 This is about stakeholder capitalism with mixing in the employees and how all that fits together and the changes here when we go from shareholder supremacy models to stakeholder balance models or sometimes we call multi-stakeholder capitalism. By the way, there's a very interesting difference in those two terms. Multi-stakeholder capitalism doesn't necessarily imply balanced stakeholder capitalism, but we may get into that today. We've been developing this conversation for a while now. This is the term that's been coming up quite a bit within the context of ESG, Environment and Social and Governance. Within this newest thinking are affectionately what's becoming also known as the six capitals, and again, for those of you that are completely familiar, human, natural, intellectual, social, manufacturer, and financial. I appreciated the comments that we had earlier from Matt around proxy votes with the shareholders and how maybe stakeholders can participate in that. Our group today, very distinguished panelists, are going to engage in, de-suite engages in creating collaborative relationships here, multi-capital models with respect to the employees. What to do and how to do it, I think past the why of it, I think that's self-evident. I'd like to welcome Paul, Maury, and Brian, and thank you for being with us today. I'd like you to each, just please introduce yourselves, tell us who you are and who you work with and for, and then just to kick us off a couple of things. How should companies think about creating a more balanced stakeholder approach? What are the mechanisms around that thinking? And how business leaders can ensure positive employee engagement within that model? So that might kick us off and then we'll go into some discussions for here for the better part of the hour. Paul, would you mind kicking us off? Well, sure. Welcome everybody. Delighted to be here at the 10th annual New Metrics Conference, now called Integrate. And it's called Integrate because we need to integrate stakeholders and shareholders together and that includes CFOs, CMOs, and of course CEOs. So I'm Paul Hermann from HIP Investor. Delighted to be here. HIP stands for Human Impact and Profit. And that's what we can note in that the drivers of value start with people. And so most of us have heard that CEOs say people are our most important asset. But people are a cost on the income statement. And so most CEOs focus on reducing cost of labor instead of focusing on the asset value of people and the innovation that they bring. And that innovation includes everything from inventing new products. So Jeff was just talking on the main stage, Jeff Rochester about diversity and North Carolina State University has academically shown that companies with more diversity that are more representative of the US population, for example, innovate at twice the rate as others. So they have twice as many patents, which means if you have a patented product, you have a higher potential for higher revenue as well as a higher competitive advantage. So and it's not just about people, it's also about planet. And we need to make sure that our natural resource efficiency is sustainable and regenerative. But who holds the stakeholder for the environment are usually nonprofits, NGOs like Carbon Disclosure Project or the Science-Based Targets Initiative. And so being able to set science-based targets like 100% greenhouse gas reduction by 2030, like Stanley Black and Decker has done, so you might have tools from Black and Decker in your garage. And that also takes trust. It takes people, planet and trust. And that means keeping our institutions honest and accurate, but also disclosing. And so one of the things we may talk about today is in order to have great stakeholder relations is to have transparency. And if you look at the material metrics, whether those be by SASB, the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, or GRI, the Global Reporting Initiative, more than 30 to 40% of the material metrics, whether it means greenhouse gas emissions or employee engagement are missing. Companies are not reporting that. So we still have this transparency gap. Once we close that transparency gap, we can close the performance gap between leaders and laggards. And then we can close the accountability gap. So last thing I'll say about that in my intro is this accountability gap we need to hold our leaders accountable. It can also work into financial instruments. There can be closing of the accountability gap, let's say in a muni bond in Washington, DC, focused on water and wastewater that really will drain the swamp and avoid pollution in the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay. But there's only a handful of muni bonds that do that. And there's only a handful of stock based securities that do that. So I hope we'll get a chance to also talk about how to do this in your 401k. So I was right there on how to integrate stakeholders and shareholders together. Thank you, Paul. Maury, please. Sure. Thanks, Scott. Maury Wolfe, I'm with Cox Enterprises out of Atlanta. So we are the parent company for Cox Automotive and Cox Communication. So for those unfamiliar, because I think it's just a little, little helpful. The Automotive Division, think Kelly Bluebook, Auto Trader, all the components of a car deal outside of the manufacturing and the dealer. Manheim auctions, that kind of thing. So really large footprint and automotive space. And then on Cox Communication, it is internet and home services in that space in many markets across the US. And now we are standing up a third pillar around clean technology. So I lead our corporate social responsibility and public affairs piece for this company. And we're a little bit interesting. I agree with everything Paul said. We have a little bit of a different shift because we're a private company. We're family owned. We're on our fourth generation family leader. And so we don't have the same pressures of a share price and stockholders, but we do have many of the same drivers. So we don't do it because our shareholders are pushing us, but we are down very far down our ESG journey and thinking about how do you continue to integrate the employee piece, which is one of our leading and we see as one of our leading drivers to success. So we can talk a little bit about that. So I echo Paul's comments. The thing I would add to answer your questions, Scott, is one of the things I think we're really learning about this engagement of stakeholders piece is that the employees not only need to be heard, but they need to be participants. And so what are the mechanisms to really stand that up so that it's not just part of an ad campaign, but fundamentally they are participating in making decisions about your future. And so we can talk about some ways that we've been doing that. But I think it's we've had certainly had more freedom to do that being a private company, but we've also had a lot of interesting stories and lessons learned about what that has done for us to to drive the agenda. Yeah. And I know we'll get into this a little bit. The being family owned sort of the the flexibilities that that gives you and maybe some perspectives that we wouldn't have as sort of shareholder led of, you know, C Corpse, Brian. Hey, hi. Hey, Scott, thanks for having me. Brian McKinnon, I'm the director of policy and programs at US SIF, the Forum for Sustainable Responsible and Impact Investment for the leading voice for sustainable investment in the United States. We represent across all asset classes and our primary work is done through research and education programs, convenings, as well as public policy, and that's where I sit. So I bring that lens to the today's conversation. But, you know, largely speaking from the investor perspective, you know, investors are looking to companies and kind of the how they treat their employees. They see that as part of the recipe for long term value growth. And increasingly we're seeing investors as glad to hear that you were already talking about the shareholder proposal process, because that's an interesting piece of how investors are desperate to get good disclosure from companies, especially around the human capital piece, whether you're moving away, not just for diversity, but employee diversity numbers kind of the welfare of especially frontline workers and how that is impacted, especially during the pandemic. So I think that the, you know, it's a the crucial question that to how do, you know, an important thing to think about from the company perspective is how do you treat your lowest on the ladder employees and how do you make sure that they feel integrated? Is there, you know, a wide gap at disparity in wage for example, or other opportunities? So I think that that, you know, from investor perspective, I think looking at that lens through the for the employees is really a fascinating thing for companies to contemplate. I am very intrigued with looking at policies and programs in the company from the perspective of of the employees that are maybe the entry level or the lowest paid, lowest maybe quintile or quartile and and the gap between that and maybe the most senior paid. So we will get into that here as we as we go. So look to all three of you, thanks for attending today and thanks for being at the conference. We know your time is super precious. So let's get into the let's get into the discussion a little bit. So how does shifting from the model that we had for many, many years of shareholder supremacy and the thinking around what that meant and the business decision drivers to stakeholder balance thinking change in the way in which how companies should and actually must engage with their employees. And then within that, an example of something specific around how that may have changed over the last few years. And if you don't mind, Maria, I'd like you to kind of kick us off on this coming from the family employee, a company that it's a family owned company. Yeah, I think this is where we had a little bit of a unexpected upper hand, actually, because as a, you know, we don't take lightly, but there's a huge benefit to being privately owned. You don't have to worry about your decisions on a quarter by quarter basis. So we have always had the benefit of truly being able to think generationally. We know that our when our CEOs are from the family, they will be there for a generation and they are thinking about handing the business over. So I think it put us in a unique position to really think about long term. And I think while that driver came from a different place, from the generational place, it's what you will start to see when you include employees very early. Our employees don't plan to leave each quarter. They're not making decisions from that perspective. They are also, you know, we can look at the employee data about how quickly they're shifting role to role now as the generations change. But employees for all intents and purposes, I can think we can assume we're going to be there for a longer term. And if they're happy, we'll stay with you. So I think getting the employee feedback for all companies actually shifts everybody to start thinking in a more long term balanced approach. And so that's that's an incredible benefit because then you start thinking about how employees see problems, see challenges that they're having in the day to day and start wanting to invest or innovate and really change the forecast for the future because they're they're seeing it, you know, they're dealing with a particular the front lines with those inefficiencies on a day by day basis. And if they have a voice in helping us solve for that, you know, it's really sort of limitless potential there. Interestingly, our founder, who we refer to as Governor Cox, because he used to be the governor of Ohio before taking before leading company in his will, he actually asked that his family continue to take care of the employees. So one of the tenants of his will of taking over business was to continue to put employees first. So we've seen these two drivers really play for us in really unique ways. And I won't take up too much air time because I'm sure Paul and Ryan have a lot of perspective on this. But I think whether you put it in an empowerment context where the employees just feel safe to bring the ideas forward or whether you actually give them decisions or an ability to participate in innovation competitions. I mean, we've tried this in a number of venues and it's pretty tried and true, actually, that the employees voice can really lead you to some of the great innovations. Well, Brian. Well, I'll go next. Yes, it was really fascinating last year. First of all, to be at any conference in person. So I'm just being in person with all of us this year. But I was at the Stanford Directors College and presenting on ESG. And the good news was it was a PAC session. So more than 85 out of the 200 people joined this ESG session. And these are all boards, directors on boards. The good news, all ages, all genders, all ethnic racial diversity. So that was really powerful to see. And so I think something that continues to be a trend is just the representation on boards continues to be more diverse. And boards, I think, traditionally tilt towards who the investors are, at least in private companies and typically. But in public companies, you need board members who represent stakeholders. So that's why Al Gore has been on the Apple board or Lisa Jackson, former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, and having those custodians of stakeholders on the board is essential. But it's still the case we're on the boards today. Boards are not 50 percent women. In fact, no board of an S&P 500 company is more than 60 percent women. There are no 80 percent women boards on public companies. And if we want to have a poll or a chat poll, what year do you think the last S&P 500 company added a woman on the board? It was just last year. It was last summer. So. So first of all, we're catching up on that front on another front. Again, linking back to Jeff Rochester's presentation this morning. The good news is that for companies that report many, especially in the Dow Jones 30, have 40 percent representation of diversity in the company from the employees. But as you go up to manager, that drops to about one third, 33 percent. And as you go up to the C suite, it drops to 25 percent, one in four. So there's still this gap of representation and leadership whether it's black or black American, Hispanic, Hispanic American, Asian, Asian American, diversity of passports, diversity of age, typically on the board, if you're under 50, you're unique. And if you're under 50 and not the founder, you're super unique. But, you know, kids buy products or kids influence their parents to buy products. So there's gaps there. So this quantitatively, we can look at all that. And so what's really exciting and boards are starting to be aware of and approve is to have disclosure and transparency like the EO one form. So the EO one form is by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. It's traditionally a confidential document with the federal government and the company. And but companies can choose to open source it. So Apple has done it, Visa, the credit card company, Traveler is the insurance company. Chevron has a whole interactive website where you can see what's on their EO one representation. But the one who's taken it the farthest and Suzanne Follander was speaking yesterday Intel is Intel. And Intel has taken it as far as open sourcing their pay ranges. By rank and by gender and by race and racial ethnic heritage. And so that's what's critical to boards is companies are being held accountable and to do that effectively, you need transparency and more and more boards are realizing that. And so we're not in the 20th century anymore where hiding information is a competitive advantage. The real competitive advantage in the 21st century is transparent information among all stakeholders, which the board can embrace. So pause there, Brian. So I just said to build on both those excellent comments, you know, I think that there's a mental shift that happens now that companies appear to be embracing at least the signatory to the business roundtable statement of stakeholder capitalism that are, you know, moving public companies to more of the mindset that Maury's company has of their employees, where it's not a cost center, but it's this asset that the company has to do. And I think you will start. I mean, we are seeing investors holding companies accountable to those statements and especially through the shareholder proposal process of gathering information through disclosure. But you also see that the vote tallies for a number of those human capital management proposals have been steadily increasing in the last few years. And I think that will be a continued trend in the foreseeable future. And I think that kind of investor accountability is going to be a huge driver for boards to say, OK, these aren't going to go away. And, you know, there are definitely leaders that, you know, that are stepping up and doing the right things. And so investors are going to go after some laggers and say it's time to step up. You know, thanks, Brian, you know, it is time to step up. You know, Paul, you said something earlier about if you are not the founder and you're under 15, you're unique in terms of a board. One of the things that we're beginning to do at Sustainable Brands is we've created something called a co-mentoring model. One of my younger, very passionate employees in the company and I have created a bit of rapport and I was doing a lot of mentoring and it dawned on me that he could mentor me as much as I was mentoring him. And so we actually have formalized this idea of co-mentoring because there is perspective that somebody of my generation, I'm a boomer, just won't see and they will. And so that kind of restructuring is interesting. Mari, before we end on question number one, I want to go back to two quick things for you. First, you've been at Cox, I think, for about two years, correct? Yep. So first, could you characterize quickly the difference you saw when you came in and like, whoa, this is different in rate related to how the employees are relate to the management of the company. And could you comment if you can't, that's OK. But in terms of your tenure, does the tenure of your average employee is it far beyond the tenure of, let's say, a publicly traded company if you know that information? I do. So I don't have the I'd be hesitant to give you the stats because I'm sure I would get them wrong in this sea of statisticians. But yeah, we anecdotally, we joke that you actually haven't been at Cox until you've been there for five years because people stay so long. And my experience has been the same while it's a great culture for embracing you. I continue to feel like the new kid on the block. So I'm waiting for the five year mark to really feel like I've cut my cut my teeth. But I think what's interesting is that that you hear the same catchphrases at every company. I've worked at several Fortune 500s of open door policies and your CEO wants to hear from you and you can feel quite comfortable. And then after they've done their keynote and walked away, everybody, no one would ever presume to actually email your CEO and give them your two cents of an, you know, on anything. At least, yeah. Right. So what I was shocked to find is that that's absolutely not the truth at Cox. I mean, the number of emails we get that are after four or five exchanges between a frontline employee and someone in our C-suite, and they've landed on it being a good idea and now tell you, you know, then it gets passed on to say, go figure out how to execute this. It's pretty remarkable. So I think, you know, part of it has to be that you enable enough concrete opportunities for the employees to have a voice that then they start using it organically in that way. Because no one is going to naturally feel comfortable. Yeah. And, you know, I think that's an important part. And Scott, I liked your comment about mentoring week. We have some ideas around reverse mentoring that sounds pretty similar. Yes, very similar. That same concept of like, let's hear from our younger populations, our newer populations, what are the things that we've missed because you've gotten too comfortable with incremental change to not see what the big new shift should be? Yeah. And what comes out of it sometimes is what's notionally called an unconscious bias. You just simply don't don't see something. Brian, I'm going to ask you to kind of think think about kicking us up on this next question. In what ways does sort of this newer thinking of balancing the stakeholder models a bit deal with us relative to the the tradeoffs because there's always tradeoffs and decisions we have to make between values that a company may have and the bottom line that the company is trying to maintain or attain financially speaking. And as a second part of that question, how does this change the idea of sort of short term performance, quarterly earnings type models versus long term value creation? Because again, this is a this is a conference for for chain equipping people with real tools. And I know these are hard tradeoffs. How do you how do you how would you be help help a CFO or somebody in the in the C-suite kind of rethink the blend of this? Yeah, I mean, it really is a huge challenge in, you know, kind of I think that there's one, you know, the approach is, you know, what does the firm value as a firm as a company? And, you know, how do you how do you want to be perceived? How do you, you know, you know, what is in your your value proposition to your your customers? So, you know, I think I think inherently, both people are good people and they want their employees to succeed. So I think that there is that need to kind of identify what the company itself can do. I mean, I think these are kind of global issues that we want to solve. Like we want the employees to do well. We want the kind of the again, look after the lowest tier of employees to, you know, that will and that, you know, collectively will bring society benefits that we all want to enjoy. So I think, you know, a company needs to kind of contemplate how, you know, what can we control that we can do this? And whether it is wages, whether it's benefits, whether it's adding a sustainable investment option in their 401K, you know, these are kind of small things, but these are things that the company can control. You know, that contributes to a larger public good. But I think that that the notion of these are the small steps that we can take and manage and measure and deliver on to that will contribute to a bigger positive outcome, kind of broadly speaking for society. Paul, Brian touched on that little, the three little numbers you like so much. You want to get, you want to give it a whirl here? Well, I call numbers little or big. 401K, yeah, and Brian is probably deep into this. And hopefully please, as many of us are at the election results because the 401K is one of the great ways, great potential ways to engage dozens, hundreds, thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of people in your company by what you offer. And unfortunately in most large companies, the offerings are very traditional and very index-based. And the risk of investing in an investment index now, Natixis is a financial company. And one of their leaders in Europe has said, if you invest in an investment index, you're investing in a world that could be five degrees Celsius hotter in the future. Now, five degrees Celsius for those of us who don't know the method system. You can show your thing if you want. 10 degrees Fahrenheit. Everybody loved it. And I will show, since Scott is so excited about this, I will show this chart here. And five degrees is 10 degrees Celsius. And can you guys see my screen? Maybe you can't show slides from, unless you're keynoting. Let me see right here. We'll try it right now. Oh, there we go. Can you see this? Yeah, so five. Well, you're showing, now you're showing your hop and screen. All right, we'll try it one more time. So five degrees Celsius is 10 degrees Fahrenheit. And what that means is if that were, if the Earth was our body temperature, that would mean that our temperature would be 105 to 110 degrees. And either that means you'd have Ebola or you'd be dead. So we actually can't invest traditionally like we have in the past. So happy to share this. And this is posted in our booth in the expo. And so the good news is like, if you're in a smaller midsize company, you can actually, the founder or leaders of your private company will listen to you. And so you actually could shift them. And so that's, we help a dozen different 401ks do that. We also try and help large company 401ks like at Adobe or Genentech. And that's been the beauty of this conference here, the Integrate New Metrics Conference is that all happened at New Metrics. People heard about changing their 401k and Katie Escaffier at Genentech went off and did it to help illuminate and educate. So it's up to us, we can make our own. But Brian, what are you seeing? Are you seeing 401k shift? It has, we're coming out with our trends report on Monday and there will be some new numbers around retirement in ESG. But it's the slowest growing piece of ESG. I mean, ESG has been steadily growing in the last decade, but the retirement piece has been the laggard. So there's a lot of room for growth. The problem has been this regulatory risk that is ping-ponging in pendulum between different parties in power. And for those who don't follow the ins and outs of the Department of Labor, they just finalized a rule that makes it much more difficult to include ESG in retirement plans. USF was fought it along the way and we're working with people on Capitol Hill. We're talking to the new administration with some policy proposals to make sure that this pathway is cleared and hopefully have a permanent fix so that plan administrators who are notoriously risk averse can feel comfortable making these selections for their planned participants. And I think, just like you were talking about boards, company boards, companies should look at their retirement plan boards and make sure that they're representing the plan participants. So typically, you have a very white and very male 401K decision-making board within a company. You will, if you have more plan participants represented or a channel for them to be heard, it will make a lot more sense to include sustainable investment options within these offerings because there's demand. Younger employees are demanding this and hopefully that will continue to work. All right, bring us home. Well, I was gonna actually step on your toes, Scott, and ask Brian's follow-up question. But I think you were starting to hit on it at the end, but I was curious if you saw in that research which stakeholder group was pushing the most for the change in 401K? If it was coming from the employees, if it was generational, if it was coming from, I mean, so many different, to choose from, but have you had any data on who was driving the request? So I think the data that we use for the report is little, just kind of broad numbers, but I think the answer to your question, I've seen studies along the way, but definitely younger employees are doing it, but there's also a performance piece that is driving this because DSG funds are, the myth of underperformance is evaporating. And in fact, in the last six quarters that DSG funds have been outperforming their indexes. So I think that you will, it's irresponsible not to consider these. Yeah, Maury, the people leading it are young or older, primarily women, but also men, and they just see it and speak up. So whether it's Serena Zhao at Adobe, who happens to be a graduate, for studio graduate school, just like Katie Escoffier has a sustainability MBA is doing that at Genentech and Roche. Kristen Magnuson at Stoke, which is a green architecture, sustainable architecture company in San Francisco. She went to Bioneers Conference and she came back and said, our work is about creating sustainable agriculture. Why isn't our 401k doing the same thing? And so when those people take it to the powers that be, what generally happens in smaller or mid-sized companies where most of the executives know every employee's name when you have 100 or 200 or 500 people, you still know everybody's name. And so it can change pretty quickly. It can change in less than a year. It can even change in half a year. At larger companies, it just, the 401k is run as a low-cost center, not as an employee engagement opportunity. And Joy Poland, who's involved in Sustainable Brands, one of the things that she worked on with a company called Four Star in Massachusetts, she presented here a couple of years ago, is they brought the 401k, the founder brought the 401k to be more sustainable. The company, the employees started saying, oh, aren't our customers and suppliers in our 401k? Yes, they are. Oh, shouldn't we tell them that we have a sustainable 401k that has those companies in it? And then Joy took it the next step was they went and got a grant from Commonwealth of Massachusetts to do a sustainable supplier program. And so that all turned into not just one more choice in a 401k, it changed the culture of the company, it transformed the culture of the company. So that's the power of it. It's an employee engagement tool, not just a low-cost investing center. And I've heard anecdotal evidence of either financial firms or high-tech firms who are using sustainable options in their 401k as a recruitment tool for younger workers, a differentiator to really attract- Marie, any other insights on this one? Yeah, yeah. So what I find interesting, I worked many years ago at another company at switching the 401k and having this option. So I was curious about since then what trends you're seeing and how it's driving. And so I think it's nice, so critical to hear that the myth that you're taking a risk or that you're having to pay something for your values has gone away and now it's not only sort of a moral imperative but also smart financial sense. So it's just sort of interesting to hear that we're still having to bust that myth in some corners. But I think what it speaks to more that I'm really interested in as well for this panel is that it's not only a huge lever to pull just in how we want to change the how other businesses are managing themselves at the value of our dollar but it speaks very much to employees wanting to have ownership and power. And I think it's hard when there's so many companies that have a vision statement or have similar values statements for employees to know how to actually tactically engage. And so one of the things that sort of sparks for me is that this is a way employees really feel like they can participate in a change in a solution. So I'm sure there's a lot we could extrapolate from that desire for them to engage to other parts of the business because I think we're hearing from employees time and time again that they don't want to just hear the nice window dressing they want to know how to participate in that change in their nine to five. Yeah, and there's this website called cleanportfolios.com that shows how other companies have gone down that path. And even companies like Google only have one sustainable fund in their portfolio and employees don't even realize what's in there. So it's a great chance to engage. We'll shift here to the next question. You know, recently in my prepping for this conference I've been talking to a lot of people and my memories failed me on who actually said this to me but I thought it was actually one of the things that could be happening here is historically in the old model we had a job and you fit an employee into a job and now the model might be you have a human being who has talents and gifts and you frame the job around what those talents and gifts are. And that's an interesting different way of looking at how you fill out a team. Moving to the next question and we've actually touched on this already once but maybe Paul you can kick us off on this one. Specifically, again, in this topic of balanced stakeholder models and with the emphasis on the employee here, how should companies look programmatically at their lowest entry level folks, let's say the bottom quintile and how should, in parallel with that it's not necessarily the same thing but how should a company look at diversity, equity inclusion programmatically in terms of hiring and promoting? Sure, when you say the lowest level folks you just mean the least and at the company. Yeah, yeah, I don't mean all are taken or over anything else. It could be the height of like you people. I don't know, but yeah. I was calling them the front line because usually that's a great, that's a way better way to say it. I appreciate that. Thank you. That's where we put them and in a true employee organization, they're not, you know, it's not low or high. It's how do we all know each other. No, I appreciate that a lot. Thank you. Yeah, so I think one of the key gaps that we've found especially this year in 2020 with all the traumas that we've had especially in racial injustice is mentoring and what is missing is how to mentor especially diverse staff into opportunities to continue at the company. And a lot of that happens informally like there's informal adoptions of new employees to, you know, there's everything from do you play softball, basketball or squash after work when we would all get together. So I'd say that's one of the key opportunities and to really formally facilitate those relationships and encourage and welcome those diverse views. One of the things I experienced early in my career was a 360 review and a 360 review means people know I review you, your manager reviews you but you review your manager. And being open to that honest, constructive feedback is really critical. And Scott, you mentioned like jobs built around people instead of people filling a holes in jobs. So that's something one of the groups pursuing that is Peach Farmers in the Central Valley in California. So Nikiko Masamoto and her dad, Moss Masamoto, they used to hire the strongest young Hispanic men to pick as many peaches as possible. And there was a lot of the quality varied because they did it so fast and they competed to do it fast. And they've ended up working with women, older women even who are taking care of kids and their families but they then have restructured the work stream around the work supporting their schedule and their skills and they turn over less, they stay longer because they found this work-life balance. So that's probably another characteristic with new incoming frontline workers is not only opportunity but work-life balance. So, but Maury, they have more to add there dealing with hundreds or thousands of employees at cuts. Yeah, I think first I'd be remiss if I didn't say we need to make sure we're paying a living wage. So first and foremost, I think before we jump, you've got to get the baseline components right. And if we are sort of loyal weed, the United States is not comprehensively paying a living wage to our frontline workers. So I think we're gonna start thinking about the prosperity of our communities if we're gonna think about the ability for our employees to go the extra mile to do the necessary job training and skills training and continue in their career development. We've got to get some of the headache that comes with not making a living wage off of their plates. I think that's a big component that if we don't get that part right, we are missing. We're gonna fall really short. But I think the other thing, I like what you said about Paul about mentorship. We're starting to really explore as everybody is, what did we miss and how do we need to do better with our employees this year? It's shined a magnifying glass on everybody. But taking mentorship a different step and taking it to sponsorships and moving it even further because you're so right that we all need those mentors that guide us and coach us and provide us with that real feedback. But who's also already in the room you aspire to be in that will raise your name, that will recommend you for something that sees the opportunities that you don't even know you're missing out on and how do we set up sponsors, executive sponsors for our talent that helps bring them through the ranks? So that's a twist that we're really working our way through and I think has a lot of legs to really help with the IND, evening out the IND space because if you don't have somebody in the room speaking up up for you, there's only so much that coaching is going to get you because you're just not provided those opportunities. I think one of the other pieces got to your question that we're really trying to think about is how do you make sure that your frontline talent is getting the skills-based training that they need to move on? For example, in our automotive division, we do a lot of recommissioning of cars of used vehicles and we have a couple of contracts with Amazon with Lyft for their vehicles and what we've learned is that our mechanics which you can imagine we hire a lot of to do that work now are really dealing with a computer. So what before was the engine of the car, now the backup camera, there's a backup camera and so what computer system within it need and what coding skills do they need? So that idea of steam training that we thought of so much for our community and nonprofit partners we really needed to start thinking internally about how we upscale our own employees so that they are ready for the evolution of their job and for the next job and we'll claim we've cracked the code but it is something we're really starting to think about so that we can maintain that talent and we're not losing them at those middle ranks the way I think so many companies are starting to see a drop-off. You know I think the last year it opened a lot of eyes on a number of fronts so I don't know how many meat processors that are at this conference but when I think of frontline workers I think of these meat processing employees who were thrust into those jobs in the pandemic working shoulder to shoulder maybe not having the right PPE you know that is a recipe for a disaster for the health of the employees for the reputation of the company so I think companies have to take into account the welfare of the frontline employees and then I think on the diversity aspect that we've learned through this year's the awakening of to injustice, racial injustice is that company leaders all the way up from supervisors on up need to understand their biases and whether that's they need training or some other mechanism within the company to understand those biases that will kind of unlock the potential within their workforce that may have kind of been below the surface subconscious that has not allowed diversity policies to flourish in the past. Brian piggyback off of that thought we had a little agenda here but that last points is interesting I'd like to shift the gear a little bit to employee engagement Gallup did a poll here a few years back that said I don't remember the stats but there was a huge percentage that were disengaged and even a relatively large percentage that was actively disengaged which means that it wasn't that they just didn't like enjoy their jobs much but that they actively sort of pushed back at the system and if we think about again rebalancing this equation a little bit where we go to more longer term value what have you seen all three of you relative to increasing active employee engagement is I am a core believer that if you get that man all kinds of issues go away but if you don't you're problematic every day love to unpack that question a little bit. Well I love the statistic about employee engagement Gallup regularly takes a poll they've pulled several million corporate employees so I'm pretty sure it's mostly large enterprises and the average employee engagement that they pull which is are you engaged at work? Satisfied find connections is 20% so that means one out of five people is engaged at work. I like to twist it a little bit and think about it this way if you're at work five days a week then it could be like all employees are only engaged one day a week. So if you could just get that engagement up to two days a week you might be able to double your productivity but those are just listening to employees versus telling employees is key when they ask for sustainable 401k listening to them when they need personal protective equipment on the frontline supporting them it's interesting in that when COVID hit earlier this year the first reactors were corporations corporations did take care of their people and did not send them to conferences and pulled them back and though that happened before even San Francisco mayor London Breed called for shutdown or the national shutdown that never came only came by state so that corporations do care about their employees but facilitating that and curating that out is really essential and getting this 20% higher like into it for example as 95% of employees return their annual employee survey this month, November before Thanksgiving and the people held accountable are their supervisors and managers. So if you are a supervisor or manager of low employee engagement HR is showing up at your door and asking what's going on. I love that, I love that. Brian, Mari? Yeah, as far as employee engagement I think it seems obvious in any organization that you're with is that if you feel valued by the people you work for or report to or you feel like you're contributing to the goals of the entity that it's a you do better work you know you're gonna deliver more and I think that creating those environments where the employee feels valued is paramount and it's listening, it's mentoring, it's opportunity it's training, I mean there's I think all of these pieces that we've been talking about through the conversation are built into that desire and that notion of I'm important, you value me. You want me to be here and I'm gonna Yeah, I think there's one of the things we've been talking about a lot as well particularly in the diversity space this year is that it's diversity is the data and inclusion is the way the employees actually feel that they feel comfortable that they feel a part of the culture because can they actually bring themselves to work and diversity is sort of what box that you check as we think about and diversity is an important proof point it's important as I think we've been talking this whole session the data is what holds us all accountable but that feeling component is really where the rubber meets the road and it's so much more difficult both to make happen but also to quantify. I think so when we think about that we've been thinking a lot about how do we make sure we foster that and how do you do the poll surveys and how do you empower but I think one of the key learnings we've had over the last couple of years as well is that that's related to ESG is that the metrics for transparency and the progress that you're making of course are critical for all the reasons we talked about whether it's stakeholders and investors or transparency improving that you're doing what you've said you've done but the goals that then come out of that have been critically important for our employee engagement so where do we aspire to be five years, 10 years down the road and why has been critical for them our employees to feel like they actually get a place to play that they know what goals we're trying to achieve in the environmental and community space and then they can have a hand in participating in that change and I think that has really sealed the deal for our employees between sort of this idea of knowing the data but then how are they included and how do they have ownership and empowerment to participate and we've seen a lot of really innovative shifts from that where one of my favorite phrases from an employee listening session when we were talking about goals and aspirations and purpose of our company was that they wanted to move beyond programs that were band-aids to solutions and so I think when you have goals it really inspires people to think about scale and big picture and what their eight hours of volunteering or eight hours of innovation or whatever it is and how it plays a part in that because I think the surveys are important but the surveys only get us so far knowing that there's a problem but not solving that emotional component. We appreciate that we are getting close to the end so what I'd ask each of you to do is just give us a maybe a summary takeaway related to this topic that somebody could take back to work with I hadn't thought about that. Well, one of my favorite things is obviously metrics that's what we do at HIP Investor is metrics and portfolios. But every board, we kick this off by like what's the blend of stakeholder value and shareholder value. So every frontline employee manager, supervisor, executive board member should know what the top five metrics are for the business and so they could be what we're calling the five crises of today, how are we solving the five crises in health like COVID or wealth, like income inequality, earth, climate action, equality of gender and race or even trust. How are we honest and transparent and not corrupt? So health, wealth, earth, equality, trust but for businesses it's typically things like financial, we need to have that one, an employee metric for sure. And then you get three more. So what are they gonna be? Are they gonna be greenhouse gas reduction? Is it gonna be inclusion, diversity and equality? Is it gonna be how often we get sued? Is it gonna be the level of CEO pay to average worker pay? Will we have a fair wage? And as the CEO fairly compensated for true performance. So that's what I'd say, what are your five metrics? And in the best case you can pick fewer but at most people remember three but boards are responsible for so much. What are our five top metrics? How do they include stakeholders as well as shareholders that be my to-do list for everybody? That's really nice. Appreciate that. I think I would add to that. So the metrics I agree are critically important. And I think we've got a lot of folks at your conference who get to influence those metrics. There are also a lot of folks who don't have that seat at the table to influence that piece. So I would add, what's the tactical thing that you as an individual can do? Because I think there's a lot of value into believing in the ripple effect of the small changes that we can make individually and how those ladder up to a much bigger play. So I would look at those metrics and then pick what's the thing I can do for one person for one group to push forward the 401k plan or programmatically what can I get my arms around? Because I think also it can be a bit overwhelming to think about how to deal with these big world challenges but we all can take one tactic tomorrow. It's I think narrowing in on the piece we can play to start seeing that change is really critical. And I'll add that identify ways to bring employees into the company's goals for these broader ideas whether it's climate, whether it's social metrics or diversity, bring your employees in to allow them to participate in that process. I think gives them a kind of a hands-on tactical feel to I am contributing to something bigger as in building buy-in with the company and kind of that employee motivation. And I think there really are simple steps like if you're an employer adding a sustainable option to your 401k, if you're an employee, go talk to your plan administrator or CFO whoever is running your 401k today and say I want this, I need this. And those are really some simple steps. And for company leaders, I would even say this is a little outside of the boundaries of this session but if you are doing good practices you should be telling policy makers you should send them your press releases when you're doing something good. They don't understand what good businesses and good leaders are doing. They don't hear enough of it. And that in the world I operate in is a huge challenge to know that there's the private some parts of the private sector really are doing good things and doing the right way and demonstrating leadership. So I would encourage folks to just in addition to your press release, your press list and local policy makers, state representatives, federal representatives to that list so they can see what good operating practices. We're up against our time. Thank you so much for your insights. I greatly appreciated for the work that you do and for adding so much value to the attendees of the conference. Everybody have a really fantastic day. Thanks everyone. Thank you.