RAW FILE

2016 USBLN19TH ANNUAL NATIONAL CONFERENCE

ORLANDO, FLORIDASEPTEMBER 20, 2016

YOUR DISABILITY EQUALITY INDEX (DEI) SCORE: THE GAME-CHANGER THAT CREDITABLY CONVEYS

YOUR ORGANIZATION IS A LEADER IN DISABILITY INCLUSION1:30 PM ET

Services Provided By: Caption First, Inc. P.O. Box 3066 Monument, CO 80132 800-825-5234 www.captionfirst.com

***This is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) or captioning are provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.

***

(technical difficulties)>> We did a lot of highlighting of employees that had

disabilities telling their story, we have an internal newspaper so to speak, that comes out every day. And the stories that we had around people with disabilities were some of the highest clicked on stories of everything, talk about business strategy, what have you. People love people's stories. And they like to hear about them, and there was a little reservation in corporate communications initially, but we convinced them that they should listen to us and do it our way. That is part of what we did over a 15-month period of time is just begin telling the story about where we are headed, what we are doing, highlighting employees and made a big difference in terms of our ability then to continue to do more initiatives.

>> That's important. Communication is really key. One of the things that happens when you do the DEI is it does require a lot of communication across the enterprise.

Jason if I can come to you next at BAE, given you are a attorney and responsible for inclusion, how would you describe the added value, because it's also added work, quite frankly, of having the DEI when you have ADA and you've got 503. How did you convince BAE that there was yet another thing that they should be

focused on in this space and the relative value of that?>> I think for me and with BAE systems, I was about a year

and a half ago with another company, with Lockheed Martin and doing this kind of work, and basically through USBLN, they had the vision of seeing where things were going and what the need was. Conferences like this they saw other corporations, there was a need to have an identified person, a designated person in the company with responsibility, and one of the things that they saw was, what is the responsibility going to be? BAE systems decided, we are going to integrate compliance in inclusion. You hear a lot of us talking about going beyond compliance to inclusion.

So our leadership had the foresight from interaction with USBLN to basically create the role that I'm now in, that really, that is in the compliance, human resource compliance division, but that integrates both compliance and inclusion. What and how that looks like is that a lot of the compliance related messaging isn't in legal terms. That is the best way to put it.

It is in people-centered terms, that other individuals can understand. I think having that foresight and seeing and being connected to USBLN and that organization, I think really led it in that direction.

When I came aboard, it was the first time there was a designated person, I came aboard this time last year, in August of last year, and there were like you said, there were things that were already done, right, within the organization. So a lot of it was refresh. But at the same time there were pockets, right, there were some things done but there was no designated person with designated responsibility, and for me, the key that I see is having those responsibilities connected to performance goals.

When I came aboard, all these things including DEI is connected to my annual performance goals. It was the second day of my job, which was when I was hired, our goal was that, Jason, we have been out of 60 for the pilot with DEI an the first inaugural DEI and our goal is to get a 80 or above for public recognition. I came aboard August 1. They are like, you have four or five months (chuckles).

So we were able to immediately put in place and do the gap analysis and look what we needed to do and later we will talk about some of those. But one of the most important ones that covered a lot of things was we launched an ERG, disability ERG. It was within the structure that we have as a organization. Those are the kinds of things. To our surprise we thought we might get 80 and we got 100.

Pretty exciting. One of the things that I can share and provide to some of you is that perspective from starting over and

with a designated person that has responsibility and really diving into it. One of the things that we might want to do is get a feel from our audience as to where other people are in the DEI process.

>> That is an excellent point, thank you for reminding us. First show of hands, how many have taken the DEI? 15, 20 percent. How many are thinking about taking the DEI? For those of you that didn't raise your hand in either case, a couple shout outs, what made you decide to become curious about the DEI, want to advocate for it within your company? What might I hit that is one of the reasons that you are here? Yes?

(speaker is off microphone).Great. Terrific. Jason, another polling question that you

would like to ask?>> I think that covers it. Was there anything else that we

missed? (off microphone).Excellent. I really appreciate that. You said there was

another one? Oh, repeat what she said?We should wait for the mic, so for the next question, we

will make sure we get the mic to someone. But I heard two things that I will repeat back. One is there is someone here from a state advocacy agency, the Department of Vocational Rehabilitation, and also from that Massachusetts and it's wanting more information to learn about the tool, so we know what it means, that the company has gotten a certain score, and how it advocates for other companies to take it. Did I capture that?

Then we will wait for the mic next time. The next person I'd like to go to is Mary, who is again with General Motors. Mary has not ever been and now is not planning in her retirement years to be a human resources professional. But yet, she led from her role as an executive sponsor for people with disabilities at GM, utilizing the DEI.

Do you want to tell us your story about how that came about and how that worked out?

>> Sure. I love telling the story, because I'm not a professional D&I person. My entire 34 years with General Motors I've been on the business side, been a business leader and the first thing I would say that I think, and every company is different, by the way. We all have our own cultures and our own ways to get things done. I'm going to give you my perspective, from a very large company, first of all, I think the partnership between the D&I folks in GM and the business side is critical.

Any time we have something that just comes from an HR side, people kind of, you know, look at it and say, oh, this is something that HR is making us do. So when you partner with the business side in my company, it gives it a different flavor. It

gives it more of a, hey, we are all in this together. The second thing that I did was, as the leader of the, or the executive champion for the employee resource group was, I leveraged my contacts.

When you are in a company 34 years, you get to know a lot of people, right? Sometimes people owe you favors. So I reached out to a bunch of my fellow executives, because the first time we took the DEI as most of you heard this morning we got 40. And again while it's not a punitive thing, it's a learning journey. It's a tool, it's a roadmap. It's a blueprint, whatever you want to call it, 40 I knew was not acceptable. But when you look at the DEI, how many people have actually looked at all of the pages of the DEI? Show of hands.

Okay, just a few. It is pretty big. Right? It can be daunting. I looked at that, and I looked at the categories, and the first thing I do as a process person is say, okay, these things are IT and these things are facilities, and these things are policy. I just started phoning a friend and I'd call somebody up and say I'm drafting you, I really need your help.

We created what we call the disabilities advisory council. We just made it up. It was a group of about 12 executives, representing those different functions and business units around the company. We just said, let's go through this thing. Let's learn about what the questions and the categories are, and then let's look at where we are and ask ourselves, are we okay with that?

Frankly, when you start with a 40, we shouldn't be okay with it. The other thing about a big company is if you really want to get something done fast, somebody that has the ability to just make things happen has to be in charge.

So I said there is nobody else that is going to fill out this DEI than me and this team of executives. So you are not allowed, Deb was on some of our calls, you are not allowed to delegate this. If you do, I will hunt you down.

Deb called me a bulldog a few times. I think that was lovingly. But that is how, that is from where we were, that is how we had to get it done in our company.

Again, as many of you heard this morning, we scored 100, which by the way does not mean we are done. When you are in a company as big and broad, with different manufacturing facilities and test tracks, we have huge test tracks and office environments, we have to make sure that this pervades through the company. We have a lot further to go.

But we made great strides by two things. One is having a tool. You need to have the tool or the knowledge, in anything that you do in life. Tool or knowledge. And then the will. If you don't have the both of those things, you are not going to

make the progress that you need to make to achieve.So we had the tool in the DEI. We were one of the, going

for gold pilot companies, which was a big catalyst because frankly, I'm from the business side, I'm not D&I, I did not know where to start but when I got this DEI, I was like oh, perfect, now I don't have to figure this out on my own. I know what to do. I just need to go get it done. We certainly had the will, there was no problem with the will. Those two things combined were just a beautiful and for me frankly a life changing experience, because again, having been on the business side, I never got to experience this before, and the accomplishments that we did together were certainly some of the most prideful moments in my entire career.

>> Mary, there was one example that happened with facilities. It's a quick story. Could you tell that? That is an example of make it so that's kind of cool.

>> Yeah. So our facilities, we were very safety conscious company, one of our top priority is safety, and so in our facilities work if you work for General Motors and you are in any facility and you see or experience a safety issue and you don't know who to go to, we have a Web Page, you go right to, you describe what you just saw or experienced or need. You check, this is a safety issue. That rockets to the top of the facilities people's attention. You get attention immediately, when you say this is a safety issue.

So Steve was one of the guys I strong armed to come help me. He was very excited about it. When we described some of the things that we didn't do so well in the survey, he said, well, I can fix that. We said, how? He said you know that box that says this is a safety issue, he said I'm going to put, this is a reasonable accommodations issue. If you check this is a reasonable accommodations issue, it's going to the same hot track that a safety issue would. All of a sudden, people say, oh, my company cares, as much about reasonable accommodations as they do about safety. That was brilliant on Steve's part, again, somebody who never had anything to do with D&I in his life but he applied his mental model with how he dealt with his functional issues, he applied it to our R.A. process and it was awesome.

That is just a perfect example of getting somebody from the business side involved for creative solution, and then he was a high enough level. He didn't have to go ask anybody. It was his website and he just, 24 hours later, we had a box.

>> Perfect. Thank you. Megan, there was a reason why I saved you for last on our panel. That is because for companies who already have extraordinary brand recognition around disability inclusion, why would they take the DEI and what was the value that E&Y found because all you had to do was go see a

play at Times square at the right time of the year and you knew that you have been the leaders for decades, we would love to hear what the experience of DEI was and what if any additional value you found in using the tool.

>> Thank you, Deb. Thank you for having me here.With any organization, and EY itself within the U.S. we do

have over 40,000 approaching 50,000 employees, a hundred offices. That is a big network. So for us, when you think about what the DEI has done for our organization, it's actually brought us connected and more together, because as you said, it's a very lengthy form. You have to reach out to all aspects of the organization. It is not a talent-driven tool. So for us when we are filling out the DEI, we really were able to get on the agenda of our IT folks, our facilities folks, our branding and marketing to make sure that our message is consistent and clear, not only to our employees, but to our clients, and to our vendors, so that we show, this is one of our priorities. We take it very seriously. Within the organization whenever you go through an exercise like this, you do learn new things about us.

Yes, we pride ourselves on being an organization that is very inclusive. However, one example was we started reading through the questions, and the questions around hearing aid benefits, we look around the room and said, we don't offer hearing aid benefits? Of course, we go to our HR folks, they say no, we don't offer that as a benefit.

We said, why not? Got it included in our benefits package for the following enrollment year.

Other things near and dear to my heart, I wear the hat as the treasurer of our organization, being able to put forward a business case. When you go through the DEI, you are able to document, areas where you have gaps, you need investment, it helps you develop a business case for getting resources. We hired a IT accessibility expert to help us with our internal and external websites, through filling out the DEI we realized that potentially, some of our external websites particularly those recruits might use, they could have accessibility issues. We didn't have a process in place to respond to those types of issues.

For our organization, it's continuing to open our eyes in areas, where we can continue to make improvement, continue to make investment and I think for our organization, really bringing all functions to the table, and enlisting and getting the enthusiasm behind it of others that, as Mary said, might not look at D&I as their main purpose in the company but everybody then feels they have a stake in the outcome.

I think for EY that has been one of the biggest learning opportunities for us with the DEI.

>> That is excellent. In a minute I'm going to turn it over to the audience. Be thinking about how you want to frame your questions. I would like questions versus advocacy if we could. Nobody is selling anything. But we are asking good meaty questions.

One of the things that has come up, is there is a little bit of confusion in the marketplace because there is another tool called the tracker, that is put out by the National Organization on Disability.

Sometimes there is questions about do we do one or the other or both, or are they measuring different things. For those of you on the panel either that have taken both or have made a choice about one or the other, anyone who feels comfortable sharing, Megan, I'll start with you because I know you are familiar with both and anyone else who wants to comment, it's an important part of today's conversation.

>> From my perspective, the tracker is more of a quick hits, really to identify high level areas where you might need improvement. But it's definitely much more talent driven, as opposed to the DEI which is very comprehensive and as I said before, you have to involve all aspects of the organization. It can't just reside within your talent or your HR function.

It requires that engagement. So if you are just looking for the quick pulse, a check, how do we think we are doing, the tracker might be applicable there. But if you really want to get behind the issues and potentially the gaps, identify where you need to make improvement, clearly the DEI with all of its comprehensive questions and requirement to go cross functional, cross organization, that is really the big benefit I think between, difference between the two. More operational.

>> Mary, do you want to comment and we will keep passing the mic?

>> Sure, quick comment for us. I agree with everything that you just said. In addition, frankly, we want as much recognition externally as we can get, and there are some external recognition opportunities that are tied to taking the tracker. So who is going to turn that down? However it is more of exactly that word, a tracker. It is much more I think just not as instructive. Let me put it that way. The DEI is really that blueprint or roadmap, that insightful description. In fact, just looking at the difference in the two, like I said, the length of the DEI could be daunting. But do it. Get into it. Then realize what is there, the definition of all of those categories is something for me again, as not somebody who is experienced in this area, was so helpful for us to be able to get people engaged.

I look at them as apples and oranges completely, both in

what they ask about and in what they drive in your company.>> Lydia, looked like you had something to say.>> We have used both. I think because we are revitalizing

our journey and really wanting to know where we have gaps, it has been helpful.

>> To have both, good. Jason, did you want to add something?

>> We haven't talked about it's important and vital for our executive management, because as we all know, what is tracked improves. So what is great about actually using both tools is, why did we get X score in 1 and Y score in the other, because, they want to say what else do we need to do?

That is one of the things from a benchmarking perspective that this is what the DEI is all about, which is it provides a tool that allows a company and executive management to get on board, to say this is a business imperative, and it's all done from a business perspective in business language, right, as like what was mentioned before, with what has been done in other diversity spaces. So we know that this kind of recognition is really from a competitive perspective, companies really jump on board, because it's tied to recognition. That is one of the carrots that then provides the benefit to corporations.

But my experience is there is and can be value in both.>> Rosanna.>> I would echo that part. In our organization the tracker

is actually owned by our talent team. We own the DEI. What we have been able to do, and I don't know if your organizations have this, we have been able to partner from a operating effectiveness standpoint with our own operating effectiveness teams to look at a more wholistic approach to the business. We are able to see what we are doing in supplier diversity and procurement, we are able to see from a philanthropy and corporate social responsibility how it ties into the business. We are able to work in local markets and understanding not only what their hiring practices are but we are discovering gaps in understanding in the environment.

It enables us to build towards what we discussed earlier which is how do we build a plan that is based not only on continuous improvement, but regardless of the score, and we are proud of our 100 score, where do we need to be to ensure that we are not just complacent on the checklist of done, not done, but how are we continuing to grow our capabilities from this.

That is where we find the difference between the two tools to be very helpful, and in particular the difference in the DEI and helping us solve for operational challenges and solutions, as opposed to the do we or don't we element, that we find in the tracker.

I wouldn't say one is better than the other. But one gives us a focus that is more longitudinal. And the other one is a read on where we are right here, right now.

>> Thank you. That is very good. I want to point something out again, that this morning, Jeff started us out with a moment of silence for all of the beautiful people that were lost at Pulse and she acknowledged their long time partnership with the LGBT community, the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce.

I want to acknowledge that the DEI was created with a ton of support from people at the human rights campaign who created the corporate equality index. I watched during my career as a chief diversity officer as did many of my colleagues here, what a game changing impact the CEI had on all of our corporations. For those of us who are allies in the LGBT community, it gave each of us something very substantive to go make happen, to make our company ones where people could be out and proud as part of the LGBT community. The goal of the DEI simplistically is for people to be out and proud and doing their very best work inside the company in order to better serve customers, to drive shareholder value.

I love that Peters JD Power thing. That was cool. I want to acknowledge that the Co-Chairs of the DEI advisory council are in the room. We have David Casey from CVS back here in the corner, with the two different shoes, with a blown Achilles tendon. He already said that so I'm not outing him here and we have Elena Burger, leader of the American association for people with disabilities. I think that prior to opening things up, because goodness, if we can't answer any possible question that you guys have between this panel, Jamie and our Co-Chairs, and we have other folks that were involved in the DEI as well over the years, I don't know who could. At this point we are going to borrow one of the mics. We will use the other one. Tracy will take that. Raise your hand and wait for the mic.

>> Hi, everybody, I'm Danielle from new artist. One of the questions that is challenging for our organization is, we are a little bit decentralized. We have multiple companies under one umbrella. How has, has there been any companies who have used the DEI with that type of structure and how was it to get it aligned? Because of course, each sector of our organization may view this very differently.

>> Any of our panelists able to answer that, where you have multiple companies?

>> BAE system we have three different sectors with three different businesses that we call our legacy company, so that were originally other companies. So there is that history of differences. One of the things that this helped us do was to actually identify those, identify those practices in various

areas that might be specific to one group, and not the others, in how can we take the strengths of one group and now add it company-wide.

That was something that we were able to identify and look at, as we went through. There were also several questions that pinpoint that, that may say, versus, is it do you have this, because there will be a ABCD answer, do you have this company-wide, or by group area, geographic or sector, division. So it takes some of that into consideration.

But for us, that was something that helped us understand in terms of taking the pulse and gap analysis as to where we are and where we needed to go, so it went up on the to-do action list of, let's use this strength, this one business division has, and let's integrate it and use it as a best practice throughout the organization, throughout the company.

>> Excellent.>> Hi, I'm Tim Williamson with Dow Chemical. This is

probably tailored towards Mary. You had mentioned that going for the gold group, and could you tell us a little more about that group, and the value it brought to your DEI efforts? And for those companies out there that are considering joining, is there a better time to join as far as in your journey, as if you are a low scorer versus a higher scoring company?

>> The going for the gold, General Motors was one of six pilot companies in that. As you heard there are three more companies that are joining. I would say that combination was the accelerant.

The DEI is a great tool. Going for the gold was just like pouring accelerant on it, and got us to move much faster, because we had the availability of experts in areas that we really needed the help with. So Deb, for instance, was our coach. She was with us through a lot of our formation meetings.

When we didn't know what something was, we had a dictionary right there, the encyclopedia right there and she was able to help us.

When the IT guys needed the real technical help, she was able to connect them to the right people.

I would say the combination was really a 1-2 punch that accelerated our progress. I think you could do it with the DEI alone. It's very descriptive, as I've said several times.

But the going for the gold was just to me, made all the difference in the world for our company. Then I would say to your question of, is there a better time than another? I think there is no time like now. No matter if you are really good at what you do, and in inclusion, you can always be better.

In our case, we were surprisingly early in the journey. We had a lot of work to do. In order to get it done and not take a

hundred years to do it, the GFG was perfect for us.>> We are not sure yet, if we are able to have another

cohort, it would be in February. You should let someone know now because if it comes to pass, we are waiting to hear if we got funding through the pose is and another foundation, we can only take nine to twelve more then and we do have a queue. If you are interested, let somebody know on the staff and they will get you in the queue.

>> Sorry if I missed this, but you all are very, very large employers.

I haven't really seen the whole DEI questionnaire or whatever, but sounds to me it would be overwhelming for smaller employers.

Was this designed in the hopes that all different size employers would be able to meet the gold standard on, I guess that is my question.

>> I love that question. I want to make sure that I let David and others, maybe Jamie say something about that. I certainly have a point of view. But I think they will have one that is especially important.

>> I just came to participate, not answer questions.>> (chuckles).>> But no, that is a great question. Frankly, the DEI was

originally targeted towards fortune 1,000 companies so larger companies. But we have expanded and broadened the scope. But that goes back to the point of, start where you are. If there is one section that you can focus on that makes sense for your organization, then focus on that section. It is not about getting the best score you can get on the entire DEI. I'll be honest with you, it is comprehensive. That is one of the reasons I like it.

But I have a team member who spends a good 20 to 30 hours gathering information from people across the company to fill out the entire thing. So it is a little bit of a, it takes some resource investment. But if you are a smaller organization, there is no reason why you can't parse out portions of the DEI that make the most sense and are the most relevant for your organization. Does that help?

>> Jamie or Elena did you want to add anything?>> Hi, everyone. I'm DEI program director. That is a great

question. I don't have to add to what David said. That was perfect.

No, the only thing I'm going to add, in addition to being primarily targeted to fortune 1,000 companies, the survey or the tool, I like to call it a tool, it is more than a survey, the tool is now available to M law 200 firms and organizations that have 500 or more full time employees in the U.S. that meet

certain criteria, can participate.I encourage all of you to go out to Disability Equality

Index.org. All the criteria is out there. You look like you have another question though.

>> With the hopes of one day being a BLN affiliate, I know one of the things that a lot of the larger employers when we were talking about this was that they would be around to them the smaller employers move up. I didn't know if there was, or maybe you want to think about this, a way in which, if the BLN affiliates and their larger employers or their, could there be some kind of a free consulting work being done to help these smaller employers actually make it, and again, design, where they should start but how can they get through the whole thing.

It would be like a train the trainer mentoring kind of an opportunity, I think.

>> One of the wonderful things about using CART is it's a transcript, so I don't have to write down every word, you guys are all saying. These are all really great ideas. That is something we can definitely do.

I also want to note that when we are scoring the DEI, it's a very confidential process, as you know, unless you score at least 80 or higher no one even knows you took it. The questions are always available on-line, so you can always see them and use them however you want.

But one of the things I know Janie does is if somebody is doing something really cool, no matter what size company they are, that makes it back to the DEI advisory council both as best practice to share as well as something that we can give companies recognition or credit for, even if they are not getting an 80 or above DEI score.

For those of you who have ever taken the diversity Inc. top 50 you will remember a few years ago they added the noteworthy category. While I don't want to speak for the council, I'm just one member, we may do something of that ilk at some point down the road, where we can recognize companies for best practices who are smaller employers, as well as to the point you made, also create mentoring and supply chain recognition opportunities, because many smaller employers are also affiliated with larger employers in some form or fashion. Your question, sir?

>> Thank you, I'm a rising leader. I hope my question is not a naive question. But here I go.

How is, this is for Jason, how is your background, how has it helped you implement plain English wording for implementing regulatory compliance and how have your efforts improved your company's DEI results? You mentioned how it did it but I wasn't sure how it did it. And how would others be able to achieve similar results?

>> Great questions. We are getting into the meat of what the items are. One of the comments earlier, and I'll get to yours, was one of the things USBLN is doing is with free webinars throughout the year, is next year there is going to be a focus to focus in on some of the specific areas of the DEI as to the how, how did the company do that, right?

For example, centralized accommodations, what does that look like? How do different companies do that for centralized accommodation budget? What are best practices? What do companies do in their evacuation process for employees with disabilities? Because again, how it is skinned is different, what are some accommodation, for example, we heard in a earlier session today about accommodation policies. An example related to your question would be, there are a lot of reasonable accommodation policies that are written by employers that are written by the legal department. That means it's in legalese. It uses ADA language. For most of us that read it, what did we just read? It is not comprehensible from a persons, I call it from a person's perspective, employee's perspective.

Again, rewriting some of those things, for example, I've even seen a corporate, if you go on to some websites, we have corporate reasonable accommodation process, with the phone number or E-mail, if you need an accommodation in the application process.

If you will go look at ten different employers, you are going to see ten different ways that is written. You will get a feel as to what I'm referring to. You will see some that is very plain language, and you will see some that looks like an attorney wrote that.

Those are some of the differences. A lot of that is what we are talking about, is the style is the corporate culture, and again there is a lot of movement within organizations, of some of those shifts. My company for example acknowledged that, and has pushed that shift within our organization, one of the things we all talk about that is part of DEI is self-identification, as part of section 503 compliance, right?

Again, what approach is each company taking? All the DEI looks at is, are you doing it, right? And what is your percentage.

The how isn't there. So those are some of the best practices that are shared in some of the USBLN webinars that goes through and shares, here is a compliance approach, here is an inclusive approach, here is approach that we have from leadership, right, where our corporate executive, our president is sharing his or her medical condition that is nonapparent. Right? Those kind of things, with personal stories, and there is different ways to do it.

Again those are all determinations that are made within ... (we lost the Internet connection for Skype. Trying to

dial back in). (standing by) >> That are simple but huge in magnitude at the same time.

We are helping rewrite the thinking.>> Teaming with those folks who are in our D&I group is very

important. But I think you need to have the sponsorship, so on the executive, I'm the executive sponsor for our accessibilities group. It was a deliberate choice not to have someone from our talent or D&I organization as our executive sponsor to rep raise awareness and engagement across the organization.

>> You do need to have the executive.>> Having people aware and engaged.>> I was going to say the message to me now seems to be that

the message that you were giving, all of you panelists, collaboration and passion for corporate responsibility and your desire for changing the climate is really the overall theme here for the D&I index.

(lost internet)

Employees inside the organization who may have felt uncomfortable if they have a invisible disability, to be more open about who they are and what they need.

>> Anyone else on the panel want to add anything?>> I would just add, I think it covers all of what you asked

about, since there is a huge component on the supply base. So are your procurement partners also companies that are accountable for disability-owned businesses, etcetera, veteran-owned businesses, so that's a component of it.

There is also a big customer comment to it. So asking about your call centers, asking about your marketing materials, ask about, in your product development, if you have a physical product, in your product development are you incorporating the needs of customers with disabilities? It's really three legs of the stool, sort of internal, current and future employees, suppliers, and then your customer base.

It's very comprehensive.>> Any other questions in the room? Yes, sir?>> Has this been done by any state our city municipality?>> Any state?>> I'm curious.>> We don't use it with government entities at this point in

time. Right? I keep looking at Jamie. Right?Maybe that is something for us to think about in the future

that we could contemplate that we do a lot of work at the

municipal, state and federal level, as at the USBLN.So it's something we can take under consideration.>> Here is a question over here.>> Thank you. Your information has been very helpful. One

of the questions I have is being in an environment, and I notice that there was someone from ESX here so I'm also with another railroad, but my question was, how does the DEI reflect aspects of safety sensitive work, that's also highly physically demanding and also highly federally regulated, which in terms creates, I guess I would call safety related disability within the workplace, and also how would that couple the highly unionized companies which creates a more difficult time in accommodating employees, based on cross craft transfers and those types of things as well?

>> Mary, do you want to start us on that? And then I have a feeling that Lydia might have something to add.

>> I'll start with the last part of your question, which was union-based employees. We obviously have tens of thousands of UAW and other union-based employees at General Motors. So in working cooperatively, primarily with UAW which is our biggest union, we have, I'll call it sort of corollary policies and procedures that we have agreed on with the union, relative to not only accommodations but return to work. We parallel that with what we have for our nonunionized workforces. But it is a little bit different, because we do have to get agreement with our union partners. But we have what I think is a very, very -- in fact, I would tell you that our hourly policy came before and was more comprehensive than our salary policy.

So we learned a lot from that side of the business, in creating what we have for salaried.

>> Do you want to add anything further? Anybody else?>> Accountants don't do a lot of heavy lifting. (laughter).We are trying to make sure we don't have unions in the

accounting profession.>> Any other questions here in the room? I want to make

sure that no one leaves without having felt like your question got answered about the DEI.

>> You know, I have one, since I have the mic. (laughter).>> Okay, go ahead.>> I work with the Boeing company and we did it one time, we

did receive a hundred percent. I'm not throwing that out there to brag because we happen to be a company that just don't brag when they should. I knew last year that when we took it, that we would get 100 percent. But this is the work that I do. But it's still not enough.

A lot of times, people feel that oh, it's just this time for bragging rights. So put my mind in some words of Maya Angelou, people may forget what you said but never forget how you feel. You have to be connected and attached to the people that you work for, from the floor, and the question that I have for you all, what would the other employees that are not even engaged in your world say? About the index, even if they knew, what would they say about the disability in an organization?

>> That goes back to where we started in conversation with communications. We do build it into the fabric of communication throughout our organization. So at EY we make sure that it's highlighted. To your point we are not bragging but we want to raise the awareness, because we have the average age of our employees is 27 years old. When we talked about people who are very concerned about social responsibility, corporate responsibility, we include our accessibilities professional network, our grass-roots, so our employee resource group.

We have thousands of people that are now engaged in our employee resource group. A lot of them are young folks that are coming into the organization. I can call them young folks because I'm old. But to me it's really that communication, and the consistent message, the tone at the top, building it into your culture, so it can't just be one person, one voice. It has to be throughout the organization, and as we become more global, and EY is a large global organization, taking that message cross border, and we can learn a lot from other countries and what they are doing in the space, as well as sharing our message, so I think that's important when you start talking about engagement.

>> Yes, it is.>> I think our employees would say, DEI, what? (chuckles).I think that we are new on our journey, even though we did

well on the survey and responding to the tool, and we are using communications. We are not where EY is. But we are beginning. So it does help us begin to start the conversation with a broader group of employees.

>> You struck a chord when you said DEI what? If the LGBT community was saying CEI what? So we have work to do in that regard.

>> Quickly, I would say, we already put David to work once, I'm going to steal his saying. Hashtag more than a score. I mean to the point of a hundred, the people who got, companies who got 80, great! You know, the companies who, when we got 40, great! Because we knew where we were at, we knew where we wanted to head.

Getting a score of 80 is nothing to be ashamed of. Getting a score of 40 frankly isn't anything to be ashamed of, because you recognize where you are and you are on your journey. I focus

less on the fact that General Motors just got 100 even though I tried to motivate the organization. It was more to make progress, not to get a number.

>> I'm so glad you brought that up. Why take it again if you didn't do well, and it really is to improve.

I can tell by the noise outside the door that we are needing to end. I'm sorry, was there another question? My apologies. Please go ahead.

>> For me it was very interesting to hear what you have already done. I know that all is currently very U.S.-driven. But I'm representing a global company. I think that is really a challenge for us. So I'm working for SAP, I'm pretty sure that everybody in the room knows this company.

We are also well-known for our initiatives for underrepresented groups like the autism at work initiative.

I'm also responsible about the accessibility topic at our company. I like the idea of the DEI approach, but have you ever thought about to make this global, that means not only reflecting the local legislation but also reflecting the country specific region or whatever, legislation, because that is also an issue what I'm currently facing.

It is a nightmare for a nonlawyer (chuckles) and I'm not a lawyer, to understand the different legal compliance situations, the regulations, the rules. Whenever I read a document, I really don't understand the content behind.

So making a long story short, have you ever thought about that? Or is this maybe a action where we can collaborate? Because I think this is really a value add for all global companies.

>> Where we are today is a large percentage of the DEI is applicable but we need to work towards making it much more so. So it's a point well-taken and one we will take back to the advisory council. Jamie, you had something you wanted to add? Was there another question first?

>> Because we have literally, it is time.>> Yeah. (chuckles).>> Thank you so much for your time today. We are glad you

could join us. A reminder before you go, if you are interested in learning more about the DEI or participating in the DEI, make sure to go out to disability equality index.org. You have until January 13 to register. However, I don't recommend waiting until the last minute.

There are some FAQs up here if you are interested in grabbing one of those. Otherwise again go out to Disability Equality Index.org. You can register, you can view the FAQs, you can view all of the 2017 questions. Everything is out there. So thanks again, everyone.

>> Thank you, everybody. Thank you for a great panel. (applause). (end of session at 1:47 p.m. CST)

***This is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) or captioning are provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.

***