Joe Gerstandt | keynote speaker, freedom fighter, freak-flag flier

Step #1 One of the most common questions I get is “where should we start?” I generally look at helping an organization become more inclusive as a chicken or egg kind of thing. There are a number of places that you can start, none necessarily right or wrong. The most important thing is the getting   [Read More…]

The SHRM Annual Conference is one of my favorites. It is consistently a great opportunity for me to see a bunch of folks I dig, meet some new folks to dig, and I always catch a bit of a buzz off of 15-20,000 HR professionals gathered together to talk about this stuff called work. While   [Read More…]

Most of the few posts I have managed this year have been focused on language. I think that language is one of the most powerful and one of the most overlooked tools at our disposal. A fair amount of the resistance that I meet in the workplace relative to Diversity and Inclusion work is not   [Read More…]

Somewhere in their delightful book, Switch, Dan and Chip Heath write “What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity.” I believe this to be true and especially true when it comes to D&I work. I would say that the lack of clear, concise, common language and logic is Mistake #1 that organizations make…and   [Read More…]

My last post spoke to encouraging signs that there is some real energy building up around actually doing the work of making our workplaces and communities more inclusive. Not just lip service, not just a parade of good intentions, not just posters and pot-lucks. We are not on the home stretch by any means. There   [Read More…]

I am hopeful. I feel like there is a new momentum gathering behind this work. Maybe it is time to get started? With the actual work of inclusion, that is. I know, I know… This may bring about a certain amount of psychological pain for some, exhausted by the mere mention of this work. There   [Read More…]

10 years ago, I did quite a bit of “101” stuff. I did a lot of presentations on what diversity and inclusion mean for the workplace of today, and a lot of making the business case. I do very little of that today, and much more regularly am interacting with leaders and organizations that are   [Read More…]

See you in Vegas? The 2015 Society for Human Resource Management Annual Conference & Exposition is rapidly approaching and it is in Las Vegas this year. This is a big conference, so there would be lots to do and see regardless of where it was held, just due to the fact that it brings something   [Read More…]

Maybe you are already working on bringing more diversity into your workforce. Maybe you have some targeted outreach programs, are increasing the diversity of your applicant pool, and are scrubbing the hiring process for bias. Good stuff. But are you hiring for inclusion? I walk into a lot of conference rooms where people are not   [Read More…]

“There is prejudice in the world, without a doubt, but you are looking in the wrong place Joe! You can’t afford to be judgmental in the talent business. I am a businessman, and bias is just bad for business.” This is from a conversation that I had recently with the owner of a recruiting firm.   [Read More…]