Cobbs, Ellen and CAC specialty
present making the claim for the and I and I.
Now here's your host Ali of Bradford.
Hey everyone welcome to Cobbs Alan and AC specialties making the claim for D
and I podcast.
My name's Aliyah Bradford and I sit on our HR team as well as co-lead
our companies DE and I committee.
Today I am joined by Michael Rice our CEO.
Mike, thanks so much for joining us. Oh, thanks a lot.
Thanks for having me.
Absolutely. We're so excited to have you.
We knew you would be the best person and bring the best perspective
to get yourself as we launched this podcast.
So for today's topic, we are highlighting
April being Celebrate Diversity Month.
Diversity is going to be our main focus for today's conversation.
Does that sound like a plan to you?
Sounds like a great plan.
I'm hope I'm not the best, but I'm just one of one of the many good
thinkers on the topic.
Well, we're excited and I know our colleagues are as well.
But before we get started, I just wanted to lay the foundation
that this is a safe space and we are learning together
so we might not have it 100% right all the time.
But I think it's important and necessary to learn and grow together
as we try to make our organization more equitable, diverse and inclusive.
So with that being said, let's get started.
First things first, Mike, what does diversity mean to you personally?
It's a that's a big, broad question, but let me take a stab at it.
First thing I'd say is it's a way of living and thinking.
It's just really, really important.
When I think about my role as a leader within CSC
and my role really involves and includes attracting and and working with colleagues
from from sets of different ethnic social backgrounds and, and different
genders, customs, religious beliefs and personal orientations.
Diversity of thought and experience
make us more relevant with our clients and with our markets.
As I mentioned before, it's just a really, really important and relevant topic
for how we're building our firm. Absolutely.
I always like to say diversity is any dimension that can differentiate
groups from one another and inclusion is accepting those differences.
So perfect for our listeners.
You have been working with not only at U.S.
and I consulting on shaping our organization
into a more equitable and inclusive environment.
How do you feel those conversations with No-No have impacted you?
Well, I'd start by saying I do my interactions with known
as as very powerful and very helpful to me.
I actually view known it is as a business coach at this point in our relationship.
And we've been we've been having conversations and interactions for,
you know, probably four or five months now.
I very much enjoy those interactions
when I think about known and the things that we talk about it.
She makes me a better thinker, She makes me more aware of my actions
and quite frankly, my inactions and my surroundings.
My eyes are wide open every time I get off the phone with her.
Oh, I love that.
So, Mike, is there anything that has taken you by surprise while working with.
No, No. Yeah.
Well, what's the biggest surprise for me
was my understanding of what diversity meant.
Known as made me realize that diversity is not just a color.
I think we get so caught up in diversity and black and white and brown
and what known as made me realize that diversity is so much broader.
It's thought it's customs, it's sexual orientation, it's
where you were raised.
It's it's just so much broader of a topic than than you really think about.
I would also say
and this is kind of recent where we're getting into this now,
but unconscious bias is a is a very intriguing topic for me.
As you start going through examples of it.
It's it's just palpable and it's all really correctable.
But, you know, the simplest things where you think you're doing something
the right way can be construed by a whole generation of people
that you may want to hire in the future and in the wrong manner.
And so unconscious bias, by its very nature, its unconscious
is something you've got to figure out how to be more aware of.
Absolutely no great perspective.
And I know you've mentioned on some of our
employee calls that we are dedicated to diversity, equity, inclusion.
Why do you feel that diversity, equity
inclusion should be at the forefront of our company culture?
You know, we want to build our firm and take talent from all backgrounds.
We want that talent to work here.
We need to welcome people.
We need to teach people. We need to challenge people.
We need to incentivize our ever growing workforce.
And we need to demonstrate
that we're going to look and feel different from everybody else.
So diversity, equity and inclusion being at the forefront
allows us to make sure that we attract the right people, that they're
joining a firm that values their values and and quite frankly,
if we embrace it and we hire very talented
people, it's just going to make us a better firm in the future.
Absolutely.
I know you mentioned attracting more diverse candidates and employees.
Are there any barriers to diversity and inclusion that you have seen
in the insurance industry?
Well, you know, I think perceptions, whether real or not,
are a degree of entry in the insurance industry.
And again, as I mentioned earlier, unconscious bias is a barrier
that we all have to be very cognizant of.
I you know what I think of our industry,
certainly the outside perception of our industry.
And and it may be true is that we're heavily weighted towards white males.
You know, if we were to simply build our business and our business has been
all about growth, you know, we've increased our workforce by 20% a year.
If we simply built that business by hiring people from the industry today,
while we get some diversity of thought and experience and customs,
it's not really going to allow us to look like the US population at large.
And I think that's that's a potential problem.
It's something that we need to be cognizant of and aware of.
We're going to continue to hire people from our industry.
There's no doubt.
Great experts and and great people are what we're all about.
But we need to make sure that we as a firm
look more like the rest of the population.
So how are we trying to overcome those barriers?
Yeah, it can't.
It's a good question.
It can't just be rhetoric.
It needs to be action action oriented.
Paul and I a couple of summers ago mentioned to the entire team that
we believe in diversity, equity and inclusion, and we're going
to show our beliefs in that via action as opposed to just talking about things.
And so my personal belief of the best way for us to overcome this
and overcome those barriers of
of diversity in our industry are to hire and train our own.
We have an intern program that we've been doing
since the very beginning of our existence.
We've hired maybe two thirds of the folks that have run through the intern program.
The intern program has been staffed by a highly diverse group of people.
We are very, very keen on hiring folks out of college
or early in their careers and teaching and training them
to be great, great colleagues and great client service advocates.
I you know, by way of demonstration of the actions that we've taken,
I Denver's our biggest office within the CSC network.
I think we have over 50 people here now
amongst those 50 people, one third of that staff
is within two
years, two and a half years of graduating from college.
It's made up by interns,
It's made up by folks that didn't intern but recently graduated.
It's it's made up by people that maybe in their second job
or the first job didn't work out. The correct way.
But when you look around it, it makes you feel really good that
that staff, that team of future leaders for us here at Cobbs, Ellen
doesn't look like the historical insurance industry.
And so I think our our our actions are speaking volumes
and there's a lot more to come in that regard.
Awesome. Thank you so much.
I really appreciate that. You're very welcome. Over.
Thanks for including me. This has been Cobbs
Allen and CAC Specialty’s Making the Claim for DE&I Podcast.
This has been a comms Alan
and CC specialty presentation.
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