April 22, 2020

Seeing Diversity & Inclusion and Human Resources From a Different Perspective, with Patricia Jesperson

Episode 42:

Patricia Jesperson is Chief Curiosity Officer at EmployeeEXP, and co-author of the newly re-released Reversing the Ostrich Approach to Diversity: Pulling your head out of the sand. With more than 25 years working on the people-side of the business, she specializes in working with employers to create better Employee Experience outcomes.

As the curious type, Patricia has spent the majority of her career exploring how to maximize the talent experience with an emphasis on Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) and Total Rewards. This drive for exploring what-ifs enables her to deliver custom content as well as EmployeeEXP proprietary models to help her clients attract, retain, develop and engage talent. Examples include The EmployeeEXP 8 x 9 Box Communication Analysis™, a re-imagined/re-purposed 9-Box that invites organizations to explore their approach to communicating key programs to increasingly diverse talent. It asks the question, “how confident are you that what you spend on Employee Experience is aligned efficiently to attract, retain, and engage today’s diverse talent?” She also introduced The Inclusion Matrix™ (IM) in 2019, which elevates the conversation from traditional DEI training to creating inclusive and engaged leaders.

Believing that one must continue to learn to keep current, she seizes opportunities to always-be-learning through teaching at Augsburg University as a professor in the MBA and adult-education programs and her Board experience e.g. Human Resource Executive Forum Board, Augsburg University Alumni Board, Chair of the Workforce Development and Education Policy Committee for the MN Chamber, and Director of Diversity Inclusion for SHRM MN State Council.

What you’ll learn about in this episode:

  • How Patricia transitioned her career to working in diversity and inclusion and the people side of business
  • Why Patricia believes that diversity and inclusion practitioners can learn valuable lessons from business development and marketing
  • Why an outcome-based approach to diversity and inclusion can be more effective than a content-based approach
  • How Fortune 500 and 1000 businesses lead the way for diversity and inclusion, and why now mid-market businesses are realizing the need to embrace D&I to compete for talent
  • Why support for a sustainable diverse and inclusive culture needs to be available at all leadership levels of an organization
  • Why human resources and diversity and inclusion shouldn’t be compartmentalized into separate silos but be viewed as a part of an organization’s overall success
  • How Eric S. Raymond’s computer programming essay, The Cathedral & the Bazaar, can teach the value of a faster, more innovative and collaborative process
  • Why organizations often make the mistaken assumption that they have communicated their message clearly and that it is universally understood

Additional resources: