be and what I don't want them to be, what ERGs could be doing and what we absolutely will not allow them to do and I ran these plans by everyone, so multiple meetings including our legal team and all of the decision makers.

So everybody would be crystal clear and on board. The whole point of that is A, to get buy-in, but B, so that they can articulate the ideas as well and B, be confident enough in the information to be able to answer questions as they come up from staff and we've just been preaching that same thing. We haven't veered off the track from day one. So once we had our co-chairs in place and our executive sponsors in place, which is another piece, executive sponsors being on board and then being part of the groups, they are great guardrails, realtime guardrails.

So it's just very clear who we are, what we're trying to do today, and then who we are and what we want to do tomorrow and that I think gives us enough work so that they're not going off the beaten path at all, but I would also say that the leadership has been so supportive of these groups and transparent about their willingness to learn as we go and so I've seen some conversations in some of our leadership meetings that I really didn't think we would get to in the first couple of years. Just some real pushing of the ERGs and willingness to expand what we would be willing to do. So it's been amazing to see, but yes, it was on paper, two three pages long, very specific.

Elfi Martinez:

Yeah, and this is really helpful because a lot of times when we see ERGs that do go off the rails, it is because there's that lack of definition on the front end, that lack of clarity. So I mean, we don't have to go through a comprehensive list, when you think about some of the things that you wanted to emphasize in terms of this is what ERGs are and what they are not, what they do and what they don't do, what were some of the things you emphasized at the beginning?

Yasmine Osborne:

So one of the things we won't do is be changing our benefits. I think there's an opportunity to talk about what we like and what we would like to see at Hearst Television, but we will not be a group that's meeting with the legal team or the benefits team to put in new benefits, but that doesn't mean we can't talk about it and that doesn't mean... We definitely are promoting what we do have and what the beauty of that is when I tell them, this is not what we're going to do, it shifts the focus, but I'm not gate-keeping anyone from having a conversation about... When you talk about what we do have, the conversation always comes up and it's usually not led by the ERGs.

It might be a benefits person, "Thank you for promoting whatever on your webinar, is there anything else you would like to see?" Now the door's open. So I want people to have a safe space to be able to talk about some things. Now I do have to put a little footnote in here and say we might be very, very lucky because our benefits here are absolutely incredible.

So I think anything that I have seen in the past where ERGs come up with, "Hey, we don't have this or we don't have that," we already have it here. So if we didn't have our benefits in such a great place, I might be having a different conversation with you, but I just felt like especially from the beginning, there are certain things that we probably don't need to be as involved in creating. So that's just the first example that I can think of.

Elfi Martinez:

Fantastic. You me mentioned a moment ago, something about kind of, hey, we know what we want to do today and we know what we want to do tomorrow, this is also something that we see and we want to kind of come up with a magic eight ball of things not to do and it would be right to have an unclear mission and vision. So when you think about the role of ERGs at Hearst, what is kind of that better tomorrow you're trying to create and what are you doing today to help get there?

Yasmine Osborne:

So we do have a mission statement. I'm all about a mission. I love the nonprofit space. I come from the nonprofit space and I just feel like it's always good to have kind of like a homing device. This is just where... So our mission is to amplify diverse voices at Hearst Television, that's the short version, the longer version says through A, B, C, D and those are our four pillars or our four goals for each ERG and really right now, because we are new, the first year we were just getting our feet wet and I kind of let them just discover who they are, who do we want to be as the women's ERG for Hearst Television, what does that look like? Year two we're focused now more on goals. So year two they had to turn in a plan.

However, I am not holding their feet to the fire on this plan. I want them to accomplish all of these things, but there's no penalty if we don't, but I also am able to say that because I know through all of the different things that we do, we are hitting all four of the goals in one way or another and then just as we go forward, it'll really be streamlining and being more intentional about how we reach those goals each year and what does that look like? How do we engage our membership, how do we engage our executive sponsors and I just think because we put so much thought on it at the beginning, it really just left us with a lot of goals that we won't be able to accomplish for the first few years and I think that's great. We want to be able to build without being overwhelming.

Elfi Martinez:

Yes, yes and there's always a calibration because another thing that we see that often happens a lot with ERGs that tend not to be successful is we kind of call the supernova effect where everyone's so excited and they want to be all things to all people and we go do this all in one year and then people get burned out [inaudible 00:23:18]-

Yasmine Osborne:

It's true and I've had to reign in some of our groups because of that. I'm like, this is amazing plan. Let's do this in two years instead of...

Elfi Martinez:

So how have you done that? How do you save people from themselves when they want to run out and do everything all at once?

Yasmine Osborne:

Well I have a very honest conversation that I don't want them to get burned out. I'd rather have them as a 25% co-chair for four years than a 100% co-chair for one year. My intention is for this to be an employee led benefit to the employees. I want the co-chair role to be a benefit to their careers. The second it's seen as extra work as when you turn a corner and start going a little bit downhill. So yeah, I've pulled people back from their plans. "This is amazing. I think you should think about doing this much in the first quarter this much..." And a lot of times I think because we're new, I think our co-chairs, our go-getters, they signed up blindly to be co-chair.

So those are people that want to serve, want to lead, want to do something new and so I think just their nature of who they are, are overachievers. I don't believe in the word overachiever. So they put together amazing mind blowing plans and it's a great place for me to be in. I love to tell somebody this is incredible work and you've actually done more than you need to do. I don't know a person that I have not had an experience where someone responds negatively to that.

Elfi Martinez:

Yeah, no, I mean absolutely. That's I think a big part of it as well when it comes to ERGs being able to calibrate and become sustainable, they do need guidance and so it sounds like you have a very active role in making sure the ERGs are acting in ways that are sustainable and productive. So can you talk a bit more about your role in terms of supporting them, is it a full-time job? How do you manage the ERGs?

Yasmine Osborne:

Yes, I think this is crucial. I've seen ERGs be strictly employee led and I think that's what leads to burnout and dysfunction and discord if you will. When an employee has taken an initiative and put so much time and effort into creating something that they're passionate about, only to be told, no, we can't do this for reasons that feel like they're being blindsided. I'm not saying that they are being blindsided, but perception is reality. So if they feel like they're blindsided, I've just seen that take the wind right out of the sails for an unrecoverable amount of time.

So again, I think if you're going to have them be completely employee led, they need to have extreme guidance on the front end. I think the best way to operate is to have a staff person that can manage them, even if it's just minor management, even if it's just the administrative piece of it, helping to set up a Zoom or webinar or contacting a speaker or sending out lists. Just administrative work. It could be a coordinator, it could be an intern, taking that work off of them goes a long way into helping or a long way to keeping the employees from feeling overwhelmed with just things to do, if you will.

I want to be in very heavy contact with my groups, not with a heavy hand but just in contact, but we also have our executive sponsors and they're incredible. So they understand the company in and out. They already have an organic idea of what might be over the line or near the line and they are incredible at redirecting if necessary. They haven't had to do a lot of redirecting, really they haven't and I do think that comes from the conversation on the front end that setting the expectations crystal clearly, is that right? Really clearly, but I do work with them a lot.

I talk to them a lot and I really don't do it via email because they get so many emails elsewhere. I talk to them a lot on our chat and I try to give them a lot of information without giving them too much stuff, if you will and then we have leadership meetings as well that helps. So we have a couple of leadership meetings a year and they not get nominated for certain things, other opportunities, leadership opportunities outside of our business unit as well.

Elfi Martinez:

Fantastic. So let's talk about these exec sponsors, because this is another thing that really is an inflection point in the potential of an ERG because we know, and I've had lots of experiences with ERGs who do have a lot of engagement, a lot of passion, but they don't have either an executive sponsor at all or an executive sponsor that's engaged and constructive. So how are you able to attract executive sponsors for all of the ERGs and how are you able to get them, keep them engaged in helping the ERGs grow their impact?

Yasmine Osborne:

So that was another communication I think is just the key, like capital C, communication or maybe all capital letters, COMMUNICATION. On the front end, I had, it's part a part of our ERG guidelines that two or three page document I was telling you about. I lay out exactly what I want our executive sponsors to do, exactly my requests for who they are in each group and how much time I'm asking of them right from the beginning and I pitched it in such a way that if they do the bare minimum, it will be wonderful for the groups. If they do anything more than that, it's just giant icing on the cake.

So I just think setting that out from the beginning and then asking for volunteers from the outset really went a long way and then there were a couple of people that we just asked if we needed to fill in a couple of holes, which there were, I want to say two or three spaces we wanted to fill in and we just asked if they would participate and if there were additional questions or concerns, particularly about time management or just am I the right person for this position, it was just a little bit more conversation.

So there were several meetings about exactly what it is that we wanted them to do, but also again, our leadership, Jordan from the top said, "We want executive sponsors is something I'd like to see in my direct reports or your direct reports, direct reports participate in," and that senior leadership is invaluable really.

Elfi Martinez:

I mean, again, that makes a lot of sense because executive sponsors are executives and so if they are hearing it from other their peers and they're more likely to be involved than not. So have you found that you've had to help navigate the relationships between exec sponsors and the ERG? Or have they been able to kind of organically gel?

Yasmine Osborne:

They've organically gelled, 100%. I would say... No, I can't think of anything. I think when you lay out the expectations, particularly about time, I think you just have to be intentional about who you're talking about. You need to know your audience and then you need to craft something that works for them. So I know that they're busy, that's the number one thing. They're busy. What we want to do is have ERGs be part of our business imperative, but you're not going to do that if you make someone feel like it's more than they signed up to do. So we asked very little of them and all of them gave more. So membership calls that we might have, they always join, leadership meetings we have, they're there. They are CC'd on a lot of different things and a CC means you don't have to respond, but if you'd like to respond.

So we do little things like that. Make sure you're not putting them in a two line, make sure you're putting them in CC only. Maybe don't include them on every communication. If it's a back and forth, we are not going to reply all with the exec, you know what I mean, but I also think that is a twofold. It's also teaching our co-chairs or reiterated to our co-chairs leadership skills about knowing your audience. I think they've been very well connected, but again, I think it's because we laid out the expectations from the get-go. Time was the smallest expectation, but what they did with that time was an expanded request and it was things like we want you to be the voice for, we want you to, in your meetings where the ERG members are not present, we want you to speak on behalf of your ERGs, we want you to amplify... Their job is to amplify the ERGs up and to support the ERGs down or sideways.

Elfi Martinez:

Absolutely and something else that you just mentioned that I thought was really interesting is this idea around developing the co-chairs, the leaders of the ERGs, because oftentimes you don't really know what you're signing up for. ERGs is such a unique leadership opportunity because you don't have any authority, you can't really tell anybody to do anything. You basically are kind of leaning on trust, kind of leaning on influence. So how did you skill up the co-chairs to be ready for this unique leadership challenge?

Yasmine Osborne:

Sure, that was a little bit on the planning as well around who should be nominated to be an ERG. So there's a time component time in to the company that we tried to manage. We didn't preclude anyone based on their job title though, their job level. So if you're three years into the company or whatever the timeframe is, you can be considered, but you had to have things like no problems on your HR record and not be on a plan. So there were a few caveats that we had to put into place in order to be nominated to be a co-chair and because those caveats were in place, I think we kind of organically received requests from people who didn't need too much skilling up, if you will.

Once they kind of understood what was expected of them and again that was very clear how much time we want you to spend, what we ask you to do, what the goals look like this year, they knew that they were going to have to turn in the plan the following year, but I also was really careful to make it feel like they had bandwidth to do what it is or represent their group however they best felt the group should be represented within our company.

Going forward again to one of your previous questions, this is something that we will be more intentional about as time goes on. Maybe there are leadership meetings that they can come to or maybe there are opportunities for leadership development that we offer to co-chairs. Right now they have, to me, what I've seen is one of the biggest incentives for becoming a co-chair is that FaceTime with senior leaders and they get that through the executive sponsors one, but two, when we present our ideas to the board, to not to the board, I'm sorry, but to the senior leaders, they're the ones presenting.

It's not Yasmine saying, "Here's what all the ERGs are doing." It's the ERG co-chairs and then senior leaders are invited to every call. They're always invited. Whatever you want to do, they might do drop in anytime. So that just creates a situation where ERGs or co-chairs, whenever they're presenting, they're always timed because you don't know who might be in the room.

Elfi Martinez:

Yeah, no that's excellent and that also kind of reminds me of something else that we know is again, a big factor in whether or not ERGs are ultimately sustainable and that is rewards and recognition. Are the current leaders being rewarded and recognized for their efforts that way when the next generation is being asked to step up, they want to because it seems like it's going to help their career. So when it comes to rewarding and recognizing the leaders and the members, what has Hearst TV done to ensure that they're sustainable over time?

Yasmine Osborne:

Well, the easy one was SWAG. [Inaudible 00:36:18].

Elfi Martinez:

Everybody loves SWAG.

Yasmine Osborne:

And our co-chairs get to decide the SWAG, so that's an easy way to say, I really like these mugs, I'd love to have one. I'm like, let's slap a logo on it and you can get one. So that's a great instance.

Elfi Martinez:

Always a good one.

Yasmine Osborne:

They get all the SWAG, their names are more frequently mentioned in different spaces. We've had one of our ERGs actually come into another position that I don't know if she would've been considered for had we not known her through the ERGs and seen the incredible work she could do. So just from some of the work that she was doing as the ERG co-chair, we knew that she would fit for this position that we created and she was not someone we expected to. It just completely fell into place, but I just think having that connection with senior staff and with other staff people and seeing her name, it created a familiarity, which I think gave her this opportunity that she ultimately ended up being able to the land.

So yeah, again, I hesitate to ask too much of them in terms of things that will take up a lot of time. So I don't want to require a four hour training to do this and that. To me personally, that feels overwhelming. So I know if I feel overwhelmed, they might feel overwhelmed too. However the door was open. So I also gave them the opportunity last year and we'll do it again this year to do some type of career development of their choice. So whatever that might look like and that included some travel. If you wanted to travel or go to a conference, we were willing to take care of the financial responsibility to get you to this, fill in the blank.

Now of course they brought that we had to talk to managers and things like that, but I think it was a really good opportunity to just say, "Hey, we thank you. We're still talking about work, so we want to do something to develop you professionally, but you choose what it is that you want." It might be a class. We brought our entire pride group to New York City Pride to March in Pride with some of the other groups and we had a hundred percent response from our co-chairs who wanted to return.

Elfi Martinez:

That's fantastic and I love this idea what you just said about you choosing because what is an effective reward or effective recognition can be very different for folks and what I value may not be what you value and so take the time to really find out what would be meaningful for you. I got to imagine goes a long way towards creating things that are meaningful for the folks that are right, taking that time.

Yasmine Osborne:

And then they also get nice thank you gifts on top of it.

Elfi Martinez:

Which again, never hurts. Everyone loves a good gift. So I want to check in with you about dilemma, because something that you mentioned that I'm very interested in is the fact that you are spread out, right? I think you mentioned there's 30 plus locations. So how do you, because one of the dilemmas we have with organizations that have lots of locations is what do we centralize so that we have consistency versus what do we localize because there's different realities at different places in terms of culture and expectations. So how have you calibrated between centralized centralized processes versus local autonomy? How have you kind of thought about it and sorted that out?

Yasmine Osborne:

Yeah, so we have multiple layers. So there's the Hearst Corporate Group, that's a group of staff. Then we have many, many business units, many of which have their own ERGs for their specific business units and then at Hearst Television we have all these locations as well. So it is a lot of juggling, but at the end of the day there are things that you can do online and there are things that you can't.

So as many things as we can do online, we try to do them, we try to invite others. So the way that we're set up is our ERGs are company-wide. When I say company wide, I mean Hearst Television wide. It's not based on your location, it's just based on which group you either identify with or want to be an ally too and you're able to join no matter what.

Almost everything that we do is online through the ERGs, webinars. If we send out gifts, obviously they go to all the locations, but everyone's getting... The women are about getting a gift today for International Women's Day on Wednesday and every ERG member from the women's group receive the same gift, same day across their locations, but then we also try to... We connect our members from all of the ERGs that are in the same location as well. So they all know they have the Excel spreadsheet to sort by station or job function, whatever the case may be and we encourage them to connect with each other outside of just these ERG led events.

So some of our stations have employee groups or diversity committees and we encourage them to start those if they don't have them, it's a great opportunity to get together and have a local, if you will, affinity group or a local, I guess it would be local employee resource group or employee group and then do things locally. So like a food truck if that's what they wanted to do or if they wanted to do some community outreach. However, I will say things like for example, back to the pride marches.

So the ERG co-chairs for the Pride Group are trying to get a calendar of all of the pride marches that we have in our market areas and find out who all might be already planning to do something and so one, it's supporting those groups that are planning to do something if they want SWAG. Last year we sent a box of SWAG around and a big sign around to multiple groups. So it's just when you get done with your thing, you ship it onto the next group on the list and it was kind of a neat thing because they knew that that sign or whatever had been at the last location and then we just sent everything around so SWAG was out and then got new SWAG, but we want to make sure we're highlighting and celebrating everybody's pride event and if you're not having one, we're trying to figure out who in the local market might want to spearhead something like that from the employee resource groups.

We do things like hang up different posters for Black History Month, there was a Notable Black, I want to say it was inventors, I can't remember which poster we ended up sending. Everybody got the same poster. So that's not something we did online, but everybody got the same. So all the ERG members know that those posters are out there, whatever they want to do, speak to them or take a photo by them.

So there are some things that need to be done, if it's Habitat for Humanity or whatever the case may need to be done at the local level, but the connection is we do a lot of photos, we do photo contests, we do a lot of post your best, whatever. So they're back to connecting with each other and then the way we manage up is any opportunity that we have that we connect with all of the ERGs that are outside of our business unit as well.

One thing that's been super helpful there is again that admin piece. So let's not have five different webinars for Women's History Month, let's get together and talk about it and see if we can maybe all get together and host one. So that helps with the administrative costs, it helps with the actual costs as well. We all got together to march in New York City Pride together. So streamlining some of the things that I think are taking up a lot of people's time administratively has been really helpful to connecting the groups outside of the business unit.

Elfi Martinez:

Makes a ton of sense. A couple things that you mentioned I think are really, really going to be helpful for the folks that are going to be ultimately listening to this, because one of the things we found is that companies that had legacy ERGs before the pandemic that were really kind of face-to-face focused had a really hard time kind of adjusting to a more kind of virtual world. So I would love to hear from you for what have you found to be some of the best practices when it comes to managing ERGs virtually? What have you done that you have found to be successful?

Yasmine Osborne:

Yeah, that takes different levels of communication, I think, different kinds of communication one of, I think, the biggest difficulties is sending emails is just tough because people are inundated with emails and they oftentimes will get back to the ERG email and then if you're like me, if the email's been marked as read, it may not be coming back to my eyes. So we've learned to utilize many more opportunities to communicate. We do a lot of communication via the... We use Teams, so we do a lot of the communication via Teams or Slack or whatever you have because that's usually not the number one place people communicate and then we have to do things like that on every call, every other post we're saying, "Make sure you turn your notifications on."

We do contests in our teams to get people engaged contests with prizes. We're right now we're doing a trivia contest in one of our groups. So that just gets people coming back. People talk about that. They have fun with it. They tell our coworkers or other ERG members and that keeps people more engaged in the chat. The photo contest, we do those quite a bit. Food exchange, recipe exchanges and we give out stuff.

Elfi Martinez:

SWAG is always going to be popular with prizes [inaudible 00:46:26].

Yasmine Osborne:

It doesn't have to be expensive. I think we gave a pin out like a old school pin you put on your... For one of our things and that was just a giant hit. It was a giant hit. I didn't expect that.

Elfi Martinez:

It doesn't take a lot. Little things does make a big difference.

Yasmine Osborne:

It really does not take a lot. So I just think being... You have to be creative and at the end of the day, that's what these groups are intended to do anyway. They started off as a creative way to connect staff and so I think what's important that you don't lose your creative juices when it comes to these groups. We have to be flexible. We have to pivot. That's what diversity and equity and inclusion is, always. So let's not forget who we represent and that we are about transformational change and that means that we have to live a transformational change kind of lifestyle within the workspace if you will, and I also think communication is key.

I think people forget the power of words and this is the power of whipping up a group. This is who we are now. Things have changed. We don't want to lose our momentum. What do you think? What would you like to see? We ask that constantly. What do you want? How do you want to communicate? If we can't be in person every day we used to, what else can we do?

Elfi Martinez:

Yeah, love it and I love this idea of transformational change. So on that lens, as we enter the last couple minutes of our conversation, let's talk about legacy, right? Let's talk about when you look back someday on this experience, what would you like to see? What would you like to see that will convince you? This was time and energy well spent. What do you think about the future of Hearst? What are you hoping for? What are you thinking that these ERGs can do that would make you say, "I'm glad I wasn't part of that,"?

Yasmine Osborne:

Well, the first thing is I hope they're here.

Elfi Martinez:

Step one.

Yasmine Osborne:

[Inaudible 00:48:34] check the line. I'd love to see more ERGs. I think keeping track of the percentage of employees that participate is fantastic. I'd love to see some external awards, one because of our ERGs, which is something that's in our strategic plan, but for me personally, it's those employee, direct employee stories, someone saying, "I never felt comfortable to be who I am before these ERG started." That's been said to me, that's probably the most powerful thing anyone's ever said to me. I had the opportunity.. I never would've met and so, I never would've built, I didn't know and so was out there. I was able to do a work function better because I met so-and-so through the ERGs.

All those things have been said to me directly since I started and that's why I do it every day. That is what it's about, connecting the employees, breaking barriers, breaking our silos, communicating, connecting and our tagline is, be heard, be valued, belong. If an employee feels a better sense of belonging or a bigger sense of belonging to Hearst Television because of these employee resource groups, that's the legacy and even if they never feel that again in their next company, they can look back and say, "Man, I was part of the family ERG, and yeah, kids were running around and I needed someone to talk to and I went," I mean, whatever.

Those are the reasons that we do it. It's that employee engagement and we say employee engagement a lot and it starts to feel like it's just another resource that we have, but it's really about how do the employees feel being here? Do we leave them with more than they came with?

Elfi Martinez:

Yeah, no, absolutely and it is always interesting because people, you never know what's going to make something sticky and oftentimes it is community. It is who do we feel like we are aligned with? Who do we trust? Who do we feel safe around? Is there a space for me, like you said, to be me, and so I am fresh out of questions. I know we only have a few minutes left, but I want to check and see if there's anything else that you wanted to mention, explore, underline, you think about ERGs and the folks that are going to be listening to your wisdom?

Yasmine Osborne:

Yeah, I mean, I think you did a really powerful workshop for us and you talked a lot about what we're still talking about is that pushing and pulling and I think it's important for employees to be willing to push these ERGs and the benefits of these ERGs and it's important for the leadership to pull in. They're invaluable. Invaluable if done correctly. If they are not of value to the organization, they are not being managed correctly and that most likely is coming from the leadership.

They can always be turned around, but the worst thing that can be done is for them to go away, in my opinion. I just think there's so many opportunities to glean goodwill, good feeling, and also incredible business results out of the employee resource groups. So yeah, I would encourage anyone who is discouraged to... I mean Google has a lot of information. There's a lot they can contact me. I'm happy to give a good Ted Talk, but I just think they're of utmost importance to an organization. I think they only help an organization succeed. Sometimes they have to be torn apart and put back together. That happens and that's okay, but as long as they are put back together, I think that's crucial. So yeah, I think..

Elfi Martinez:

Absolutely and I think this is a really important note to end on, is this idea that they are valuable, that they do provide lot of really great results for the organization. They are an investment, not a donation and I have seen ERGs that have been kind of put to the side because they're seen as a nice to have or we're doing our good deed for today, but it doesn't really impact the best. I love what you're saying about this is an investment, this is to make us better, it's not charity, it's not a donation.

Yasmine Osborne:

No, it's definitely a business imperative. Yeah. I mean it is definitely a business imperative. It's a new creative, again, transformational change. It's a different way to think about how we utilize our employees. So they can do a lot of things. They can can foster growth, they can help with career development, they can create mentorship opportunities. They can bring awareness to different issues facing some of the groups. They can foster a sense of belonging, foster their social camaraderie and a lot of those things happen organically, but a lot of times they are infused with a lot of bias. Cool people go to the water cooler. You know what I mean, with these groups, it's not like that. You don't have to belong to belong.

So literally they're an invitation to everyone without the barriers and I think we need to lean into a little bit more in the business world about how important that is to the health of a business, to the health of an organization. So yeah, your employee resource groups can do all of that in one fell swoop.

Elfi Martinez:

Absolutely. Well, love it and again, just want to thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your wisdom. It's been a great conversation. I look forward to connecting again down the line.

Yasmine Osborne:

Absolutely. Thank you so much.

Jennifer Brown:

Hi, this is Jennifer. Did you know that we offer a full transcript of every podcast episode on my website over at jenniferbrownspeaks.com? You can also subscribe so that you get notified every time a new episode goes live. Head over there now to read my latest thoughts on diversity, inclusion and the future of work and discover how we can all be champions of change by bringing our collective voices together and standing up for ourselves and each other.

Doug Foresta:

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