Gender equity, wage gaps, and corporate America

Jeffery Tobias Halter Transcript

Sabrina Merage Naim
From Evoke Media, I'm Sabrina Merage Naim, with me is Kassia Binkowski, and this is Breaking Glass - a series of conversations with women around the world who are shattering glass ceilings and challenging social norms. They are audacious, gutsy, and their stories are echoed across borders and generations in a rallying cry that is changing the narrative for women everywhere.

Jeffery Tobias Halter
Today's guest looks a little different than our usual interviewees. We're speaking with Jeffrey Tobias Halter, an expert in corporate gender equity. Jeffrey started his career in HR and sales but pivoted when he realized that if he wasn't advocating for women's issues at work, and he wasn't advocating for the world that his daughter would inherit. Since then, Jeffrey has built yWomen, a consulting firm with deep expertise on engaging men to advance women in corporate America.

Kassia Binkowski
Sabrina, I'm really excited for our listeners to hear Jeffrey reflect on the inequity of his success. We challenged him with really hard questions about how his white male privilege has opened doors at huge corporations. And he's sharing how he's leveraging that position to invite men into the conversation about how they can be both allies and advocates for women.

Sabrina Merage Naim
And we're dissecting what that means the difference between being an ally and an advocate and how critical it is to normalize men's engagement on gender equity in the workplace. There's something to learn whether you're an employee or an employer, and regardless of what gender you identify with, take a listen. Jeffrey, thank you so much for joining us from Atlanta today.

Jeffery Tobias Halter
Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Sabrina Merage Naim
We're really excited to have this conversation with you. And, and frankly, you know, we will acknowledge at this point that you look a little different than most of the guests that we have on this show. Namely, you have a different chromosome, but but nonetheless, your experience in the field of gender equity in the workplace you know, something that we are really excited to talk about. And you are certainly one of the people that we had on the list to engage with the subject. It's it's very timely, it is something that we care about deeply. So we're excited to chat with you about it. So thanks for joining us.

Jeffery Tobias Halter
Oh, awesome. My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Sabrina Merage Naim
So let's just dive right in. We want to, we want to understand a little bit more about your background. You came up in corporate America, having spent the better part of your career working for the Coca Cola company, consulting for the likes of Bristol Myers Squibb, Deloitte, Citi group, GE Johnson and Johnson, Moet Hennessy and more. And your early career was was in sales and HR, but you now work in diversity, equity and inclusivity, specifically, as it relates to gender equity. What was the tipping point for you? When did you decide to shift your focus?

Jeffery Tobias Halter
Yeah, I would love to say it was very intentional. I spent the first 20 years of my career in sales, sales management, P&L responsibility, two years with Procter gamble, 18 years with Coca Cola. And then in 2000, Coca Cola actually had a $200 million discrimination lawsuit, something no company should ever go through. And at the time, I was liaison into the training function, I was actually a certified sales trainer. And they came to me and said, you're going to go lead the diversity education initiative, as part of the consent decree. And I looked at them and said, "I'm a straight white guy." You know, I had no idea why I was getting this job. I didn't have a lot of say in it at the time. And so if you've ever seen this episode of The Office with the really awful diversity training, that was my program, and I would sit as a hostage in my own program every day, and we had to train 4000 people, but something happened, I would sit in class and I would hear stories, stories for my friends of racism, and sexism, and homophobia. And I had what they call a white male epiphany, where you realize what white male privilege is, and the world revolves around me. I'm always the majority of the room, my voice is usually heard. And so I didn't choose to be an advocate at that point, but I chose to get curious. And so I would go out and talk to women and and my friends who are people of color and just ask them what's going on that I don't experience. I don't know. And this would lead to a whole series of things, I would end up becoming the first male member of the Koch women's forum. I would later be first chair of a number of planning events, Chief of Staff of the diversity Advisory Council. And in my last role, was actually the Director of Diversity Strategy. And so for three years now, we were post lawsuit, Coca Cola was winning awards for their diversity initiatives. And I got to go out and benchmark and I got to benchmark with best in class companies around what they were doing. And it just dawned on me two things. One is that we don't spend enough time engaging white men in this conversation. And when you think about the fact that 80% of leadership in most companies is still men, we will never drive long term systemic change without us. And then I saw another trend. And that is, you know, having done this kind of work and being based in the south, you know, when you mentioned diversity and inclusion in the south, it's automatically race. But in the northeast, it's women. And on the west coast, it's a much broader expansion. And so it just dawned on me, again, use gender as the gateway to diversity inclusion, because
And so I was contemplating launching this consulting company around strategy. And I kept going to conferences, and I'd run into five or six men at the 800 person women's conferences. And I'd look at them and I'm like, "Dude, what are you doing here?" And they're like, "We want to help. But we don't know what to do." And that was really the tipping point where I said, "Oh, my God, there are actually a lot of men who want to help at all levels of the organization. And they don't know what to do." And so I launched why women about 10 years ago, pre-COVID, I was on the road 30 weeks a year doing this work with best in class companies. And it's really twofold. One is around strategy, getting the strategy and measures and metrics and programming, right. And then the second part is training men of all levels to be advocates. So long answer to your question, but that's it.

Kassia Binkowski
The curiosity that you're reflecting on the humility that you had to be able to ask, "What don't I know? What am I missing? What don't I see?" it is unfortunately, all too rare. How were you perceived when you made that pivot? I mean, let's, let's talk about that elephant in the room, you are a white male, you're working in gender equity. Now, what was the reception then?

Jeffery Tobias Halter
Yeah, that's, that's funny. Um, initially, I will say the bigger concern is by women. When I go into companies, it's like, why do we need a man. And then when they find out my background, and what I do, I'm usually welcomed with open arms. They see me as an ally. It's like, "Oh, you're saying the same thing that we've been saying to them." And the problem is, their bias, the senior table that still 80% men, here's it differently from me, than they do from their own women in the organization. And quite frankly, I can frame it up a little different, I can call them on their crap in a manner that's a little different. So there's apprehension there. And then, you know, I think a lot of the other apprehension, and this is what men deal with a lot of is the fear of sticking out the, you know, the fear of going and being an advocate. And I actually received more group from my, from my old sales management guys who, you know, because I went to HR, and I kind of, you know, went to a staff role instead of staying in line. And, and the way to overcome fear, and I found in doing this work, is you have to have a personal connection, I'm not saying you have to have. Most men that I have found have a personal connection. And for me, I never made the connection that if I wasn't part of the solution and part of the problem, and if I'm not advocating for women, I'm betraying the women in my life, my spouse, my daughter, of the women in my workplace. And so quite frankly, when men kind look at me sideways and say, "Why are you doing this work?" I basically look at them and say, "Well, it's not for me, it's for your daughter, it's for your spouse." And that immediately shifts the tone. You've got to make this personal. Sadly, you got to make it personal, men are not going to do this because it's the right thing to do. We've talked about the business case for 30 years, the numbers are overwhelming. And what happens when you add women to the mix and it's still not enough. Advocacy takes that personal connection.

Sabrina Merage Naim
So you're alluding to something that we really wanted to unpack a little bit more, which is that you have now had a career working for some of the largest corporations working with some of the largest corporations and impressive names. And would a woman have been invited to the table for this work in the same way that you've been invited to the table? Or has your gender given you that edge, that advantage?

Jeffery Tobias Halter
Yeah, you know, I will, I will fully acknowledge there is probably a privilege that I carry, and they are much more likely to hear the words coming from me. And I go back to the story I told earlier, I, I partner with a lot of women who do women's leadership training. And we will literally stand in front of the same executive team say the exact same thing. And they will look at her as playing the women's card. And they'll listen to me. And what they haven't done is acknowledge their own bias in the space. And depending on the group and the comfort level, we'll actually unpack that in a moment.

Kassia Binkowski
So Jeffery, what the hell is it gonna take to change that? It's crazy to me to think that, you know, it's taking a white male to carry that torch in some ways to open that door to start those conversations. Is it a metric of success for you personally, for your company that like when a woman is invited to that table when a woman is given the same opportunity to start these conversations that some change will have happened, some progress will have been made?

Jeffery Tobias Halter
Yeah, this is probably the hardest part right? To draw straight line between the work I'm doing and success for women. You know that the metric that I track is the number of men that I'm able to come in contact with, hopefully, in very senior roles for who we're touching, you know, 500 to 1000 employees in the organization. And what you're touching on is really the challenge whether it comes from, you know, a consultant who's a male like me, or one of my female colleagues, there's no one answer. What we found is there's a series of there's 10 specific barriers that McKenzie has identified that conspired to hold women back. There is a lack of accountability. There's a lack of leadership, there's a lack of transparency. And so what you see is the companies that are doing this well, IBM, and J&J, they've been at this hardcore for 20 years, and their numbers bear it out. And the problem is, we're, I think we're sitting in a U shaped curve, where on one side, you've got the companies that get it. And there's maybe 100 of them. We've got this trough of companies that acknowledge there's a problem, and you've still got a big chunk that don't even realize it's an issue. And oh, by the way, you know, when did Sears realize it was Sears? You know, when did Circuit City realize it was Circuit City, these companies don't know what's coming. And this is where part of my message is also to scare them. And there's a simple number that is moving on the horizon. So every year for the last 10 years, we've lost about 4000 Boomers to retirement - largely white men, like myself. Well in five years we're all gone. And so if you think about the average organization, 8% white men in the executive team. Today, as of 2020, Millennials are now the largest percentage of the workforce having eclipsed Boomers. 85% of available talent today is a millennial, a woman or a person of color. So think about that picture in your mind, versus what senior leadership looks like today. And oh, by the way, the clock is ticking. And so the numbers are going to change and the good companies are going to survive, and they're going to get the best and brightest in them. And quite frankly, you know, sadly, if COVID taught us anything, the bad companies aren't going to be around. And and so there's this, there's this closing of businesses that you know what maybe should have figured this out a long time ago. Not challenged to that map is that COVID has hit women exponentially harder than men. We lost 800,000 women in the workforce in just October, that was the worst single month, it reported. And you read the McKinsey research of 2020 to 2020 McKinsey Women in the Workforce for all your listeners go read this. It's amazing. It talks about the effect of COVID. In fact, we are probably losing 15 years' worth of progress. Women are just burnt out. And it doesn't matter what level.

Sabrina Merage Naim
So I want, I want us to dig into COVID, and how it impacts women differently in a minute. But something that you said, which I think is really important to touch on, again, is that the fundamental shift of the demographics coming into the workforce has changed to the point that corporate America as the system, the structure that has existed in corporate America for decades, is not prepared for these people. You know, it wasn't created for these people. And the needs that women or people of color will have, the skills that they bring, the perspectives that they bring are not recognized in the same way in corporate America. Sin that regard, it's our understanding that there's really been very little progress toward gender equity in the workplace in recent decades. And as of early 2020, women still held held less than 21% of C-suite positions. Why did this progress stall between 1970 and 1990?

Jeffery Tobias Halter
Yeah, you know, and boy, there's an ancient history lesson there. Um, and I think it's just a whole host of factors. I studied this to some degree, and when it almost becomes is a game of thrones strategy. You know, I want you to think about the C-suite, and how hard it is to get there. This is not something you get out of college, this is the end of a 30, year, maybe 20 year very successful run. And during the course of that time, so many things have to line up. Right, you hate to say it's political, but a portion of it is political. Are you aligned with the right regime? And is your regime rising? And so do you have visionary leaders, what we've seen even in best in class companies, and now we're fast forward to 2020 is companies who have again made huge commitments on women are two steps forward one step back. And it boils down to the fact that the average CEO is only in his job or her job for three to five years. And so every one of them will say, "Oh, no gender and diversity are critical priorities." But it's ranked number five on the list. And the first three are about keeping the doors open making profit, you know, and the stuff corporate America is about. The other thing I'll point out that move to senior leadership is also wrought with bias, and an expertise or a belief in this country, that meritocracies work. And so as I do this training, there's some research that I use, it's from a book called empowering the organization. And everybody thinks meritocracies work and the best performers get ahead. And what we find out is that in high performing companies, where everybody is an A plus plus, performance is only 10% of the reason people get ahead. Image, what people say about you, and what your reputation is in the company is 30%. And exposure is 60%. So if I don't know you, if I don't know what you're about, I don't know that I'm going to let you into my club. And I hate to call the C-suite a club, but it is a club, whether you like it or not. And so this very, very rare air has been so challenging for women to get to for all those reasons.

Sabrina Merage Naim
It's something that you said that, again, I want to highlight is that performance is only 10% of why people get ahead, which is frankly shocking to me. Maybe it shouldn't be, but to me, I grew up with the mentality that our performance, our skills, our work ethic are the things that get us ahead, but it's it's not the case. And I want to go back to a conversation that we had recently with a woman named Tina Hay who is the Founder of Napkin Finance and one of the things that she said was in the early stage of her career when going out and looking for investors, people were looking for a stereotypical young white male who spoke a certain lingo, who dressed a certain way, didn't have necessarily the qualifications or experience, but fit a stereotype that they were comfortable with in their minds. And that is it relates to what you're saying. And it is, frankly, part of a much larger problem that is, has been rampant for so long. Solet's talk about that problem, though. Because if we're going to talk about how image is a barrier to promotion, how does race play into this equation? I mean, we know and the data shows that black women have faced far greater barriers to promotion and representation in the workplace. So what can you speak to about that? What can you tell us?

Jeffery Tobias Halter
Yeah, and again, you know, it's a multi pronged approach and it is absolutely wrought with, with bias. Something as simple as, and I talked about this, in all my training, women absolutely face a double blind dilemma. And that is, if you think about corporate behavior on a continuum, a line from zero to 100. At one end is ultra aggressive, fist pounding profanity using leaders. And at the other end is the quiet, more introspective, you know, leader. Men just have a wider operating reality - they can be very firm, very quiet and still be accepted.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Right, versus the women who are aggressive.

Jeffery Tobias Halter
If women are too aggressive, we know what they're called, if they're not serious enough, we know what they're called. And so I believe women have an operating range of about 45, to 55%. And it's just so much narrower than men. And it gets into the bias around assessment, right? So is assertiveness is seen as a positive in a man and a negative in a woman, or aggression. And so, you know, this unconscious bias, number one starts to feed that image. Secondly, we know that women and women of color get far less exposure to senior leadership, they get far less support from their managers. So these also conspire on the image. We know women of color get exponentially less feedback, because many men carry a concern that it may be perceived as a racial issue. And so it's so easy for me as a white male not to go there, I can have a long happy career by never wading into that, and my management is not holding me accountable. You know, something as simple as - and this plays directly to the image thing - I've seen this play out dozens of times where you'll be sitting in a succession planning review, and the division's President will ask "Who's ready to be promoted? Let me see your list." And it's, you know, 19 white guys. And when he says, "Where are the women? Where are the people of color?" The divisional leaders invariably say "We just don't have any ready." And and the CEO goes "I understand that" instead of saying, "What are you doing to get ready? The next time I see the slate, I want to see 50% of the people who don't look like you. Because if you can't train people like you, why do I need you?" And I've actually seen that play out by very courageous, committed leaders, but it's not the norm. So that gets back to tracking and measuring and assessment. And it gets back to the image.

Kassia Binkowski
What is different about those leaders? Have you been able to track any kind of commonalities across that group of leaders who are making those courageous decisions, who therefore are going to change the culture of companies?

Jeffery Tobias Halter
I will tell you, the ones that I have worked with, have had that same epiphany moment that I have. They they're there has been a pivotal role in their life, and they've made the connection. And, and for a whole host of reasons worn out. One is, the courageous men I know who've just been so passionate on this one was raised by a single working mother. And and you know, his mother is asking him, "What are you doing for women?" I've heard a number of CEOs, you know, who have been challenged by their now 25 year old daughter, saying, "Dad, you have like 1000 people working for you. What are you doing for women?" And so it's this huge epiphany where they're really making that connection. And then I talked to another gentleman, he was the guy who actually told the story of I'm holding you accountable. He was the brand manager at Procter and Gamble when he was 26. And his wife was a brand manager. And she was 26. And they got married. And they open each other's paychecks. And she was paid less than he was for the exact same job. And that's when he got really angry about the diversity thing. And he was 26 years old. He's been on this for 14 years. So you've got to find that connection. I'm not saying that's right. I'm just saying the men that I have found have that are the advocates are the ones driving.

Kassia Binkowski
Let's talk about the 20% of companies that do have women in the C-suite - what's going on with them? What's happening differently? Are you at that table? Are you having those conversations?

Jeffery Tobias Halter
Yeah, what they're doing is everything right there. They're mandating diverse slates, they're mandating diverse panels. They're mandating succession planning and development plans, and they have high pro plans for women. If you look at the diversity, top 50, list 48 of the top 50 places to work for women have accountability down to the divisional president level, and many of them have compensation at risk. And it's always interesting when we get to this conversation and say, "Well, doesn't that just leave the lead to token hiring?" And what I will tell you is good companies don't allow that to happen. You know, Gallo is one of my clients, I love working with Gallo and they have a statement around talent. They say we would never use bad grapes to make good wine. And so you think about Intel, you think about any company, they've got huge quality control groups that ensure that things meet standards. But yet, when a woman gets a job, somebody questioned whether she's capable or not - this is crazy to me. And it's all because the CEO, or the senior leaders are not doing their job saying "She got this job because she's the best qualified." You know, this visible vocal, leader. I want to talk about tokenism. Because the story you told about having a list of 20 people to potentially promote and where are the women? And where are the people of color? To me, it's so easy for someone in a leadership position to just add a few names to check a box and pat themselves on the back and make themselves feel better, that those people are there, right? But it doesn't change fundamentally the culture of an organization. So you know, one of our recent guests Dr. Winnie Kiiru, who is a as a renowned conservationist in Kenya, spoke so eloquently about the need for leaders within organizations to stop being tokenists. How do we avoid that culture? How do we avoid the perception that if we have one woman in a leadership role, or a black woman at the table, or you know, a board of 20 people and one person is XYZ then the box is checked, then we're, we're good? Yeah. Yeah, it's a fundamental shift mentally for the executive team to either embrace this or view it as tokenism. And if you make that shift, you realize one or two is not the answer. You know, the answer is 40, or 50%, you actually buy into gender equity, and diversity equity, because you see the value that it brings. Part of this also links back directly to our exposure comment, where if you have been doing a good job, the divisional president is already aware of the five women or people of color on that list. And and they're challenging to say, "Well, you know what, you know, Sophia might be on your list, but I don't think she's ready yet. Oh, by the way, I want you to put a development plan together to get Sophia ready in a year. And where's McKinsey? You know, I worked with McKinsey, and she was awesome on this project." Well, this gets back to exposure, if I'm a divisional President I can ask that question. So so it is this commitment. And then I'm also going to put out - having done this work for 20 years -I'm going to put out a controversial notion. I have been on both sides of this argument. And that is I will tell you that quotas work. And and there are a lot of companies that say we don't want quotas, we don't want tokenism, I'm going to tell you when you are starting out, you need a collective. And then you can start to decide who's not making it. But companies need to set hard goals. We try and measure everything in our organization. And so what I would see more companies doing is saying, No, we're gonna have 40% of women in senior roles across the organization in three years. Now go solve that. And, and, and at massive numbers some of them are gonna not make it. But the vast majority are. But we see one or two women promoted. And when they fail, we go, I told you, well, yeah, that's a 50% failure rate. Well, if we do 300, women, I doubt that 150 of them are going to fail. So I believe quotas are initially critical and necessary to get your critical mass. And then you can move on from there.

Sabrina Merage Naim
What do you say to the leaders of organizations who are challenging you that the thing that matters to me is my bottom line?

Jeffery Tobias Halter
Absolutely.

Sabrina Merage Naim
You know, how are you? How are women going to help me? What what are women doing to change the culture of the company? Why does it matter that they're in leadership roles? What do you say?

Jeffery Tobias Halter
Diverse teams generate better business results and drops directly to the bottom line. If you're in financial services, a great one, you have to be more representative of your customers. This is the first thing I have any company do, I want you to do an assessment of what your sales teams look like, versus the customers you're calling on. And every one of them is surprised because there are more women sitting on the procurement desk, whether it's it or financial services than they possibly anticipate. So so this is a metric, you have to look more like your customer. When you see companies, you know, financial services, a great one, when Blackrock comes out and says, We're not going to sell your company in our portfolio unless you have gender equity in your company, you're responding to your customers. So it's a combination of things, right? It's the ROI that we know gender diverse teams bring. It's the war for talent that we talked about earlier, what is your plan for talent? It's what your customers look like. And really, it's just part of another business planning process like you would do with anything else.

Kassia Binkowski
And there's a lot of data to back that up. I mean, as you said, hitting them over the head with the reporting. Forbes said something like narrowing the gender gap could add between 12 and $20 trillion to the global GDP. So it's it's backed up by really good numbers, really compelling numbers. Assuming you can make that pitch so you can you can convince them of that. How do we engage more men in the effort? You know, what role do they do they play? Where have you seen the most traction within a company, a corporation, engaging men in these conversations?

Jeffery Tobias Halter
And this sounds so simple, and it's not, you have to invite us in, you have to invite in ready now men who want to be part of the solution. And again, I do not have hard data on this. But what I believe after 10 years of doing this work, I think 30 to 40% of men want to help and they don't know what to do. So we start by inviting them in. And the first thing happened do is an exercise called listen, learn to lead and have the will. And listen means go and talk to women about the experiences they're having. Go and talk to people of color about the experiences. And then learn - read the McKinsey report. You know, read all the data. Lead - ask tough questions. This is what leaders do. And finally have the will.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Your comment that we need to invite men into the conversation really strikes a chord for me, even for the purposes of this podcast. I'll be honest with you that we got a little bit of flack.

Kassia Binkowski
We got a lot of flack!

Sabrina Merage Naim
A lot of flack at the idea that we would invite a man onto the podcast, which was kind of mind boggling to me. But there was a concern that this there's a savior complex here, right, that we don't need men to come and save us, which is truly you know, a foreign concept to me because we we do actually. Not to save us but we need men to fight alongside us. And that leads me to ask because we've touched on in previous episodes on the difference between having allies and having advocates in our male counterparts? What do you see as the biggest distinction? And why does it matter to have both?

Jeffery Tobias Halter
Yeah, I think it's twofold. And it's what I would tell you is, we don't want to be the white knight. In fact, the men I trained, we literally talked about the fact you will never be able to talk about 90% of the things we're talking about in class, I just want you to demonstrate action, and go out and be an ally, go out and be an advocate. The ally and advocate, the way I differentiate that, I would liken allies to mentors. They're standing next to you, they're supporting you. But they may be passive. An advocate to me, is speaking up on behalf of women, an advocate has your back in a meeting, when you get interrupted, which we know you're going to eight to ten times a day. And I'm doing it because I passionately believe in it. It's this visible vocal action. And the difference is advocates talk about advancing women when there's no women in the room. So that, to me, is the difference. We are visible and vocal interaction.

Sabrina Merage Naim
And by the way, the locker room conversation comes to mind for me, which is when no women are present, and there are things being said that would be offensive to a woman. You shouldn't wait for a woman to be present to say something. Right?

Jeffery Tobias Halter
Exactly. Yep. No, I'm in complete agreement. But to me, advocacy is visible and vocal. The advocate is inviting 30 other minions to this conversation. An ally is one of those 30 men who wants to help.

Kassia Binkowski
So Jeffery your work, this work has never been more important than it is right now. I want to talk I want to bring this back to COVID for a second, because the shift the impact that COVID is having on the female workforce is tremendous. Tell us a little bit more about that. How far is COVID going to set us back as a workforce? And what can we be doing? How can we shift things right now to limit that fallout?

Jeffery Tobias Halter
I think what you're gonna see transpire is a hybrid approach. Right? Yes, we are, yes, we have lost, we've lost a lot of men, we've lost a lot of women, we've lost a lot of workers, you know, in the last year. The economy, for the most part has proven to be amazingly resilient. And so I think, again, going back to the companies that are gonna win, the companies that are going to have competitive advantage in the workplace, come March or April, are going to hang their shingle out and say, everyone is welcome. We want you. And if COVID taught us anything, it's I can work from home. I can make flex time work. You know, if there are lessons to be learned by this flexibility does work remote, telecommuting does work. This chapter is unwritten.

Sabrina Merage Naim
So we know that women have been disproportionately affected by COVID, we know that women of color have been even more affected. And I want to also talk about working mothers for a second who have always juggled the impossible, you know, working all day, and then coming home to work as a parent at night. It's been called the double shift. And the pandemic is really amplifying that struggle making it impossible for women to continue to juggle both, those supports have been removed. More than one in three mothers are considering leaving the workforce. What price will the economy pay for losing in that quantity of work?

Jeffery Tobias Halter
Yeah, it's, it's significant. And it's going to go back to I've got jobs that need to be filled, you're capable. But now you're going to dictate the terms you want to come back in. And so in what strategies might change, I may have to replace you with two part timers. But I may still have to offer you flex time and some type of benefits. So so I don't know what that's gonna look like, I believe the opportunities will be there. There are women who want to reenter the workforce. And I think there are so many bright, talented, motivated women who are going to want to do that. I think you know, it's the realities of the world today, probably close to two working parents. And still, I think everybody's gonna have to answer that individually.

Kassia Binkowski
What can we learn from history though Jeffery? What lessons are there that we can pull from? If these women step out, are they going to come back?

Jeffery Tobias Halter
Yeah, that's interesting. Um, they're gonna come back because we need them back. We're going to be begging for them to come back on their terms. It goes back to 20 million job openings right now on LinkedIn, the jobs are there. And the companies that are going to win are going to come up with a solution that is, oh, by the way, unique for you, and unique for Maria, and unique for Yolanda.

Kassia Binkowski
So this is interesting, what you're talking about is kind of a very interesting power shift that is going to happen between the corporation and the prospective hire. That that individual - hopefully that woman - is going to be in a better position to negotiate for what she needs and wants to reenter the workforce. Do you think that's gonna be the case?

Jeffery Tobias Halter
I think it's going to have to be the case. And by the way, it's not going to be easy, you know, companies are going to gnash their teeth over this. But if you think about, if you step back and think about the new American worker, right? I think Starbucks is a great example, right? Where work the hours you want, oh, by the way, I will pay you a supplemental healthcare, which is why a lot of people work. But you know, if you're not working full time, I can't offer you health care. So companies are going to have to rethink about healthcare, and some of their benefits and the way that work gets done. You know, we have proven that virtual work works. The interesting one is when senior leaders you know COVID, is behind us and senior leaders miss having their people around them. And they say we want people back in work. And even though we have proven for a year virtual working works, and senior leaders are going well, I got this building for 15,000 people, what am I going to do with that? And, and again, you're going to, you're going to solve this company, by company and person by person. But let me put it this way, if there's ever been a chance to reinvent something, it's right now.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Breaking Glass is a production of Evoke Media. Evoke is a nonprofit organization that exists in order to elevate the people and stories that are working to make the world a more unified and equitable place. Learn more at weareevokemedia.com