How to get workplace gender equity now (with Sara Sanford) (Transcript)

[00:00:00] Chris Duffy:
You're listening to How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. Today on the podcast, we’ve got equity expert Sara Sanford. Sara is the author of Inclusion, Inc.: How to Design Intersectional Equity into the Workplace. Sara created a playbook and a set of standards that can help organizations and people bypass their biases and become more inclusive.

That work is informed by her own experiences as well as loads of research. And one of the things that I find so exciting about Sara is that she's laser-focused on changing how workplaces operate, not just how people think. So, you know, when I talk about this show, when I talk about this podcast, I always try and tell people that our goal is to take brilliant people who share these big ideas and then say, “Okay, great. You are so smart and you are so interesting. But what would a regular person like me actually do, right?” Like, how does a regular person put these ideas into place in our everyday lives? And I think Sara is amazing at that. So today, our episode is all about: how do you go beyond good intentions to actually making change?

Here's a clip from Sara's talk at TEDx Seattle.

[00:01:12] Sara Sanford:
Many businesses think they're addressing the problem because they provide training. 8 billion dollars worth of training a year, according to studies from the Harvard Business Review. These same studies also conclude that these trainings don't work and often backfire.

The other solution has been to ask women to change their own behavior, to lean in, to sit at the table. Negotiate as often as men. Oh, and get more training. Women currently earn the majority of college degrees, outperform their peers in key leadership skills, and are running businesses that outperform the competition.
It doesn't look like education or skills or business acumen are the problem. We're already empowered: enough to make an impact on the businesses that are ready. These approaches failed to address the key systemic problem, unconscious bias.

[00:02:16] Chris Duffy:
We’re gonna take a quick break, but we will be back with much more from Sara Sanford.

[MUSIC BREAK]

[00:02:27] Chris Duffy:
Okay, we are back. Today on the show, we're talking about gender equity and how to create a more inclusive workspace with Sara Sanford.

[00:02:33] Sara Sanford:
Hi, I'm Sara Sanford. I'm the executive director and founder of GEN, which stands for “Gender Equity Now”. It is the first standardized certification for intersectional equity in the workplace.

[00:02:47] Chris Duffy:
In your book—Inclusion, Inc.—you talk about how you were once at a panel where they asked the powerful CEOs of a bunch of companies like, “What are you actually doing to make your workplaces more equitable?” And everyone gave these kind-of good sounding but very vague answers about like, “It starts with caring.”
And I think it's interesting. It seems like you had a personal journey from being like, “Great, I wanna work for people who talk like that”, to being like, “It doesn't matter what you say, it matters what you do. And I want it to be verifiable, as opposed to like, we're inspiring and we're capturing hearts and minds.” As it… you were like, “Okay, well what are the numbers?”

[00:03:25] Sara Sanford:
Absolutely. It's something that I wanted to see treated the same way that businesses treat operations. The same way that they treat accounting, that they treat any other business-critical function. You know, I get to spend my days researching this and seeing what the new data is around what is working and what isn't.

And a lot of decision-makers just didn't have access to those tools at that time. I think a lot of them feel overwhelmed. Information overwhelm is a real thing, or they're afraid of saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing, and they really don't know where to start. So we wanted to see them have a clear action plan that was evidence-backed. So it's looking at causes. So it's not just looking at end results and outcomes and saying, “Oh yes, we need more people of color in leadership. Oh yes, we need more women in leadership.” Okay, we know that. But a lot of times that bridge between the problem and that desired end result was not clear. No one knew what the path was from one to another.

[00:04:21] Chris Duffy:
Let's just define some terms here so that we all know exactly what we're talking about. Um, what is a GEN certification?

[00:04:29] Sara Sanford:
Yeah, so a GEN certification is a standardized assessment of employee experience and fairness of practices, and it is based on what we know has an impact for countering bias in the workplace rather than fostering it.

So it is in many ways just a checklist that will look at your organization and say, “Do you have the practices in place that are proven to counter the impact of bias?” And then once organizations go through this assessment, we help them find where they have gaps, and then optimize their processes and make sure that they're actually hearing from all of these diverse employees that they've recruited. So it really takes them beyond diversity, to meaningful inclusion.

[00:05:18] Chris Duffy:
What first drove you to create GEN? What was the impetus for it?

[00:05:23] Sara Sanford:
I started as kind of that nonprofit classic do-gooder kid, who worked on a lot of causes. Um, I was really focused actually on racial equity, and I think I just saw the limits of what can be done in the nonprofit sector from the outside, and so decided to make the switch into the private sector and worked for several finance companies, seeing that the demographic that they served and the demographic that they employed looks very different.

From the inside, I saw, okay, it's very white and male. There is still wealth in spaces that doesn't look like that. There are demographics that need to be served. And so I got to launch and run several programs focused on DEI—diversity, equity, and inclusion.

[00:06:13] Sara Sanford:
And really what I saw over and over again was that companies were practicing the same kind of trifecta of DEI Doom in which they would bring in underrepresented groups, they would ask them to lean in, and then they would conduct diversity trainings. And these approaches didn't work or really had their limits, but from what I saw, employers weren't willing to go beyond them. It felt like too much of a risk.

And so we were bringing underestimated, which is how I more commonly referred to underrepresented groups. We were bringing underestimated groups in-house and we had changed the window dressing, but we hadn't fixed the house. We hadn't really addressed any of the systemic problems. That would just mean that over time these employees would be faced with the same choice over and over again to assimilate or leave.

[00:07:03] Sara Sanford:
And so I got frustrated with seeing this dynamic and ultimately realized that I was a part of the problem, that these programs were a part of the problem, that I was letting employers just check this box that said, “Look at us. We're trying, we're investing time and money”, but ultimately nothing was changing.

And so, you know, I. Asked out loud, is there a standardized certification from a third party that has said “Yes, these employers have taken the correct steps to accommodate employees of all backgrounds.” Something that was like an organic stamp on an apple that lets you know that they've been vetted because employees and candidates really had no way of knowing. It's been this kind of nebulous gray area for so long. But we do have the ability to put data behind the causes of the gaps and implement meaningful solutions.

[00:07:53] Chris Duffy:
I know from reading your book and from hearing you talk that there are many different factors that are considered in a GEN certification, but I wonder, could you pick one that's emblematic of like, “This is the kind of thing that we're looking for?”

[00:08:08] Sara Sanford:
Am I allowed to take a second?

[00:08:09] Chris Duffy:
Of course, please. You could pick three if you want.

[00:08:13] Sara Sanford:
Yeah, so what the certification is about is moving beyond mindsets to mechanics, so adjusting what we call cultural levers in the workplace. And so the simplest example of this, if you ask a woman to state her gender before she fills out a job application or takes a skills test, she will perform worse or represent herself worse than if you had not asked her that question first. So a simple fix for this is just to move that gender check box to the end of the job application so that applicants aren't thinking about it, so that internalized stereotyping isn't activated. And so the certification is really a series of those kinds of cultural levers and saying, “Have you adjusted these?”

What are the default settings in your organization and how can we change those? You know, and some of them may be more in-depth, like we may look at a job description and say, What kinds of words do you use? We found that in the tech industry, organizations that use the word hacker kind of in a tongue-in-cheek way, are far less likely to recruit female candidates than organizations that use the word coder.

So we'll go through and just find our points like that and look at what you can adjust or not adjust. So it's everything from how often do you conduct performance evaluations? When you do a pay gap audit, are you looking at total compensation, say, including commission and not just base salary?

[00:09:42] Chris Duffy:
Well, I guess there, I have two questions. How did you learn about these levers and these tendencies within organizations? And then have you seen them at play in your own professional and personal life?

[00:09:53] Sara Sanford:
Ooh. So we got a great partnership with the University of Washington, mainly working with their Evans School of Public Policy to conduct the research that was more employee data-driven.

So we did conduct a mass study of employees in a range of sectors, initially across the US. And then honestly, it's just been a lot of time spent on research, and it's a mix of academic survey review studies that you know, we've conducted on our own. And then, yeah, I would say some speaking to personal experience. The gaps that I've experienced that tend to be most pervasive for other underrepresented groups would fall into the bucket of just not being taken seriously.

[00:10:40] Sara Sanford:
And I think that that becomes visible in a lot of ways in the workplace, you know? So for me, it would be having my idea stolen at a meeting that I couldn't get people to pay attention to for months until a man voiced it. It would be being the person who's asked to get the coffee when you're the only woman at the table. I know that happened to me several times.

I think being asked to complete duties that had nothing to do with my job because I was the woman in the office. So a lot of like, “Oh, well you look at this template I created to see if it looks pretty because that seems like something you would be good at.” I'm very bad at that. I'm not good at that at all. I'm not good at planning birthday parties for the office. You should not ask me to do these things. So I think for me, it was a lot of times not having my credentials or experience recognized and also just being expected to do a lot of emotional labor in the office.

[00:11:34] Chris Duffy:
In your talk, you mentioned that opportunities for women increased over the last 50 years, but that progress has stalled in the last decade. I'm curious to talk to you about some of what you think the root causes of that are, but also what are the indicators that you use when you talk about progress?

[00:11:49] Sara Sanford:
One of the better analogies I've heard is that we look at the physiology of an organization as opposed to the anatomy. We want to look under the hood and see these intermediary steps and see that they've changed.

So for example, I would think about mentorship. This is something that is a little overtalked, not talked about with quite enough nuance. And so one of the things that will look like progress would be women having equal access to senior mentors. When we think about progress, we want it to be data-smart and being data-smart means that we're looking at finer aspects of progress.

[00:12:29] Sara Sanford:
So a lot of employers that we've worked with have said our employees have equal access to mentors in the organization. But if we look at the data, employees of color and women are far less likely to have had access to senior mentors, whereas their white or male counterparts have had access, and we see that this has a traceable impact on the projection of their careers and on their salaries.

So we see that when women or employees of color are paired with more senior mentors, they do accelerate faster in their career, and they are promoted faster. I think there are obvious markers of progress that you can look at from the outside and say, “Oh, okay. They have a lot of leaders of color.” But we wanna see progress around the finer points that make those changes work or not work. So do you have maternity leave, or do you have family leave? And do your leaders use it? And when employees are out on leave, are they actually still eligible for promotions? So to us, a business that has evolved enough to be considered inclusive has really paid attention to those finer change management aspects that will have a long-term impact on those underestimated groups.

[00:13:41] Chris Duffy:
I know we've also been talking about it as just male and female, but I imagine that something like a GEN certification would be really helpful for trans and non-binary folks too, who are thinking about which workplaces are going to be accepting and also just like positive places to work.

[00:13:58] Sara Sanford:
Yeah, and it's an area where we found employers are actually the most scared and the most reticent to have conversation, and now they are more scared to talk about their trans employees and their non-binary employees than they are race.

And so part of our certification process does help employers work through what are the steps you need to take to make trans employees feel included? For example, workplaces will talk about gender-neutral bathrooms. What does that look like? Or they have to look at their healthcare policies and see what that encompasses.

[00:14:32] Sara Sanford:
Smaller tweaks, a lot of times, can be more effective. One of the best things that leaders who are cis male or cis female can do is model behaviors that will make the workplace more accommodating for trans employees. So email signatures are a huge one. I've seen a lot of workplaces say, “Okay, we've made templates available in which you can state your pronouns if you want to”, but it's not universal.

For employees that have been misgendered, it doesn't really get rid of the problem because when they've been misgendered, they have to go through the whole awkward, “Oh, should I tell this person they've misgendered me? How should I bring this up? Are they gonna be offended?” If I'm an employee who's frequently misgendered, and I'm the only one or one of two to put a pronoun in their signature, it's still like waving this giant flag that's saying, “Pay attention to this. Get distracted by this.” Whereas if leaders do this first and say, We would like this to be universal throughout the company, it normalizes it, and it means that someone who is trans or non-binary doesn't have to take as big a risk.

[00:15:48] Chris Duffy:
Okay, we're gonna take a quick break, but we will be back with more from Sara in just a moment. Stay tuned.

[BREAK]

[00:16:03] Chris Duffy:
And we're back with equity expert Sara Sanford. Here's another clip from Sara's TEDx Talk.

[00:16:07] Sara Sanford (recording):
Women in the workforce today are constantly told. “You can be anything you want, now. It’s up to you.” Women of color, for whom the wage gap is even larger, have heard it. The two-thirds of minimum wage workers who are women have heard it.

Workers who don't identify as male or female and hide their identity at work have heard it. If they can hear “You can be anything you want now. It’s up to you,” I believe it's time for our businesses to hear it, too. Eliminating workplace bias is a tall order, but we can't afford to let half our people go on being ignored.

[00:16:55] Chris Duffy:
How do you deal with what I imagine might happen, which is that there's one category of businesses and leaders who care about this stuff, and so they do an okay job, and then they get better and better, and then there's another category of businesses and leaders who are skeptical or don't care about it at all?

How do you make it so that everywhere becomes more equitable and more just rather than just having this fork in the road between good and terrible organizations?

[00:17:22] Sara Sanford:
One of the reasons we created the model behind the GEN certification is to neutralize those actors that may be skeptical, or may think it doesn't matter, or may be actively working against it.

So, the way that our model works is that it essentially makes unbiased action, the path of least resistance. I'll give you an example. If we think about interviews, one of the fascinating things that happens when it comes to asking questions in interviews, if they're not standardized, women get asked prevention-oriented questions, which are, you know, “How do you think you will keep us from losing customers? What is your risk management approach?” Questions that are about preventing loss.

[00:18:14] Sara Sanford:
Men get asked growth-oriented questions. How do you plan to grow our customer base in the next few years? How do you plan to increase sales? What this does is put female candidates on the defensive. So to be GEN certified, one of the steps businesses often take is standardizing their interviewing processes. And what this means is asking the same questions in the same order to all of the candidates to prevent this kind of bias from setting in.

Even if you've come into the conversation as someone who really doesn't care about diversity, you've never learned about your biases, we've set up a system that's essentially provided a detour that said, “Okay, you don't have to think about being biased or not as much as you may have before.” So it's really about putting systems in place that even though if you have bad actors in an organization, counters the bias may come out of them by neutralizing it essentially. It also means that sometimes if a leadership team genuinely does not care about this at all, we're probably not gonna end up certifying them.

[00:19:27] Chris Duffy:
It, it's interesting, I mean, one of the things that I think is so fascinating about that, and what I think is one of the many things that is very important about the work that you're doing is that it doesn't actually require us to fix the boss. It doesn't make it so, like, you can only have an equitable workplace if the boss becomes an enlightened being, right? There are ways that the boss can still have ingrained prejudices and biases, and it can still lead to a better outcome just by tweaking the way that things are done so that those impact it less.

[00:20:02] Sara Sanford:
Yeah, you could implement every single Gen-approved process in the book and still hire a jerk. You know, you're still gonna have people in the workplace who may offend people or may harass people, but in an organization where Maria has been in this organization for five years, but her work has been recognized, and this place has inclusive meeting behaviors in place, so she's not interrupted as often, and her pay is equitable to that of her colleagues. And then John harasses her. Maria may go to HR, but she looks at that as John's problem.

We found that in organizations that do not have inclusive practices in place: Maria’s been passed over for promotions, she’s felt ignored, and then John harasses her? She's suing the company. If they've had these inclusive practices in place, there may be a bad actor in the workplace. 9 times out of 10, he's gonna be detoured, by the processes.

[00:21:03] Chris Duffy:
One thing that I was really struck by talking about evaluations and feedback, that if feedback was formally given more infrequently, like once a year or twice a year, that bias came much more into play, that the managers would often then think back and try and give their general impressions of this person.

And those impressions were shaped by internal biases, but then, if feedback was given every week, it was really much more about the actual work because it wasn't as much like, “Here’s how I feel about you.”

[00:21:28] Sara Sanford:
Exactly. Much more objective. We found that when evaluations take place just once a year or just twice a year, they really rely on our memories and our feelings, and that is just your amygdala lighting up, which is where your bias lives.

We've found that when employers give feedback more regularly in those short spurts that you talked about, the feedback also tends to be more actionable. So even if there is negative feedback that's given, it tends to be less vague and it tends to focus on a particular skill.

[00:22:03] Chris Duffy:
One of the other things that I can see as being a real benefit of having kind of an objective list of behaviors and practices that affect gender-based performance is that it's not just that the organization can be evaluated by them, but that if you are someone who wants to improve yourself, right? Say you're a, a cis heterosexual man who's like, “I'm trying to figure out how I can be better.” There's this list of things that you might not even be aware of that are a big factor.

And I know just speaking from my own personal experience, I have really benefited from having some colleagues who, very generously, have been willing to point out in a productive way, behaviors that I've done that are not helpful or that are rooted in some of this misogyny or just practices since we all live in this.

But I think you have to learn about it in order to get better at it. And, for me, it was really helpful to have people be like, “Do you notice that our ideas aren't taken as seriously? Do you notice that you are sometimes speaking over us? That you don't do that to other guys?” And that I think is a way that you can like change and improve, too.

[00:23:07] Sara Sanford:
Well, and I think it takes the feeling and the defensiveness out of it. Well, I would say that you are a rare bird in being receptive and welcome to hearing that, that…

[00:23:17] Chris Duffy:
Oh, I don't know that I was necessarily as receptive at the moment. In retrospect, I'm like, “Thank you for doing that.” In the moment I was like, “Are you kidding me? I am an ally. I am an ally. I’m great.”

[00:23:27] Sara Sanford:
And I've been there. I'm more likely to ask female colleagues personal questions or interrupt their work and chat about their weekend. And so I think also what these checklists do, they don't say like, “Stop behaving in this way”, and they're not too vague to really understand how to make a difference or to feel personal.

So one of the changes I talk about in the book and that we have in the certification, that's a cultural lever that a business can adjust, we talk about having a red, yellow, green availability system. That if you are one of these people who is still in an office, you know when there are cubicles and chairs around you, that just sit on the edge of your desk. Think of it almost like sliders. And if everyone has one, then it's normalized. This is also one of the important points for these cultural levers: make them universal. But that essentially is coded like red—“I am deep in focus. Please do not bother me. I am on a deadline”. Yellow, which is “If you have something work-related or important or urgent, sure. Interrupt me.” And green, which is, “I'm doing busy work. I'm bored. It's a Friday afternoon. Please come bug me.” And it's a nice way to avoid that interpersonal tension.

The interruption itself, it is all of the mental labor around, “Oh, should I tell them no? Oh, should I just go ahead and have the conversation to avoid conflict? I don't wanna be the angry woman in the office. I don't wanna be seen as unlikeable.” But it takes all of that guesswork out of it.

[00:24:54] Chris Duffy:
I know that one of your big key phrases is changing mechanics rather than mindsets, and it does seem like a lot of, well-intended, but maybe ineffective, workplace trainings really do focus on changing mindsets, on winning people over, on trying to make them feel more empathy, which is not to, I, I say it in a tone where I feel like I'm being dismissive of that.

Not to be that's not important, but it is interesting to me that you're really focused on the mechanics instead. So what are some of the trainings that you feel are the most ineffective and that you wish that people would move away from?

[00:25:29] Sara Sanford:
One-off trainings. I will say it is not that every single type of training is effective. The ones that we've seen have a positive impact are ones in which there's at least a set of four. One of the reasons trainings are difficult is that people don't make changes overnight. They have to sit there and process and go through those uncomfortable feelings we just talked about and maybe become okay with the fact that they've had some privilege, and then move on from that. That takes time.

And this is a problem that has existed for decades, so we're not gonna solve it in an afternoon. I know this sounds like an extreme stance, but I would rather see businesses do nothing than continue to conduct diversity trainings or unconscious bias trainings in the workplace. Um, one of the reasons I always laugh at the title “Unconscious Bias T rainings” is because you're acknowledging that bias is unconscious, and so even though you sat there and had a conscious conversation, one of the insidious aspects of unconscious biases is that learning about them does not make us any better at recognizing them.

[00:26:31] Sara Sanford:
It makes us slightly better at recognizing it in our peers, but we found that this phenomenon is even more pronounced the more prejudiced you are. So those who come into trainings with the most prejudiced views are actually the most likely to leave thinking that they're even more meritocratic than they thought they were before going into the training.

And they benefit from this phenomenon called “moral licensing”. So it's the training equivalent of “I have a black friend”. You know, they can say, “No, there's no way what I've said or did was sexist or racist. I hold a different view and I know I'm not any of these terrible things because I've got my training card to show you.”

So a lot of times we've seen, like, the employee of color who has tried to speak up about gaps in the workplace and has been ignored or sidelined suddenly becomes Racism Google at trainings, right? That everyone turns to them and says, “Oh, was that your experience? What do you think?” And they're put in a really risky position in which they have to decide, do I speak the truth and make my coworkers uncomfortable and possibly suffer retaliation? Or do I just bite my tongue and let this go?

[00:27:42] Chris Duffy:
Okay, so that's what not to do. What about the flip side? How do you design an anti-biased workplace? What are things that both bosses and workers can do to work towards this?

[00:27:51] Sara Sanford:
Please work with an expert. It does not have to be me, but you don't have to reinvent the wheel. The methods are out there. GEN has them. The Harvard Business Review has done a lot of great writing in this area. Trust experts. This is a much more complicated topic than a lot of organizations realize. And then, form a comprehensive equity strategy that doesn't stop at, at recruiting. So when organizations come to us and they say, “We want a hiring and recruiting strategy”, we say, “We will only do that if you have a retention and development strategy.”

Um, and then be data-smart in your approach. That means that when you look at your employee survey data, make sure that you look at it through an intersectional lens. So don't just look at, “Oh, what are women experiencing and people of color experiencing?” Look at what women of color are experiencing because it's often very different.

[00:28:46] Chris Duffy:
I wonder, since a lot of people now these days are working in either remote offices or hybrid offices, are there specific things that can be done and implemented in those kind of settings to combat bias?

[00:28:58] Sara Sanford:
So one of the interesting things that we're seeing happen as some employees are going back to the office or offices are opening up to employees is that they've said, “Okay, whoever wants to come into the office can. Maybe you don't have a good office at home, or it's not quiet. Come in whenever you want.”

Professional women, working women during the pandemic are bearing the brunt of child-raising duties, overseeing schooling at home, overseeing a lot of care. Taking this means that they are not as available to come into the office. So what's happening by default is that those who are going back to the office by choice tend to be men. We do see this kind of out-of-sight, out-of-mind bias then come into play in which the people that leaders see every day tend to be men. And that does influence their promotion decision-making processes.

[00:29:53] Sara Sanford:
It’s not just that women and people of color were forced out of the workplace, it's also that they tended to be forced out of promotions. So, one of the recommendations we've made when we think about hybrid work environments is to create staggered schedules that everybody observes.

Okay, we're gonna go with two days a week. You can pick any two days, as an employee. Come in between the hours of 10 and three, so you avoid the terrible commute times. Parents can still drop their kids off, and it only works if leaders also do it.

[00:30:23] Chris Duffy:
I imagine one of the things that I can do is buy your book and read more, but how can I get something like GEN, like a certification like that, an unbiased look in my own workplace? Imagining that I'm not the CEO of the company. Although if you're listening and you're the CEO, listen, you don't even need the advice, just do it.

[00:30:43] Sara Sanford:
So we have made the information available on our website. It's the reference guide to the certification, and it lists every single indicator that we look at when we are assessing an organization for certification.

We've made it transparent enough that no matter what role you're in your company, you at least can advocate for a policy change that doesn't seem threatening and have the rationale behind doing so. So, as an example, a lot of organizations recruit diverse employees because they want the benefits of their diverse insight of collective intelligence.

[00:31:17] Sara Sanford:
But when you have group meetings, we found that men tend to respond to questions more quickly than women do. White employees respond to questions more quickly than employees of color do. But, one way to hear from everyone is to put a policy in place that says, “Okay, I'm gonna ask a really important or significant question. It's important to me that I hear from everyone. So after I toss this out to the group, I want everyone to wait two minutes before anyone raises their hands.”

You’re far more likely to hear not just from women and people of color, but also introverts and those who are neurodivergent if you observe this. So, that is sitting on our website and our reference guide as one of many cultural levers that can be adjusted. We have footnoted everything that says this is the reason to do it.

[00:32:05] Chris Duffy:
I am also always curious to hear how this affects your own idiosyncratic daily life, maybe in ways that are unexpected. So like how did these levers and how does thinking about these cultural change mechanisms, how does that drip into your day-to-day life?

[00:32:22] Sara Sanford:
Um, for me personally?

[00:32:23] Chris Duffy:
Yeah, for you personally.

[00:32:24] Sara Sanford:
Yeah. Constantly.

[00:32:25] Chris Duffy:
Like are you walking around into the coffee shop and you're like, “Wow. Before I say what I want, maybe I should wait two minutes and see if the barista will ask me?”

[00:32:33] Sara Sanford:
Oh, yeah. It’s terrible, but it's also kind of wonderful. I mean, it does end up influencing every single part, I think, of my life, it's difficult for me to go through my day and not see these levers light up on their own around me. Even going into restaurants, one of the things I'm proud of when it comes to the certification is that we also address sectors that aren't just corporate.

So it was important to me that we address service industries, retail industries. And so one of the things we look at is restaurants, and what do workers really face there? And we found that in restaurants where at the top of the menu it says tipping is automatically included at the end, female servers are harassed less often.

Because in restaurants that don't have that, customers can tend to feel like they can get away with it, where it's, “Oh, you know what? I'm gonna flirt with her and she'll flirt back to get a tip.” That dynamic goes away when the tipping is built-in. The plus side, though, is that when I have seen organizations that do this, I thank them, where I say, “Oh, you've implemented a practice that we know makes this workplace more inclusive for everyone else out there.”

[00:33:43] Chris Duffy:
This show's called How to Be a Better Human. What is one thing—it can be a book, a movie, a piece of music, an idea, a person, anything—What is one thing that has made you a better human?

[00:33:54] Sara Sanford:
There is a podcast called This Plus That, that I dearly love, that a colleague named Brandi Stanley has just put out there, connecting the seemingly unconnectable.

And, so, she will have guests on to discuss things like quantum physics and absolute truth. Or neuroscience and dance where it will be two topics that seem to have absolutely nothing to do with one another. But I think from an intellectual perspective, it's made me a better human. And it kept me open to that idea that these two things that may not seem to influence each other somehow find a ripple that joins with the other ripple.

[00:34:31] Chris Duffy:
What is one thing that you currently are working on to be a better human?

[00:34:36] Sara Sanford:
Um, recently I've brought art back into my life. I had a bit of a dance background growing up and have returned to dance recently and actually took up drumming over the last year, and I think it has improved who I am as a human being.

I think it returns you to this mind place of thinking about possibility and just playing that what if game all the time and like, what if I did this? What if I did that? And really listening to other people and respecting them. I hope it has made me a better human.

[00:35:04] Chris Duffy:
Well, Sara Sanford, thank you so much for making the time to be on the show. It's been a pleasure talking to you.

[00:35:08] Sara Sanford:
Of course. Thank you, Chris. This is great.

[00:35:16] Chris Duffy:
That is our show for today. Thank you so much for listening to How to Be a Better Human. I am your host, Chris Duffy, and thank you so much to today's guest, Sara Sanford. Those drums that you are hearing right now, that is Sara playing now. It's incredible. I love it. Sara's book is called Inclusion Inc.: How to Design Intersectional Equity Into the Workplace.

And from TED, Our show is brought to you by Sammy Case, Anna Phelan, Erica Yuen, and Julia Dickerson. If you take their initials and then you anagram them, you get DJ Spacey, a musical act that I strongly encourage them to start.

From Transmitter Media, we’re brought to you by Gretta Cohn and Farrah Desgranges, who are certified fresh.

And from PRX, we’ve got Jocelyn Gonzales and Sandra Lopez-Monsalve, who don't just change mindsets. They also change mechanics. And when their car breaks down, they change their mechanics' mindsets as well.

Thanks so much to you for listening to our show. Please share a show with a friend. Tell a stranger about it. Write us a review. Text the link to your coworkers. Help us spread the word. It makes such a huge difference. We will be back with a new episode for you next week. In the meantime, have a great and safe week. Thanks for listening.