Addressing Harassment in CLA Offices
At CLA, we promise to know and help our people. While our culture goes hand-in-hand with inclusion in the workplace, we also understand that our people may have found themselves, or may find themselves in the future, facing harassment in the office.
CEO Denny Schleper connects with Linda Rubenstein, leader of the Diversity and Inclusion Council, and Pat Bowes, director of People Solutions, to find out what preventative measures the firm is taking in 2018 to prevent harassment, and what steps you should take if you experience treatment that doesn’t align with our culture.
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Transcript
At CLA, we promise to know and help our people. While our culture goes hand-in-hand with inclusion in the workplace, we also understand that our people may have found themselves, or may find themselves in the future, facing harassment in the office.
CEO Denny Schleper connects with Linda Rubenstein, leader of the Diversity and Inclusion Council, and Pat Bowes, director of People Solutions, to find out what preventative measures the firm is taking in 2018 to prevent harassment, and what steps you should take if you experience treatment that doesn’t align with our culture.
[00:00:02]
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Narrator: Welcome to “Own the Promise,” a CLA podcast created to share what guides every decision we make and every relationship we cultivate.
[00:00:17]
Denny: Hello, CLA family. This is Denny Schleper coming to you. I hope everyone’s reporting season, tax season, busy season, or preparation for busy season is going well.
I think we are having a phenomenal start to 2018. We have all of the industries doing well today, the service lines doing well, and really the majority of the geographic locations within CLA doing extremely well. I met with the board of directors and the leadership advisory team in Albuquerque, and one of the comments that I had mentioned is, you know, we are really operating probably in very good times, and our goal — probably all of our goals as a CLA family — is to continue to do all the things to keep that moving forward.
Obviously, there’ll be outside influences that’ll continue to give us challenges, but we’ll address those challenges. I think they key is to make sure that we aren’t creating our own challenges within CLA, and what I mean by that is that we continue to live the CLA promise, we continue to create opportunities for all of our clients, and creating opportunities for all of us here at CLA.
[00:01:36]
But obviously, there’s things that always do come to my mind, and there are things that sometimes concern me as to how are we really addressing certain issues within CLA? And one of those lately has been the whole harassment issue within our society that we’ve all heard of, and we’re aware of the many, many stories and the #metoo influences that are in our marketplace today. CPA firms, professional service firms, we’re not immune to this type of thing, and so I just started wondering and concerning myself as to how much of this is happening within CLA.
What are we doing, not only as leadership, but all of us, to make sure that we have the type of environment and culture that will really make this the place where everybody wants to be, everyone feels good, everyone feels inclusive, no one feels harassed within CLA, and also, hopefully, in the rare occurrences that it does happen, the firm is able to react in order to keep that environment and culture the way that we want it to be.
I’ve asked Pat Bowes, who heads up our people solutions group within the firm, and Linda Rubenstein, who heads up the D&I council, and really have a discussion around this issue within CLA. Pat Bowes, I’d like to start with you and just ask you, Pat, from what you experience across the firm, how prevalent is it that reporting and so forth comes to the HR group, to the people solutions group, really addressing or trying to address some of these issues?
[00:03:27]
Pat: Thanks, Denny. You know, as you mentioned, we’re obviously observing an issue here that’s societal in nature, and while we’ve got a really strong culture and a culture that we’re all proud of, as a part of that society, this is something that we’re certainly not immune to.
However, with the question about how much volume there is internally, I’d have to say that the volume is fairly low around the firm.
[00:03:58]
Denny: Pat, obviously, those are items that would be reported. I’m interested, Linda, from the DNI council and the volunteers that join you on that council, how much discussion has taken place around any of these issues, and I’m trying to get at, you know, maybe the types of things that don’t get reported but still happen within the CLA culture.
[00:04:38]
Linda: Denny, a part of the D&I council discussions have been around making sure that people feel safe, welcome, and included, and that we have environments based on trust and respect and help people develop connections and abilities to get to know each other.
While we haven’t talked specifically about how to prevent harassment, we have talked about ways that we can make that environment one where people will get beyond stereotypes and understand somebody for who they are, not based on the category they happen to fit in.
[00:04:59]
Denny: That’s great. CLA currently has developed an anti-harassment communication and training plan. Pat, could you tell the family just a little bit about what that intended to accomplish?
[00:05:29]
Pat: Yeah. Our training plan includes a couple of different elements, and the first of which is every new team member that joins CLA takes a two-hour anti-harassment course. A couple of things that we’re looking at for 2018 and beyond is just looking at this curriculum to make sure that what we’re really trying to do is build a culture that goes far beyond our compliance requirements, so a couple of things that we’re going to see is we’re going to be asking every CLA team member to take a one-hour refresher, and we’re going to ask people to do that once every two years, and so for many of our team members, this is going to be a year where we go through the refresher.
[00:06:12]
We’re also looking at how we train leaders and managers throughout the firm, and each of those individuals is going to be asked to take the full two-hour course this year. There’s a couple of different goals of the course. The first is really we want to create awareness — awareness of the type of environment we’ve committed to, the expectations of each of us.
[00:06:33]
We also want to empower people. We want to make sure that we’re influencing and creating a culture where people feel welcome, feel listened to and safe to communicate, and we also want to educate people. You know, what do you do when you see or experience this? You know, where can you turn if somebody does come to you?
Denny: I know there’s organizations that have hotlines for the reporting. Could you just tell us your perspective as to why you think the methodology that we use might be a better fit for our culture?
[00:07:06]
Pat: Yeah, this is certainly something that’s been on our minds. It’s been a pretty active conversation about whether we move to a hotline type of environment. What’s really important to us is that we give people a variety of places they can turn to if they ever experience these types of issues so that we can quickly understand and bring about a resolution to anything that’s brought to our attention.
[00:07:30]
It’s also important that we know what to do when people do come to us. There’s a number of people that we’d encourage any individual to reach out to — certainly a managing principal, a people solutions team member. Probably the closest thing we have to a hotline is our employment practices team. Any one of those individuals or really any leader around the firm is somebody that we ought to be able to approach with this, and we’re working through the training that I mentioned to help those individuals understand where to turn when someone does reach out.
[00:08:03]
Denny: And Linda, you know, the D&I council is still fairly new within the culture of CLA, and it is becoming a much stronger voice and really being an advisory group to the leadership of the firm to make sure that we, as leaders, are addressing the types of things that concerns the D&I council members, but I would imagine that part of the D&I council function would be an opportunity for people to voice their concerns, and so that the D&I council itself could be a source for the firm to be able to hear the concerns of people out in our offices, industries, and services. Would that be true?
[00:08:46]
Linda: That’s absolutely true, Denny. There’s 15 of us on the D&I council, and one of the things that we are going to be doing soon is beginning to hold a series of lunch and learns where we’re going to get out into the offices and have facilitated discussions about inclusion and diversity.
[00:09:04]
All of the council members are listed on the [inaudible] D&I page, and there’s a hyperlink you can contact any of us on that list anytime. We’re all passionate about these topics and want to hear the voices from throughout the firm.
Denny: Well, Pat and Linda, I want to thank you both just for sharing some of your thoughts around this. Just before I wrap up, is there any other overall comments that you would like to make regarding this issue to the CLA family?
[00:09:34]
Linda, anything on your end?
Linda: I’d love to see us get to a point where we can have courageous conversations and be curious and have an open mind and learn more about each other, and I think that will help to remove any instability, objectionable behavior, and harassment that we might see, so thank you for bringing this topic up. I think it’s an important one.
[00:09:55]
Denny: Pat, is there anything?
Pat: Yeah, you know, I think, to me, Denny, this all starts with the promise, and being a firm that exists to create opportunities, it’s really all about the daily interactions we have with people just reflecting a genuine interest in getting to know them so we can help them, and just at the core of that is the highest level of respect for people and building trust with people, and I think as we move forward and we have more of that, we’re really going to move the culture forward.
[00:10:09]
Denny: Thank you, Pat. I will share my own experience with the family, is that I did have one situation this past year where there was behavior that was simply not consistent with the CLA culture, and when I found out about it and spoke to some of the individuals, it went beyond just the fact that the behavior occurred.
What really concerned me was the fact that the individuals did not want to bring it forward because of a feeling that the firm would not do anything about it or would not be responsive to it, and that’s clearly — both things are bad — the behavior, but to me almost more so is that some of our people feeling like the firm would not be supportive in trying to eliminate this behavior.
I just want to let the entire CLA family know that from the board of directors to the leadership of the firm, that is simply not the case. We do want that environment and culture at CLA that everybody feels like it’s a very civil environment, meaning we are all treating each other like human beings with full respect, we’re not behaving in such a way that somehow makes people feel uncomfortable in an objectionable manner, and clearly, we are not exhibiting any behaviors that would make people feel like they are being harassed within CLA.
[00:11:53]
So I hope all of us can commit to this as well, and I appreciate you listening, and again, have a wonderful rest of the spring as we head into that and into the summer months, and I will be back to you next month. Thank you all.
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Denny is the chief executive officer of CLA. As he goes about his duties related to the oversight of CLA’s direction, operations, expansion, and strategy, he is also an enthusiastic ambassador for the CLA Promise. He is fully committed to the firm’s position as a professional services firm that delivers integrated wealth advisory, outsourcing, and audit, tax, and consulting capabilities to help our clients succeed professionally and personally.
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