 We send it to you our next speaker Louise Treadwell. Louise an eternal web developer web development geek and social media junkie She's a native of Metro Detroit and an alumni of the University of Michigan go blue She learned about the human side of computer science while earning her master's degree in library and information science Fancy and has fine-tuned her web developer skills over the course of 20 plus years of career building Breaking and fixing sites for multiple startups. She's never had a quote-unquote real job or worked in a real office And this is quite well-versed on the realities of being a successful freelancer remote contractor and small business owner Louise loves coffee is full of useless facts and is eagerly waiting for her shot on Jeopardy she lives in South Florida with her three Bouncing boys in her husband. She's here to talk to us today about working with diverse teams. I mean, let's welcome Louise Treadwell Thank you All right, as he said, I'm Louise Treadwell. I'm gonna be talking about diverse teams We're gonna discuss how biases can be a barrier to building up diverse teams And then we're gonna talk about how inclusion can directly add value to your company So we're gonna start off with This works. Yes, we're in business Okay, so we're gonna start up with a simple definition of a diverse team a Team that's made up of people from a wide range of backgrounds Experiences levels of ability and cultural perspectives so when most people are asked if they support the idea of Promoting diversity in the workplace. They're gonna say yes, of course definitely. Why not if you step a little bit further and ask them How do you deal with your own personal biases when you're putting together these teams when you're going through the interview process? That's when I usually get what I'm gonna call the speech and the speech usually goes a little bit like this I'm not biased at all. The only race is the human race. I Don't see color because I am colorblind Now as somebody who actually is colorblind I am This Casual use of the phrase I am colorblind doesn't bother me or offend me so much as it just kind of irritates me First of all, even if you are colorblind, you're still gonna be able to see something as obvious as somebody's race Duh, right? Secondly, it's not really polite or a good thing to completely try and eliminate An entire aspect of someone's persona or their cultural identity. That's not it's not a compliment to do that If you guys don't walk away with and if you guys don't walk away from this talk have taken anything at all from what I'm saying I want you guys to embrace and understand this. There is nothing wrong with seeing race. There's nothing wrong with seeing disability There's nothing wrong with seeing culture identity These are all perfectly fine things to observe. It just means that you're a person who's capable of making observations About the world around you. It only becomes a problem when you try and attach that physical observation To a value judgment So we're gonna give you an example of that I was talking to a mom Who said that she was worried that her four-year-old was exhibiting racist tendencies, okay? I mean the kids for it's possible, but So her example that she gave me was she said she told her daughter We're gonna have a new therapist coming to the house soon and her daughter said Okay, mommy is the therapist going to have light skin or dark skin and the mom Completely kind of came unglued and freaked out and she's like well, honey. I don't know but Whether he has light skin or dark skin. I'm sure he's gonna be a really good person and really good at his job now Let's unpack what just happened here. The kid made a simple Observation a physical observation the mom took that observation and attached it to a value judgment Imagine if instead the kid had asked her about color of a car and The mom had said well, honey, I don't know if his car is gonna be blue or green But I'm sure he's gonna be a really good person. He's gonna be really good at his job. That's ridiculous There's absolutely no reason to attach the color of somebody's car to the goodness or badness of a person So why did the mom do that when she was talking about you know a person? Um? Sorry lost my place here a little bit Obviously the mother's intent was not to do that. She was trying to do the exact opposite She was trying to convince her child of something that maybe deep down inside herself She didn't really believe to be true and kids can pick up and we do things like that like um if I tell my son Oh asparagus is yummy. It's great. He's gonna look at me and say you're selling this way too hard lady Like there's no way so Sorry Yeah, so back to the story what the mom did was automatically assume her daughter Why did she assume that this question about skin color was a bad thing? Why what what inside of her led her to that and that is something that is implicit bias Every single one of us harbors implicit biases about any multitude of things and I really do mean everybody everyone if you're Judging someone by their accent or their demeanor or the way they dress or their educational background We're making value judgments in the back of our mind without even realizing that we're doing it So The problem with this is that Well, you can look at the definition and see it within implicit biases. It's an unconscious thing So it's been with these things these feelings these ideas have been with us so long that we don't even remember where they came from We don't even remember where we got them in the example I gave the daughter kind of accidentally inherited these biases from her mom as she goes through life She's going to kind of remember that time her mom freaked out about skin color and talked about somebody being good and bad and that might actually Morph into something, you know different later. She goes along So if you're not aware of your own biases, then how can you be absolutely sure that you're not injecting those biases into the Interviewing process when you're looking for new people. You're trying to build new teams so here's an example, let's say your company wants to hire a new copywriter and Someone on your team says, you know, we should make a social media post about it and you say that's a great idea We can you know job search within our own network your graphic designer puts together this really cool meme That's how you say it meme them meme. Okay, they put together a really cool meme It has a witty description of the job tells people where to go to apply and then the social media manager puts it up on the website and LinkedIn Twitter Instagram blah blah and the caption says Our family is expanding please share this with anyone you think, you know would be a great fit So you get a bunch of resumes you do a bunch of interviews you hire somebody. This is a good thing, right? This was a successful venture There's one huge problem here You completely left out and eliminated an entire segment of the professional copywriting industry How because all of the important information about your job posting was hidden inside of an image that's completely invisible to screen readers So this is this problem like it happens a lot like honestly if you go on social media It's very very rare that you're going to see people actually write out What's in an image and when it's like a jokie jokie meme, you know, who cares but when it's a job posting You're actually Eliminating somebody's opportunity to apply for a particular position and it's silly because there's absolutely nothing about being a copywriter That requires you to be able to see We've got screen reading technologies There's all kinds of accessible technologies out there that make it very easy for these people to participate in these You know professions and Actually, that's it's not even just in the realm of Copywriting it's really there's there's a lot of jobs out there that you don't have to be able to use your eyes to do But our like as it in general as a society We're so biased against people with disabilities that we kind of don't even consider Their employability or their talent level so we don't even think to include them and it might not be malicious Honestly, usually isn't malicious It's just a complete oversight and it's something that we have to be aware of and try and combat So an implicit bias can actually be a direct barrier to building a diverse team So how do we fix this and do we care? Let's see what we're at here. Okay So as far as how we're gonna fix this or what we'll think about first do we care I Want you guys to think from a strictly Capitalistic selfish point of view don't think about it as like an altruistic thing think about it as In order for my business to succeed I need to be able to hire the best people at You know, whatever the price point is that I can afford if you're not fishing from the full pond Then you have no way of knowing if you're actually getting the best people But your competitors probably are so while you're gonna end up with the mediocre person They're gonna end up with this, you know top very very talented copywriter who may or may not use a screen reader We don't know but you haven't actually gone out and talked to everyone Okay, so as far as actually being inclusive This is a lightning talk. So we can't get you know too deep into the reads on this But we can look at this quick list here. Make sure everything is showing Applicant down to work environment. Yeah When you're going through and you're thinking about hiring new people at your business or you're thinking about Onboarding a new technology I want you to go through and ask yourself a bunch of questions about who you might be eliminating Who you might be offending who you might be alienating by you know, whichever thing you're picking So for example in a job description I saw a job description once for an office job and There were requiring that people had a driver's license and their own vehicle now their excuse was They were trying to eliminate unreliable people But they also completely eliminated anyone who relies on public transit for a million different reasons There's a lot of reasons why somebody might not be able to drive that has nothing to do with their Accountability reliability any of that Interview setting if you're not open to the idea of flex work remote work What are some other scenarios? Teleworking There are a lot of people who actually need those type sort of accommodations to do their job better if someone has PTSD Sitting in an office environment for 40 hours a week May or may not be something that they can handle at that exact moment has nothing to do with their talent level Their productivity could be great, but you're gonna miss out on them because you have this like Ridiculous notion that someone has to have their butt in the chair for 40 hours every week so that person is gonna end up being a remote worker working for your competitor and You'll never even know the difference. You're overpaying for a mediocre talent and you think that you know everything's fine I'll try if you guys one more example Applicant requirements. I've actually seen this one a lot that People will require a degree when it's not really necessary because they think that They think that they're gonna get someone better than what they can afford with the position requires You'll see a lot of veterans actually getting discriminated against in the Serena So you'll have like 10 years experience and whatever your field is plus like security clearance All kinds of certifications you just happened to have not had time to finish a degree because you were being shot at somewhere in Iraq so Why do you not having a bachelor's or a master's degree have anything to do with how you're gonna perform on this particular job and big big big companies are Working very hard to have inclusion and diversity efforts within themselves. So like HP or Microsoft they'll actually have entire departments dedicated to diversity and inclusion and they're gonna be winning these people and getting all these You know new workers and new staffers and they're having it, you know innovative interviewing processes if there's someone who Maybe due to autism Doesn't interview very well. I'm one of those people like I kind of shake when I talk So if I was sitting in an interview it would be kind of silly if you're judging me based on that when I'm a web developer It doesn't matter how awkward I am Because it's just me in the computer. It's very rare that I'm going to interact with, you know, the actual clients The same thing goes for a graphic designer. Why are you judging them on their ability to write a really great cover letter? That's really really stupid Their job isn't to write cover letters their job is to do graphics design Stop making people fill up these long forms and just rethink everything about the way that you are handling your whole intake process and You'll probably be very very surprised at the difference in applicants that you get you'll be surprised at the new types of people that you meet You might be surprised at what some hidden disabilities your existing employees might be able to Admit to because you've changed certain things within your company. You've taken certain software made it standard instead of just an option and It'll just open up a whole new world for your business. And that is that. Thank you Do we have time? for any questions, I don't think One or two if anybody does have a question About any resources. Oh, yeah About he's asking about when someone's trying to get hired, but they don't have the right qualifications. So Oh, right, right, right Well as a business owner that's something I well He's asking if you have all the qualifications But you don't have the degree as a business owner when you're writing the job descriptions That's something that you need to address and really ask yourself every time you list something Say is this really important does this matter as a job seeker? There's not really much you can do except to go apply for the company who is going to appreciate you But at that job description writing phase, that's what you really need to dig in and do the serious work and Pick through everything everything that you think is like standard and routine and this is just how it's always done This is what we require Ask yourself what would happen if I just scratch this off who would end up applying as a result? So there. Oh, yes. Oh, wow Citrix said that what would you do if you saw a job description that had something illegal in it? Something that says we're looking for someone who's young and fresh out of college. Obviously, that's age discrimination Right off the bat. Yeah, you really used to work young in a job description like that There are government departments like the Yeah, I really just turn them in Because it's not worth fighting with someone because honestly, they've just proven you don't want to work with them And that's the danger of we're putting these things out there and 18 celebrating 10 years Guy no, it's Sunday March 18 work command not available accessibility settings are on somewhere Which is exactly what we're talking about. So that's perfectly narrator settings window Exiting there. Yeah, if a company proves that there's someone you don't want to work for it's not worth pushing back at them And trying to battle them. You should just move on and let it go report them Obviously, maybe send in a complaint to their HR department, but schedule work at Miami 2018 yeah schedule work camp Miami 2018 desktop schedule work camp Miami to Social media best practices Work camp Miami social displaying work camp Miami social media. Dr. Nancy Richmond dot PPT X unknown key Unknown key Cortana window, so you're saying when someone's at the country that the company that hired the contractor search box editing ease of access center link speech right control panel home link and speech properties dialogue okay button speech property right talking about people being discriminated against because they are a contractor or a freelancer One columns one column headers volume control is it still okay? I'll just answer your last question He was just saying about when a corporation discriminates against contractors because they would prefer to hire someone Through the HR venue and like you know a full-time person That's their mistake and their loss Because it's everybody knows that if you try and hire a contractor for an individual project You're actually going to get a lot more labor out of them than you are somebody who's sitting in a chair for 40 hours People what was that line in office space? He's like I only really do any real word from about three to five o'clock every day So again, if that's what an employer is doing and that's what the client wants I mean just walk away from them and go find somebody who is going to appreciate you Yeah Every time okay. I am definitely out of time If you guys want to visit my site It's louise tread will calm or you can I'll have my speaker notes on there to download and Thank you guys very much for your time