![\"Empathy,](\"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Empathy-equity-and-flexibility.jpg\")
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To remain successful as the COVID-19 pandemic wages on, organizations must continue to help employees navigate as they blend home and work responsibilities. But with employees facing so many different challenges at the \u201chome office,\u201d how can a company stay sensitive as issues arise?<\/p>\n
The practice and mindset of diversity and inclusion can hold many of the answers. Two diversity leaders joined the FIU Business community for \u201cLeading Teams Through Uncertainty: How Diversity and Inclusion Impact Team Roles,\u201d the second installment of Wertheim Wisdom Wednesday. The Wertheim lectures, endowed by Herbert Wertheim in 1993 and moved to Zoom in the wake of the pandemic, are designed to share insights of organizational leaders with the FIU Business community.<\/p>\n
In the May panel, Ken Bouyer, Americas director for inclusiveness recruiting for EY, with 280,000 employees worldwide in tax, assurance and consulting, spoke from his home using a powerful background message: \u201cIf you don\u2019t push boundaries, how will we break them?\u201d He was in Miami when word came down to send everyone home and halt all travel. \u201cWe acted very quickly,\u201d he said, noting that the CEO\u2019s decisiveness put minds at ease.<\/p>\n
Sleeplessness and anxiety ran throughout the EY workforce. Bouyer found that communicating his own anxiety in the first few months helped calm others. \u201cAs a leader, you have to be vulnerable,\u201d he said. Virtual happy hours with the team allowed for communication.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrust is also very critical,\u201d he noted. As leaders, we\u2019re real too \u2026 you have to express that in a very vulnerable way,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Bryan Lovy, senior manager of recruiting at tobacco firm Altria, said transparency is an important part of modeling healthy habits in the new normal. For example, the sales organization\u2019s CEO\u2019s calendar, visible in the background for a recent broad communication on the screen, had a daily time period blocked off for time with his daughter.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cPeople know when you\u2019re being authentic, when you\u2019re trying to understand where they\u2019re at.\u201d he said. \u201cIf you\u2019re doing what you were doing before the pandemic, there\u2019s probably a miss.\u201d<\/p>\n
Under current conditions, Lovy said, \u201cWe all have to deliver things we\u2019re accountable for. Empathy and flexibility are critically important.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked what made a difference in fostering a more effective transition and working situation, Lovy cited Altria\u2019s Black and Hispanic resource groups as particularly important in raising the conversation.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur employee resource groups are helping to build the skill of empathy and telling the story of how this pandemic and its issues is impacting different communities,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n