The future of DEI: How far have we come, and what comes next?

Steve: Alright. Thanks, Shereen, and hi, everyone. Bonjour. I am Steve McKersie, CEO of Gowling WLG Canada and it is my real pleasure to welcome all of you here today, for what will be a thought provoking discussion on the future of diversity, equity and inclusion. I'm grateful to be speaking to you from the traditional territory of many Nations, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples. This land that we now call Toronto has long served as a site of meeting and exchange for many Indigenous Nations. Now today's panel discussion is all about learning and reflection and with tomorrow being the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation it's an opportune time to discuss some of the leading edge work that's being done in the DEI space. Together our organizations are working to dismantle systemic barriers, to foster more equitable inclusive environments and ensure that our workplaces better reflect the diversity that's inherent in our communities. This work matters more now than ever. It forms the very foundation of a sustainable business and society but this work isn't easy. It requires courage and a willingness to learn, stretch and take risks. Sometimes we'll get it wrong but we've got to keep trying until we get it right. That's why I'm excited to hear from our panelists today. Our good friends from Accenture, BASF and CIBC are here to explain how they're really pushing the envelope on DEI, getting creative and innovative about what that looks like and turning words into meaningful actions. So without further ado I'd like to turn things back to Shereen Samuels who will be moderating today's discussion. Shereen is our head of DEI at Gowlings. She joined us last year with more than 20 years of experience in DEI leadership change work, policy development and strategic planning. Thank you. Enjoy the discussion and, Shereen, back over to you.

Shereen: Thanks so much, Steve. Before I continue with a welcome of our panelists and a round of introductions, I'd like to start today in a good way as well by acknowledging that I'm speaking to you today from Treaty 7 territory, the ancestral home of the Siksika, Kainai, Piikani Nations of the Blackfoot Confederacy, as well as the Stoney-Nakoda, and Tsuut'ina Nations. This place is also home to the Metis Nation of Alberta Region 3 within the historical Northwest Metis homeland. As we gather in this virtual space today, and in preparation for the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation tomorrow, I ask that we all acknowledge and reflect on the fact that the ground beneath our feet, from coast to coast to coast is territory that has been owned and home to Indigenous people since time immemorial and some of it is unceded to this day.

A special welcome to the many clients and friends of the firm who have joined us today for this discussion and welcome to all the Gowling WLG firm members from across the country who are also here today.

Three housekeeping notes before we begin. First, you will have seen the slide saying that simultaneous English to French translation is available and there's a button at the bottom of our screen that allows you to choose your preferred language, and recordings in both languages will be posted on the Gowling WLG website after the event. Second, this session qualifies for Continuing Professional Education credits and a detailed slide will be shared at the end of today's session. Third, as we move through the discussion, if you have questions for the panelists please post them in the Q&A. Once we've moved through the agenda, time permitting, I'll facilitate some Q&A and further discussion.

Now to introduce our panel of esteemed speakers, in alphabetical order of the companies they represent here today. I'll start with Riccardo D'Angelo who is Legal Lead of Accenture Canada. He's also the global Post-Merger Integration Contracting Lead for Accenture's global acquisitions. In his various roles he provides legal advice to senior business leadership on all legal matters relating to Canada and PMI, overseas deal shaping and negotiations for some of Accenture's most complex transactions, globally, and is responsible for supervising a team of legal professionals providing legal support and client facing transactions and PMI activities. As part of Accenture's ambition to be the most inclusive and diverse company in the world, and as part of his commitment to I&D, Riccardo oversees numerous initiatives in his capacity as executive sponsor of Accenture's North America I&D challenge, executive sponsor of the North American Asian legal community and through his involvement with Accenture's Elevate Legal Program, a first of its kind program, focused on increasing the visibility, retention and overall engagement of Accenture's ethnically diverse legal professions. Welcome, Riccardo.

Marian Van Hoek is a General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer of BASF Canada. In this role Marian is responsible for leading the legal and compliance team in Canada. She's a member of the Canadian Executive Committee, the Canadian Leadership Team and the North American Legal Leadership Team. Marian is the sponsor of BASF Canada's Women in BASF Employee Resource Group and BASF's North American Legal DE&I Team. Marian also serves as a current board member of the United Nations Global Compact Network Canada, which is dedicated to assisting Canadian organizations with the advancement of the 10 principles of the UN Global Compact and the implementation of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Marian holds a JD from Osgoode Hall Law School and a BA Honors in political science from Western University.

Finally, Andrea Nalyzyty has been with CIBC since 2004. In April 2019, Ms. Nalyzyty was appointed Senior Vice-President, Chief Compliance Officer and Global Regulatory Affairs. In this role Ms. Nalyzyty is responsible for the compliance function globally, including all market conduct and securities regulatory relationships, as well as all global regulatory relationships. In March 2020 she also took over responsibility for conduct and culture risk. Ms. Nalyzyty has been an active member of various not for profit and industry boards and is currently a member of the Advisory Council for the North Wind Financial Services forum. She has also, for several years, co-Chaired CIBC's Leaders and Major Individual Gifts Cabinet for their One For Change campaign, and finally Ms. Nalyzyty is also Chair of CIBCs Accessibility Action Committee and a member of the bank's diversity and inclusion council. Welcome one and all.

So let's kick it off by saying that the Globe & Mail posted a story last week that was titled 'Do you have diversity fatigue?' and I thought when I read it that this conversation that we're going to have today is so timely, because the article was referring to people who are working on DEI in corporate settings. While they still have enthusiasm and passion for the work there is this sense that people are feeling stuck. I thought that was really interesting, particularly when I think about the work that all three of your companies are doing. Accenture, BASF and CIBC have all been doing really sustained and leading edge work, pushing the boundaries of what DEI can look like in a corporate environment. So, I guess let's kick things off with maybe each of you telling us about your company's diversity, equity and inclusion journeys so far. What have your priorities and efforts been that your company's have focused on up to this point? So I'm going to start with Riccardo and move through the group in the order of introduction. So, Riccardo, I'll let you kick it off.

Riccardo: Thanks, Shereen, and hello, everyone. I'm just thinking about our journey. Accenture's legal team is approximately 3,000 professionals so I think we'd be the fifth largest law firm if we counted. So we knew we had a lot of influence, both internally and externally, and when we first started to think about D&I it was all around how can we sort of reallocate some of our outside counsel spend towards minority or woman based law firms. Then we got a little smarter and we decided to pivot and try to influence change to all of our outside counsel providers and over the course of the next 7 years we looked to our firms to track and report on the staffing they would have with us, of minority and women individuals, to our matters. Over time that progressed to expand to other diversity slates of LGBTQ, persons with disability. We started to benchmark the data and the results and compare our firms together. We would establish targets in countries where there was data available and where there was not we would have metrics, soft metrics, to make sure that the firms were actually doing something. Then we most recently, in the last few years, we've established what we call the Outside Counsel Diversity Awards, where we look to our outside counsel firms and we provide awards that we publicize in very leading journals, and it's not around who was the better firm in terms of staffing or matters, but who's actually promoting and advancing diversity in their firm and in the legal profession. That's been our journey.

From a priority standpoint, I'd say there's three. One is lead from the top. If you look at our CEO, Julie Sweet, and our general counsel, Joel Unruch, they've been highly public on this issue. They're both executive sponsors. To them, they want Accenture to be the most diverse and inclusive company in the world and to have a culture of equality. So it starts from the top. We also see it as a strategic business priority. It's not an HR issue. It's a business priority. It's helping to drive it because it makes sense. It's innovation. Then third, we use our global brand and expertise to use our buying power. We put out a lot of knowledge capital in the area. I was reading a report the other day that our security team released around the benefits of inclusive hiring to cyber security resilience. So certainly lead from the top. The second is drive accountability. You can't just do this for good intentions. You have to have accountability and we've gone publicly and set very ambitious goals to be gender balanced by 2025. We have targeted levels of percentages of improvements, in terms of ethnic and diverse mix in our workforce, and we've publicized those because we want to hold ourself accountable. We also, internally, all executives have as a priority I&D and that priority is something that we are judged on when it comes to performance achievement. So want to drive accountability. We also do that with our firms through accreditation with the Mansfield Rule. For those of you who are not aware, the Mansfield accreditation requires that across all diversity slates you have 15%25 representation when you recruit, hire, promote, provide opportunities and use outside counsel utilization. So that accreditation is very important to us and it's another way to help drive the accountability. Then third and lastly, we want to build a pipeline. We want to increase representation and we have a very comprehensive plan, both internally and externally, around programs, internships, the associations with our partners, the items I've mentioned about what we do with our outside counsels. So that would be the three priorities that continue to drive our agenda.

Shereen: That's great. Thank you so much, Riccardo. Marian, tell us about what BASF Canada is doing.

Marian: Well thanks, Shereen, for the question and I think the word 'journey' that you mentioned is key because it's truly been a journey for BASF and I think likely for many other companies as well. I can recall many years ago sitting in boardrooms talking about the business case for diversity. We always knew it was the right thing to do but what was the business case? Studies after studies came out supporting the notion that diverse teams make better decisions. That diverse companies perform better. I think, fortunately, we're beyond the business case discussion. I think it is now well accepted and we know that we want a workforce that truly reflects the communities in which we operate. So how do we move the needle to do so? Many years ago, as I'm sure many other companies did as well, we set ambitious targets for ourselves, both on the attraction of diverse talents as well as having diversity reflected throughout our organization and in leadership. So we review those targets regularly, making sure that we're on track, but also challenging ourselves. If it looks a little too easy perhaps we need to adjust the target. But getting back to the journey question, I think beyond the metrics we're still focused on the diversity piece, but really the inclusion piece is where we continue to see lots of room for improvements. How do we bring a culture of inclusion and inclusive behaviour to the organization across all levels? As already mentioned, we're also focusing on holding our leaders accountable, making sure our leaders have the tools and toolkits to lead in an inclusive manner and holding them accountable. Every leader in our organization has to have a DEI target and that goes directly to their performance. In addition to sales targets, business targets, they need to have a DEI target. This is now an expectation and by holding our leaders accountable we're truly hopeful that the inclusive culture, that we believe we have but I think there's always room for improvement, will continue.

Shereen: That's really lovely. Thank you, Marian. Now to you, Andrea. Tell us what the journey has been like at CIBC.

Andrea: Thank you for letting me follow these great speakers. Now I better deliver. At CIBC we've been focusing on our bank's culture and how inclusion is a cornerstone of our culture. So we know, in particular, if we're not practicing intentional inclusion we're likely being an unintentionally exclusive and that's something we've been focused on. So for many, I think, the concept of inclusion is largely connected to human capital. For example, activities for attraction, retention and advancement of talent. While we think that's important it's only part of the larger conversation. We take a holistic approach and we focus on three unique areas. Practicing inclusive talent management to ensure our workforce and leadership reflects the client's and communities we serve, and also removing barriers to create conditions where everyone can achieve their full potential. Investing in building inclusive leadership capabilities. So my colleagues also spoke to that. It's one thing to put it on somebody's scorecard, which we do as well and I'll speak to that, but then we have to give the leaders the tools in order to deliver on the goal. Finally, removing barriers our clients face to financial inclusion and creating greater access to opportunity. So we look at it from the employee perspective, and we also look at it from the procurement, and then also how does it impact the clients we're serving in the community. For us it also starts at the top of the house with our President and CEO, Victor Dodig, who Chairs our Inclusion and Diversity Leadership Council, of which I'm a proud member, and it's imbedded in our overall business performance factor which is used to calculate incentive pay. This is on all global leadership team executives scorecards. So we're proud of the long term investments we've made, and continue to make, in order to progress the inclusion agenda.

We've established publicly stated goals for talent segments, and leadership roles, and workforce representation and we measure progress against those goals. We reported in our annual Sustainability Report and I think the banks have the added benefit of everybody looking at these numbers all the time and comparing us against each other. So it actually puts your feet to the fire, which is a good thing, and we do publicly disclose all of this information. We create tailor-made solutions to disrupt bias in action and micro-aggressions during moments that matter. We bring that to life in many ways including hands on training for our people leaders, starting at bank manager level and moving all the way up to our executive ranks. We've established a center of excellence for accessibility within our client experience team. That team works very closely with our bank's Accessibility Action Committee, of which I'm the co-Chair, and that's to accelerate our progress to become a leader in accessibility, for not only our employees but also for our clients. We support the next generation of leaders and change makers by investing in community organizations that promote access to opportunities, because we think that's important as well. So our internal investments but also our external investments, and those external investments often lead to finding talent that we can bring on and they become part of our CIBC workforce as well. I'll turn it back to you, Shereen.

Shereen: That is so amazing. Can I just say, to all three of you, that I find it inspiring to listen to the kinds of work that all three of your companies are doing. It really lights a fire in me to know what's possible. I'm going to come right back to you, Andrea, with a second question and certainly once Andrea's given us her answer, Marian and Riccardo, if you have anything you want to contribute you're welcome too. So my question to you is, you just gave me a really large list of things that CIBC is up to. I'm curious, what's the driver for this work for CIBC? What do you think sustains CIBC's internal momentum in continuing to push the work forward?

Andrea: Well I think part of it is we see the value and the benefits. I know Marian spoke about the business case. The business case, to Marian's point, was built a long time ago but it keeps being reinforced in what we see every day. So you know for us there's many drivers for this work and it just so happens I had our last inclusion and diversity leadership council meeting yesterday. I will share that we've just completed moving into CIBC Square, which is one of our new towers in downtown Toronto, and we had a ceremony yesterday in something we're calling The Legacy Room. We had a smudging ceremony in The Legacy Room and it was an amazing experience. The architect spoke to why the room was constructed in the way it was. We had special guests who spoke to the meaning of the room, and all of that, it actually brings a tear to your eye. When you're standing there you see all the symbolism and everything that was brought into the room. We're just going to try and ensure we bring that to life for everyone. We actually had an All Team call today. That means all CIBC employees, globally, that was led by Victor, in advance of the National Truth and Reconciliation Day tomorrow. He spoke to the dedication of The Legacy Room. So we're trying to bring it to life for everyone. I think some of the other drivers are we're building an engaged team that creates breakthrough ideas and promotes inclusive client experiences. We can only really do that if we have the right people on our team who are open to new ideas and new ways of looking at things. It makes good business sense, to what Marian said. When you embrace diversity, as we do at CIBC, you gain insights into your client's thinking. You develop better relationships and, frankly, you build a better company. We're creating a culture where everyone's enabled to deliver on their ambitions and help us deliver on our mandate to be a purpose driven bank and to help make our client's ambitions a reality. It's only if we let everyone bring their best self to work that we can deliver that for our clients. So it's all connected for our clients and our community. I'm speaking about clients but we serve the community as well, more broadly, even if they're not our clients. Finally, more inclusive economy for Canada. The more people we can bring into the fold, the more people we have rowing in the same directions to help improve the Canadian economy or, in our case, those economies in the other jurisdictions in which we operate as well.

Shereen: Yeah. You're point, it almost sounds like what you're saying is, after all it becomes almost a self-generating process where people are excited by the innovation, they're excited by what is possible, to sort of Riccardo's point earlier about this being innovation work at its heart.

Andrea: And you learn from every interaction. Sorry to interrupt, Shereen, but you learn. If you're surrounded by people who are like you, frankly, you don't learn as much. I think I've consciously tried to hire people who aren't like me because I don't need other people like me running around. I can handle me myself. But when you have those different points of view at the table that you actually come up with a better solution. So I think that's bringing that to life in a much larger scale.

Shereen: Yeah. That's great. Riccardo and Marian, did you have anything you wanted to add to this question?

Riccardo: Yeah. I think we can all agree, and we've talked about it, the business sense it makes. The culture of equality and diversity, it's an innovation multiplier. Of course there's societal responsibilities and BASF and CIBC and Accenture, we want to be the world's most ethical and best companies to work for. But one thing that really resonates, at least for Accenture and I think for the other two organizations, is our most important asset is our people. So we want to accelerate a culture of equality so that everybody feels they can be themselves. It's a very important part of our strategy to attract and retain best talent and I think it's become even more important over the past few years between the impacts of COVID, all of the things that have happened across the world, particularly in the US over the past few years. Our people are our greatest asset and that's a real driver behind why this makes tremendous sense to improve.

Shereen: That's great. Marian, go ahead.

Marian: Thank you and to concur with my fellow panelists, I think also for BASF the driver is, D&I is viewed as a critical business enabler. For those who are not familiar with BASF, we are a kind of global chemical company. We're based in Germany and we are very much dependent on innovation. We cannot be innovative if we don't have diverse teams working on our products. So this is seen as key to our business and continued innovation. We have a Chief Diversity Officer and a D&I council, and while we always had a DEI council, in recent years that council has a direct line to the executive and that is very important. Every business has an inclusion champion and those are really, when you talk about momentum and sustainability, it's the inclusion champions and our employee resource groups who are some of the most passionate supporters of these efforts and really amplify what the company is trying to put in place. I think that's important to sustain momentum, but I'll mention one more thing, which is maybe a little bit unique to BASF. While we have lots of colleagues in corporate roles, we also have production facilities on our sites. When I speak about Canada, they are throughout Canada, and we want to also be aware of our blind spots. Our first facilities, themselves inclusive. We could have all kinds of nice corporate policies but if we don't have inclusive locker rooms, inclusive mother rooms, or quiet rooms in our facilities, how can we really say that we're an inclusive company? So it's looking at, again it's multi-faceted, it's looking at all types of ways that we can continue to move the needle and really listening to our colleagues and what they tell us.

Shereen: I love that. Thank you so much. Riccardo, I'm going to jump to you and ask you, what challenges has your company faced in pushing this work forward in such an ambitious way? Either internally or externally.

Riccardo: I think, if we focus on externally first, the goal that we've been trying to achieve by influencing our outside counsel firms and the industry as whole, that required us to break sort of long established trusted relationships. A lot of instances where our law firm engagements were based on historic past relationships, and when you're asking these firms now to consider other diverse lawyers, you're sort of starting over. So there's a little bit of that risk factor. So that was a challenge. There also remains a lack of available diverse lawyers in some markets, in firms, in some areas. I think there's been improvements but it still exists. Reporting of diversity is a challenge for some law firms. Whether that's due to sort of confidentiality reasons, local legal requirements, a lot of it is self-reporting. So it's hard to do an apples to apples comparison across the full spectrum of our firms if there is divergency reporting abilities. There's also a lack of industry data. There's a lot in the US, a lot in UK, Canada's getting better but there's not a lot. So when you're trying to establish targets and metrics, when you don't have the data to back it up, it becomes a challenge. Then the last one, externally, is you don't want this to be a short term thing. This has to stay for in perpetuity and you don't want what's happened over the world, and particularly in the US, to be the driver for short term change. It has to be long term. Internally, as I mentioned earlier, we've come out publicly with very ambitious goals by 2025 and onward. In order to meet those we have to attract and retain top talent. So we talk about it but we have to walk it, and we have to innovate and we have to be able to attract and retain this talent. So that's a challenge but it's a good challenge that we embrace. Then obviously, as a legal function, we're a cost center. So we're position based within Accenture so when you have very aggressive and aspirational targets, in order to meet those when you're a position based organization, you have to come up with creative ways to find roles and to find opportunities for our diverse talent.

Shereen: Thank you, Riccardo. Marian and Andrea, did you want to add anything in there?

Marian: I think sometimes a challenge with any large topic such as D&I is that sometimes folks may feel a little helpless. They may not know how to get started or how their efforts can truly move the needle. We've talked a lot about the multi-faceted approaches that our companies are taking, whether it's attracting and retaining diverse talent, ensuring our facilities are inclusive, ensuring our social engagement and charitable giving strategy is aligned. So all of those are fantastic but to really bring in inclusive culture we need to also ensure that the every day interactions between our colleagues, from our leaders, are respectful, inclusive, free of micro-aggressions and I think we're well on that journey but it is a learning opportunity, I think for the company as a whole, and for all the colleagues who participate in the company. I wouldn't call it resistance but I would call it in continued learning and it goes back to that journey, Shereen, that you asked about before. I think we're on our way but it's sessions like this that will continue to push this agenda forward.

Shereen: Absolutely. Andrea, go ahead.

Andrea: The only thing I would add is along with the setting the goals, we've talked about providing the tools and the leadership capabilities, I think that's something we're continuing to develop. So I think we've all experienced some movement in talent over the past year, given the current environment and a very competitive environment, and so we're trying to ensure that on all of our slates for all roles we're looking at an inclusive slate. That is sometimes challenging to do in certain niche roles. I have a team of about 300, globally, and in some cases there's a specialized niche skill set where there's certain individuals who fill that kind of role. Sometimes you can't find a diverse candidate to fill the role but in other cases you couldn't bring somebody in and provide them with the necessary supports and get them there in short order. So sometimes I think you have to be courageous in your decisions as well, in the choices in filling some of the vacancies, or in promoting internally as well, where that's a possibility.

Shereen: That's great, Andrea. I'm just going to say that there are some fascinating questions popping up in the Q&A that could probably extend this conversation by another hour or two. I don't know if we're going to get to all of them but they're all very, very juicy so we'll see if we can get to some of them before our hour is up here. Marian, I'm going to come to you and ask you, how do you feel this work permeates your company's expectations for your partners and your service providers?

Marian: We have a very extensive diverse supplier program at BASF and that goes to all levels of our procurement, but maybe because there's probably quite a few lawyers or legal professionals here today, I'll focus on what our legal team is doing. Our team believes that the diversity in the legal team allows us to provide the best advice to our business colleagues and that truly extends to our external law firms. So we expect our law firms and the lawyers that support BASF on our various matters to represent the diversity of the community. We've talked a lot about this but then we realized that we needed data. So a number of years ago we teamed up with a data analytics company and this program started in the US. We then brought it to Canada and as of this year we actually brought it across the globe. What the program does is every year, and Gowlings participates in this program which is fantastic, we come with a very extensive survey to our law firms and it focuses on all types of diversity across all levels of the law firm, including the work that the firm is doing for BASF. The analytics firm, because they're quite good at numbers, help us to create a scorecard and then that scorecard becomes a driver for a DEI conversation that we have with the law firms. You may ask, does it work? We believe it has worked and it continues to work. So I'll share some statistics from our US program which was in place a little longer than the Canadian program. So since the program launched in the US. the number of diverse partners on BASF matters more than doubled, and the number of diverse lawyers in leadership positions increased 9%25 overall. The share, and this is probably the most exciting, the share of BASF work performed by racialized associates increased 46%25, and by women associates, 28%25. It increased by women partners, 24%25 and by racialized partners, 11%25. So, again, when we think about we believe that receiving advice from the versed attorneys will allow us to better advise our businesses. We expect the same from the law firms and this has really been a great tool to increase that but also to have meaningful discussions with our firms around how we can advance diversity in the legal profession together. Thank you.

Andrea: You're on mute, Shereen.

Shereen: Thank you. Andrea and Riccardo, did you have something you wanted to add to that?

Andrea: Thank you, I'm happy to jump in. Obviously, as with others, we rely on suppliers to help us on our journey and unfortunately we've been let down by some suppliers in the past, who have overlooked opportunities to integrate accessibility and inclusion in the products or services, which is a disappointing outcome. Along with everything we're doing internally we're also looking to engage diverse suppliers through various organizations so we can increase the pool that we're actually going into. Some examples are the Canadian Aboriginal and Minority Supplier Council, the Woman Business Enterprises Council, the Canadian Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, and finally the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business, which provide us an opportunity to engage with a broader group of companies and allows us to expand our diversity and inclusion initiatives. We can't always do it alone. We have to rely on suppliers as well and this is part of the way we can access new and diverse suppliers. Riccardo?

Riccardo: The only thing that I'd add is to the point I made earlier about leading from the top. So Julie has come out and it's on every single earnings call. She raises it and Joel, our GC, has pledged with the leadership counsel, LCOD, about using his platform to increase diversity with Accenture, in the profession and the expectations on our suppliers is very high, both at the corporate level and our partners and also our outside counsel law firms, to not just meet our targets or metrics but to exceed and to find opportunities to collaborate with us. This is a great example, today, collaborating together on this topic. So there's a lot of pressure and expectations that we place and we get to use our buying power and our influence to do that, which is part of our goal of driving change.

Shereen: I love that. So final question, and I'll go back to the order of introduction again, what do you think is the future of DEI for your company? So we've talked a great deal about what you've already achieved and what you're in the process of doing, I'm curious to know what you think is on the radar. What's the next goal and, selfishly I'm going to ask this bit, what do you think your service providers need to be prepared, or how do you think we need to be prepared to step up to support you in your next goal? Riccardo, I'll start with you.

Riccardo: I think we've heard all the great reasons of why this needs to be the way it has to be. I think it just makes complete sense. So that gives me a lot of optimism around sort of what the future looks like. I love the survey result. I think one of the questions, 66%25 of the participants said that they'll be more invested in it because it's the right thing to do and it makes business sense. There's no reason not to. You'll lag behind us as an organization if you don't. I think the future's bright, thankfully. In terms of what we expect, or the goal of our providers, again I think we've all touched on this but we've got to exceed our targets. I know that every single opportunity where we use firms outside for assistance, I challenge our relationship partners as to who they're putting forward to represent us, to make sure that they've properly considered and put forward a diverse candidate. We're asking them to share diversely related materials. The more data we can have, particularly in Canada, I think it will help and we're looking at our law firms not just to increase staffing with us of diverse candidates, but what are they doing both within their firm, at all levels, associates, partners and so forth, but also in the legal profession. We really want to drive change. That would be the goal and the expectation.

Shereen: Thanks. Marian, over to you.

Marian: I'll echo a lot of what Riccardo just said. I think in terms of what's next, I've often heard that you'll know when our DEI efforts have been actualized when we stop talking about it. I think we're probably a long way from that point but it is clear that this is not a trend. This is not a time limited company strategy. It is well accepted that it is here to stay. It will continue to influence how we do business and how we can conduct ourselves. Speaking from the legal team and the legal function, I think it's very much court; how we position ourselves to provide the best sound and thoughtful advice to our business colleagues. Therefore, as an extension to the second part of your question, we will continue to push and expect the same of our external law firms. The scorecard that I mentioned is I think a great tool for us to do so and to engage in meaningful conversations with our firms. But we've been open with our firms for quite some time that diversity in one of our key factors that we consider when we are presented with a proposal. Cost is important. Of course expertise is important but diversity is equally important and our law firms know that. We've seen the firms be very mindful and thoughtful when they present us with proposals because we've been so open about it. I think that openness has really allowed for collaborative relationship because, at the end of the day, I think both in-house teams and law firms have an inherent desire to see increased diversity in the legal profession.

Shereen: Andrea.

Andrea: I could speak to the legal profession because I'm not in the legal department now, but I am a lawyer and I did run part of the team at CIBC for 11 years, but I was going to speak more broadly as to what we expect from our partners and our suppliers. Some of the questions we ask ourselves, and we would expect that our partners and suppliers would ask, is do your teams reflect the labour market you're recruiting from and what are you doing to address gaps when they exist? I think it's one thing to have the goal. You have a goal. You often have a gap to that goal and what action plans are you developing to address those gaps? As somebody who's focused on accessibility at our bank, how has accessibility been factored into the work you do and how do you imbed, or are you imbedding, inclusive design into the work you do going forward? Finally, and this one's sometimes hard, but listen. Listen to other people's stories, perspectives and experiences so that as leaders we can better understand which barriers exist so that we can unlock the full potential that's available to us. I think we've all experienced labour shortages, supplier shortages, etcetera. There's a lot of skill that's out there. We just have to unlock that potential.

Riccardo: Shereen, I'm just going to give one anecdotal example, if I can because I think it will build on a point that Marian made. I remember about 6, 7 years ago when we just starting thinking really seriously about D&I. I was in a meeting prepping for orals on a very large pursuit, and I was with our President at the time, and we looked around the room and we were 7 white males and we said, "What's wrong here?" We knew what was wrong and I'm happy to say I haven't had that situation occur recently or for the longest time. I think it's because the new normal so hopefully at some point we won't have to have these talks because the new normal will be it's not an issue. So, I'm optimistic for that.

Shereen: Thanks so much. So the Q&A is on fire. I'm going to see if I can roll some of the questions together a little bit and see if we can get your thoughts on some of the things that are in there. There were a couple of questions. There was a question about what do you about sort of the informal settings in your organization? So interactions where people are going out for meals, and drinks and participating in sports on teams and that kind of thing and those interactions can, and do, influence higher and promotion decisions, and, can really be a hotbed of discriminatory or exclusionary experiences. I'm going to couple that one with another question that was about how do you actually measure leadership's performance of DEI? Because I think that those two things are possibly connected. But I'm interested to hear what your thoughts are. Anybody who wants to jump in. Riccardo, go ahead.

Riccardo: Sure. In terms of measuring, I think it's two-fold. Financially and from progression. All of our executives have it as a priority. I think we've heard the same from Andrea and Marian, which is fantastic, and there's only a small number of priorities. So it has significant weight and impact and that's part of the accountability. To the earlier question, I think similar to I think it was Andrea talking about what CIBC does, we do a ton of internal training and workshops just around the unconscious bias, around improvement, mindset and so forth because of those types of scenarios. You don't want to be in a situation where you have to tie something around a golf event. People may not like to golf or even just when we talk with our colleagues outside of Canada. We can't just always talk about hockey. It's not important to those outside of Canada or it might be not important to many within. So we do extensive training to drive out and change behaviours and mindset to address exactly that.

Shereen: Marian, I saw you unmute.

Marian: I echo Riccardo's comments, maybe just one more item to add, because I work in the compliance function as well. In addition to inclusive leadership training we do a lot of training around respect in the workplace. But we also make sure that there are avenues that colleagues can report disrespectful behaviour, as I'm sure the other panelists can speak to as well. We have a compliance hotline, where it's open 24/7, where colleagues can make anonymous reports and we really try to promote that. We want to make sure that, you hope it never gets to that point, but if there are such instances that colleagues know there is a place that they can sure their concerns and their feedback, and that we will follow it up confidentially, respectfully, but seriously as well because we have a very high expectation of how colleagues will behave, both in the workplace and after work, and on social media. So it's really about the training, the communication but also the transparency and ensuring that there are avenues for reporting any behaviour that doesn't align with those expectations.

Andrea: And, Shereen, I have nothing to add to my colleagues comments. Thank you.

Shereen: That's great. Thank you. The next set of questions I'm going to ask, again I'm going to group a couple of things. We had, and this I think speaks to that sort of balancing act that you need to do if in an organization of the range of understanding and approaches and beliefs around DEI change works. So Steven, on the one hand says, I find myself uncomfortable hearing about the business case for DEI. It's such important change work, should we not just be doing it because it's the right thing to do? Am I being naïve to think we shouldn't be thinking about the business case? On the other hand, we had another person asking the question, how do you address the resistance you get to hiring with DEI as part of the framework when people are going to talk about merit and how you're not hiring based on merit? That people are getting hired based on diversity characteristics rather than merit. This one I think we all cope with on a constant basis so I'm interested to know how do you walk that balancing line?

Andrea: I'm happy to go first on this one, Shereen.

Shereen: Thanks, Andrea.

Andrea: I think the business case is important but I agree with the person asking the question. It's not the priority. I think it's a belt and suspenders thing. It is the priority. It's the cornerstone of our culture. It helps that it's a strong business case but that's not what the driver is of the strategy or of our approach. So I think I would do it more as there's a main reason that you do it and then there are sub-reasons and I think the strong business case would be a sub-reason or a supporting reason. With respect to pushback or resistance, I frankly have not experienced that. I've been at CIBC for over 22 years now and we've evolved over the years. I would suggest when I first joined, we wouldn't have been having these kind of conversations, but we've grown and we've evolved our culture and we've also seen the benefits, not just the business benefits or the business case benefits, but the benefits of having a diverse but inclusive culture in our organization. So I don't think we have that challenge anymore. I will say, and I did say that sometimes it's challenging to find certain candidates to add to a slate so that you do ensure you have a diverse slate, but like I said, sometimes you do have to have the courage to take a chance or to provide additional training or support to get somebody to where they need to be in order to be able to either hire them or advance them within the organization. I think we've made those investments.

Riccardo: I think maybe I'll go next. I agree. The business case is just one of the factors and can't be looked at in isolation. It's like if you make a cake, there's four or five ingredients. The business case is one, especially for a firm like Accenture. We're a service provider, and if it makes sense and we can drive innovation for the clients, it is an important factor. But it's not an isolation. Being the best place to work, and attracting and retaining the best talent, and societal responsibility, those are all the ingredients together. So hopefully we can come across as saying that that's the most important one. So that's a great question. I will answer quickly on sort of the very interesting and accurate question around how do you balance the need to increase your metrics but not do it in a sort of fair and balanced way. In my position, and I'm sure with my two colleagues, we are in that position where we have to make decisions and we have to weigh all factors. I think that's really why I like the Mansfield Rule, which is make sure that you have 50%25 of your candidates that you consider for all opportunities are diverse, because then have a proper clean slate to make the right decision. But certainly it is a factor. I think it's on everyone's mind to get it right but in order to get it right you have to have that right representation in the first place.

Marian: I have very little to add to those excellent responses. I think maybe one additional point I would say to the hiring question, in addition to of course the importance of a diverse slate, is also consider diversity among those conducting the interviews, or those who are reviewing the applications that are coming in. Because, again, if there's little diversity in those individuals who are asking the questions, the types of topics that will be discussed could be quite narrow.

Shereen: Yeah, that's so smart. I just want to ask one quick question related to you've mentioned the Mansfield Rule a couple of times here, Riccardo, and I know that certainly we've talked about the Mansfield Rule and my frustration. The Mansfield Rule is, of course, built around the US legal industry and so while it has some bearing in Canada, someone had asked in the chat, why there are so few Canadian firms that are signed up for the Mansfield Rule, and I think that's part of it but do you want to talk a little bit about metrics and frameworks for measuring this work in Canada, any of you, and thoughts you have on how we could push that forward as a final question, wrapping up.

Riccardo: I'll go first if that's okay with Andrea and Marian. The accreditation is limited to the US, UK and a couple of other jurisdictions, formally, but I still think you can use the mindset and the metrics in those jurisdictions where there's not formal accreditation. I think that's where it gets to the point I made earlier around the challenges around not sufficient data. So the more data we can get, and that's what we're posing and putting on our outside counsels and other players in the industry, to bring forward the data so that we can have the metrics to be able to sort of properly report and properly score and gauge ourselves, so that we make sure we're making the right incremental improvements at the right pace. I think hopefully over time that accreditation goes beyond those countries and comes to Canada.

Shereen: Yeah. Any other thoughts about metrics and frameworks, Marian and Andrea, before we wrap up?

Marian: No, I'm good.

Shereen: Well, thank you so much. This has been a fascinating chat and very inspiring for me, and as I say, we could probably have talked another hour just on the questions in the chat alone. Thank you all very much for making the time. The CPD information is on your screen and thanks very much to all the participants for joining us.

Riccardo: Thanks, everyone.

Marian: Thank you.

Shereen: Thank you so much. Have a great day.