While working as the chief program officer for the Institute for Responsible Citizenship, a nonprofit focused on the advancement of Black students, JT Saunders noticed that the “high-achieving African American males” he worked with were struggling to get ahead in their careers.
“I was frustrated by that,” Saunders told HR Brew, “so I decided to leave nonprofit[s] and come to [the] corporate [world] and really understand how organizations were making talent decisions.”
He joined Korn Ferry as an executive recruiter in 2014, primarily working on CEO searches, before moving into a dual role—helping HR clients drive DE&I and culture change, while developing Black leadership initiatives. Since February 2021, he’s served as the consulting firm’s chief diversity officer.
In an interview with HR Brew, Saunders discussed the role of HR and DE&I work in today’s economic climate, and the lessons from his experiences in the field.
What are the most rewarding aspects of your work in HR?
Working in DE&I/HR can be quite rewarding because it is where the business and talent meet…These functions help to create the systems, structures, and best practices that help to optimize performance. We are positioned to advise business leaders on how to best incentivize, reward, recognize, and develop talent. It’s most rewarding to help activate an organization’s strategy through people and measure progress over time. In these roles, you see the impact you are having on others’ lives—which is absolutely priceless.
In what ways does the HR field still need to change?
Over the last 10 years or so, there’s certainly been a broader evolution around the HR profession, where it’s gone from being less about compliance…to being really a business driver for organizations via building culture, building engagement, and ensuring that you have the right reward systems and accountabilities in place to support an evolving workforce.
I think there’s a greater appreciation…[of] the value that HR and DE&I play in really managing a resilient workforce, because inclusion really is good management at the end of the day…I think most organizations prior to 2020 saw this as mainly a behavioral issue, and I think post-2020, people recognize that it’s a behavioral and structural issue that has to be managed in sync if you want to see the best return on your investment in your people.
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How do you think HR should be thinking about the racial makeup of people teams?
The reality is, representation is important in every function, in every organization…It’s important for organizations to certainly have that representation on HR teams, because HR tends to be the first line of defense within organizations.
HR professionals really need to be thoughtful about understanding what inclusion means, because you can drop people into new and different environments, but if you don’t create systems and processes or a culture for them to be successful or culture for them to be successful, you’re actually doing more damage than not, because today’s employees will walk. They want to make sure that their employer is aligned with their values, and so HR professionals really need to be thoughtful about driving inclusion on their own teams and then advising their hiring managers in the organization on how to best role model it throughout the organization.
What should HR leaders do to ensure they’re creating an inclusive environment for the next generation of HR leaders?
There are two ways, in my opinion. The first is recognizing what you know and what you don’t know, and seeking guidance and counsel from those who have maybe a better experience or more informed experience than you.
We have to remember that HR should never be treated as an island within itself, that it shouldn’t be siloed from the organization. HR is a partner to the business, and so there are a number of people around the organization who could be effective culture carriers in partnership with HR.
Secondarily, it’s up to HR to really think about creating the systems, the processes, the best practices that will drive towards greater inclusion. I think there’s sometimes an over-index on this idea of we just need to hire diverse people, “We just need to bring in more Black talent into the organization.” I’m glad organizations recognize that as a need, however, I think it’s more important for them to really focus on how we de-bias our processes. Or begin to manage or mitigate bias and our processes so that it’s less about a reactive measure.