Okay, today we are joined by Jacqui Barton. She is the Vice President of Human Capital in the community and state segment of United Health Group, which is a major global healthcare company. Jacqui is joining us for this interview via webcam from Minnesota. So, Jacqui, welcome. Can you tell us a little bit about the diversity efforts at United Health Group, and how you became involved with them? >> My pleasure, thank you for inviting me. >> So, I thought the first thing that would helpful for our students, is to hear a little bit about your background, and how you became involved in diversity efforts at United Healthcare. >> I have been at United Healthcare for the last seven years. I work in the community and state business, and it's a tremendously diverse workforce. We serve economically disadvantaged individuals, or individuals that are tremendously medically under-served. Or perhaps they're individuals without employer plans. They might be known in the community as the Medicaid, as children's insurance, or a special needs plan. So, when you think of the customer group or the member group that we serve, it's tremendously diverse. So, to have the perspective of diversity, as it relates to our employees, to link to our members, is critical. >> Mm, so it sounds really important for you to be able to make connections with your customers and stakeholders externally. And how about internally, what are some of the, why is diversity so important for how you work internally at United Health? >> Well let me step back and talk a little bit about, diversity is a tremendous priority with our business. And we, as a organization, have a fundamental commitment to employee engagement. So, if you think about employee engagement, it really is about head, heart, and hands, and that would be for every single employee. With the diversity and inclusion, and truthfully I have a very difficult time talking about diversity without inclusion, it really speaks to the empowerment of our employees. So, if in fact we think about that, it really is the driver that ensures that our employees are empowered to reach out to the community. And really, that requires us working together with the business and the business partners. So I would tell you that diversity is foundational to how we meet our members in the community. Probably the secret sauce of what you'll see within a community and state business, is the ability to connect with our employees. So, for instance, it could be in the New York City market, and we have a strong Asian community that we serve. In order to connect with the employees, to communicate with our employees, to understand their particular needs, we need to absolutely understand what's happening from a cultural perspective, but also from an individual diversity perspective. >> Absolutely. And so what are some of the ways in which you're specifically promoting diversity at United Healthcare? What specific techniques and tactics have you tried, to make sure you're actually doing that? Well, first of all, I think I'd probably start with the fact that we have four pillars of diversity. >> Okay. >> The first is with our employees. It's how we recruit employees, it's how we onboard employees, and it's how we ensure that our employee base is reflecting the customers and the communities that we serve. We promote it internally, by looking at the developing our diverse employees and developing the leader talent that we have. It's a constant focus and to that endeavour, you have to work on building and educating our employee bases, since obviously, they're the ones that are touching the members that we deal with. And then, but it really requires going beyond the standard practice of recruiting. And really, our goal is to be known as the leader of recruiting and, quite honestly, retention, and really become the employer choice. So if I think about diversity sourcing, and the recruiting piece of that, it's really having very innovative strategies to create that competitive advantage, as we go out in a tremendously competitive workforce environment to attract talented and that high-performing workforce. And we have a very global, and a comprehensive strategy. You mentioned the word earlier. And it really has to do with relationships. We have very strong partnerships, nationally and locally. So if I step back for a second, and I talk about my role in community and state, I have the benefit of, while I work with 25 different states and 5,400 employees. I have the benefit of working with United Healthcare, which has 225,000 employees, and international. So, while we have a tremendously international enterprise, I have the opportunity to take a lot of resources, a lot of tools that are in my toolkit, and be able to localize that. So we have very strong partnerships nationally, with a number of different organizations. But we also have the advantage of being able to go to the local level, to the individual city organizations, and create tremendous relationships there. We have a number of local outreaches, and that's how we've developed our strong relationships in our markets. And truthfully, what happens is, our business partners in those local markets become our ambassadors. And it's our ambassadors that help us reach out into the public and it really is a continuous circle of what we're doing. We have a number of events that we do in the markets, and we may in fact do an event actually in a city, with an organization. But we do a number of, we leverage our technology a great deal, much like we're doing today. And we'll have virtual career fairs. We'll have virtual career fairs focus on specific organizations, or open to the public in a much broader venue. We certainly do, once again, leverage our technology. We actively participate in a number of job boards. We are a very, very robust recruiting system. And touch, literally, millions and millions of candidates on an annual basis. And then, of course, we have a great deal of marketing. And we are very, very active on campus. Active on campus from a graduate perspective. As well as functionally focused, financial, clinical, etc. But, I would tell you in all of these different methods and ways that we operate, it's all based on relationships. So that sort of speaks to, kind of, the internal employee base. But I would go on to say, as I mentioned before, we have four pillars. The first is our employee base, but how we really connect with that, is through the community as well. United Health Group has a foundation, and we partner with a number of non-profits. In civic organizations we select scholarship winners. We contribute heavily into the community, and it is very foundational to the culture of our organization. And it really something we pride ourselves in, we have a number of diverse scholarship initiatives. We have a number of organizations related to military family associations. And then, of course, we work with our communities at a local level, with the people with fill-in profit partners with active participation, in our time and dollars. The third pillar that I talked about, so I've talked about employees, I've talked about the communities, but I would be remiss to not say, it's our customers, as well. And that's really the health equity services, the foundations, the multicultural populations. How do we connect? How do we understand the gaps of care? So remember, we're providing healthcare. How do we understand that? How do we work with the multicultural organizations? How do we manage interventions? How do we manage gaps in care? And it's really looking at the ethnicity and the language preferences, and being able to work there, as well. We have a number of different forums that related to unique populations, that connect with our own employee base, as well. And then the last pillar, so employer or employees, community, customers, I would say, our supplier diversity. So remember, there's much of what we do, especially in the community and state business, where we are working actively with suppliers who are supporting us. But also, we support them through a number of business initiatives related to our request for proposals in the communities. And we have very strong relationships with vendor management oversight. And we also do a number of different recognitions, and strive for very strong metric performance in that area, as well. >> So, one thing that I'm taking away from this is, yeah, we talk in this course about diversity, specifically in the context of teams within companies. But I think what I'm hearing from you, Jackie, is that to be really effective in your diversity efforts, you have to think about it very holistically. Not just something internal, as something internal to the company, but as something that's more effective when you're also building relationships externally with stakeholders, with customers. So it It's sort of the whole company mentality. Not just, we're going to do this within human resources, within our company, because diversity is important, but we're also going to find better ways to connect with a diverse demographics of customers, that all those things seem to feed into each other. >> Absolutely, and I would go so far as to say, in fact I would consider it one of our successes, I'll talk about it a little bit later is, diversity is fundamental to the products that we have, but also to the processes. So, from a business perspective, it's almost hard to carve it out and talk about it individually, because it is embedded in everything we say and do, every single day. And if you look at the population within our organization as well as the populations that we serve, it's what makes the organization tick. And the level of diversity within the 225,000 employees that we have is what enables us to connect with that outside market. So you're absolutely right, thank you. >> And so, let's talk a little bit about barriers and challenges, because obviously this isn't always easy. What are some of the specific, big barriers you see to building diverse teams at places like United Healthcare. And then, how have you been able to overcome them? >> I would tell you, I'd probably put that into two categories. The first is, and I would tell you what I would personally consider to be one of our number one barriers, is the competition that we have in the external marketplace. If you're looking at the unemployment area today, if you look at the number of people that we serve in communities, we're not, I'm going to say ever, the sole managed care organization from a community and state basis. We are there with many others. And while we have the opportunity to partner with other managed care organizations, with people in the community, we are truly competing for that talented workforce, for those people who are most embedded in their organizations. So we're looking for the same people. We're looking for that high talent. And I would tell you the part that differentiates us, and what we work very much on promoting and perhaps addressing one of those barriers, is the culture that we bring. We have a very focused culture on compassion, on understanding the member, and understanding how we reach out to them. A part of that is through the innovative ways that we go to market. Innovative ways that we go to market in providing our services. But also innovative ways that we go to market in attracting candidates to us. The second part that I would say that would be a barrier, and while I think it's one of our greatest strengths, I think sometimes it's our greatest weakness, which we are constantly working on engaging and ensuring that all of our employees understand their role in diversity. Understand their role in attracting high talent really speaks to what does it do to their individual team. It speaks to, what does it do to their individual department. It says, what does it do to the individual business, as well as United Health Group. So it's really about their team, their business, and UHG overall, and how everything that we do counts. And every person we add to this team adds value to our diversity. How do we overcome that? And we're like every other organization, it's a demanding organization. It's a high degree of performance that's required. And it's a constant balance between where your energies are going at any given time or in any given moment. So I would tell you it's a constant drumbeat. Our talent agenda never stops. And ensuring that we have the relationships with the four pillars that we talked about. It's comprehensive sourcing. So I had talked about that earlier. The sourcing of talent, both internally as well as externally. How do we offer opportunities within our organization, and develop the diversity and the talent of different teams? But, also, how do we address that in the external market, as well? It's consistent messaging to our employees about the value. It's consistent education, always being inclusive of the multitude of different training center there. And I would also tell you, always being inclusive of diversity in all the events that we have, and the activities that we sponsor. So, there are a couple of things there in terms of the recruiting challenge you mentioned. It sounds like you really have to demonstrate to potential candidates that when you talk about diversity inclusion, that you're not just engaging in tokenism or hitting a quota just to hit a quota, for example. But that this is really something that's fully embedded in your culture, but also in your business model, right? Because I think when people believe that diversity drives your bottom line in some way, they believe that you're really serious about it as a business because that tends to focus organizations. And then in terms of speaking to employees internally, I like the point about continuously messaging to them why diversity matters. So they also see it as not just tokenism, not just as hitting a quota, but. Why does this matter for our bottom line, why does it make our teams better? And the idea of making that message, communicating that message over and over and over as a way to get through to people. I think those are really key points. >> I would be remiss if I didn't add that when I have a diverse senior leadership team, when I have a diverse manager within the work force, the most powerful message that you can have, is when you have representation in those key decision making influential positions. So I think it's about walking the talk and really demonstrating what it looks like every single day and how we behave every day. And when that becomes so embedded, it makes the diversity initiative just part of life on a regular basis. >> So let's talk about successes then, what are some of the specific successes that you would highlight? About your diversity efforts at UHG and really specifically what made those efforts so successful. >> So when I talked about this and I think I might have mentioned some of these earlier. I will tell you the biggest success that we have, is the fact that it is diversity and inclusion, is so embedded in our business processes. It's embedded in our products and what we offer to the public, but it's also embedded in the processes that we use on a regular basis. So It's not really even a separate entity. And I think that is truly the fact that everybody has kind of a stake in the game, and it's a success to the business because of the nature the members that we serve. I would tell you within community and state, very much our employees mirror our members. And we have a tremendous growth agenda. And part of that growth agenda is working with individual states and, quite honestly, bidding for their business. A key part of doing that, is the connection that we have to the business partnerships in that process. Whether they be through vendors or whether they be through community organizations that support our members. Or from where we would gain employees from that community. So we have kind of a very strong business partnership, through the procurement process of maintaining the contracts that we have within community and state. And when I say contracts, that's the partnership that we have with every state. Where we have the privilege of being a managed care organization with them. And I would tell you that another critical component that we have, and one of the things that I think is our biggest success factor, is as an organization we really have world class as measured, employee engagement. And part of that score, so you probably care about net promoter score, well, we have employee promoter score. And that really speaks to when we look at our employees, how many of them would recommend us as an employer of choice. And when I look at that, when I look at the success that we've had, when I look at the referrals that we receeve on a regular basis, and how we measure that. We truly have a world class engagement, and are tremendously effective with employer promoter scores. The last piece and I probably look at this last, because I'm really talking about what are all those critical pieces that are within the business that I think we have a life blood of who we are. I can name all kinds of recognition that we've had, and I think I'd be remiss if I didn't say that that's a very big indicator of the success that we've had from perspective. >> Yeah, and I especially love the point about employee engagement. I think what that highlights, and in the course we'd talk a lot about how diverse teams and organizations tend to make better decisions because they just have more perspectives at the table. They tend to be more innovative. But I also appreciate the point that it just leads to more engagement. There's the sense that everyone's included, that everyone is valued and that is good for everyone, not even just the people who might be particular targets for diversity initiative, whatever the case may be. >> Absolutely, absolutely >> Good, well those are the questions I had Jackie, would you add anything else that we haven't touched on here? >> I think if I were stepping back, saying, if I were a company starting out and saying, how do I really build the diversity? I really believe it starts internally. It starts through, how do you recruit the people, how do you retain the people, how do you develop them, and how do you really ensure that you are walking the talk, that you are leading from the front end of diversity. That you are embracing employees from an inclusion perspective and it's really by having a very strong foundation internally, that it allows us to connect with the external market. Whether it be the consumer, whether it be our suppliers, whether it be the recruiting institutions. And it really is a never ending circle. And I believe strongly that the key to success is that constant drumbeat. It's not a one and done. It becomes embedded in the business, and it is who you are. And I think that United Healthcare has been tremendously successful. We have, every year we revisit our agenda, every year we develop more stretch goals, figure out what we can do to include more. And my goal would be to ensure that every single employee we have, has a connection and relationship with the community they serve, and a connection with the teams that they're working with. So thank you very much for inviting me. It's been a pleasure, thought provoking, and I hope that it's provided that same venue for the people who are watching this. >> Absolutely, Jackie, it has been thought provoking. And thank you again for joining us, I know this will be a helpful case study for the students. >> Thank you so much.
