Michael Papaycik of GreenPath Financial Wellness, center, receives the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Award from NH Diversity Workforce Coalition Board President Monica Zulauf, right, and Business NH Magazine Co-Publisher and Executive Editor Matthew J. Mowry. (Courtesy of NH Diversity Workforce Coalition)
More companies are embracing the culture shift to be more diverse, equitable and inclusive (DEI)—a shift that has been taking place over the past few years. HR professionals attribute this to the growing call for people-focused workplaces.
The evolution from awareness—and in some cases resistance—to embracing DEI for many organizations sped up in the past three years, says Jermaine Moore, founder of the Mars Hill Group, a leadership consultancy firm in southern Maine that has helped many NH businesses with their DEI strategies. Eighty percent of his work today, he says, involves DEI leadership and coaching work. “There has been a lot of interest in this work [following the murder of] George Floyd in 2020,” he says. “That opened a lot of people’s eyes.”
In March, the Diversity Workforce Coalition (DWC) held its annual Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Award Ceremony at Southern NH University. Mascoma Bank and GreenPath Financial Wellness, a nonprofit organization focused on debt counseling and credit counseling beginning to take root in NH, were the 2023 award winners. NHDWC Board President Monica Zulauf says what sets Mascoma Bank apart from many of the other banks that applied for the award is the attention the bank pays to its peoples’ needs and the potential for upward movement. “What they’re being clear about is that they’re moving people up. They’re moving [tellers] into management positions, and they’re also looking at their lending practices,” she says. “[Mascoma Bank] is looking at their employee manuals; they’re really taking a very measured approach to how to be more inclusive, and I think it’s just amazing.”
Moore, who works with a variety of clients ranging from small companies to Fortune 500 companies, as well as colleges and universities, says, “The wonderful thing about DEI work is that it translates across industries no matter what their size. There are different challenges and cultures, but D,E, and I works with them all,” he says.
A Focus on People’s Needs
Chief People Officer for Mascoma Bank, Liz Eames, says her title change from human resources directoris one indication of Mascoma Bank’s commitment to change, and a recognition of its focus on its employees’ needs in the area of DEI. Mascoma Bank has approximately 400 employees across NH, Maine and Vermont.
“Chief People Officer is a new type of title that surfaced after COVID-19. The position has risen from being under CFO to a partnership at the CFO level,” she says, explaining that with the title change comes a more analytical view of DEI with a “people focused” approach and an emotional component. “Human resources is now called people resources, which represents a state of mind that we’ve evolved into a department that wants to partner with the other areas in the organization to support the needs of people as well as our
business needs.”
Eames says being committed to DEI involves creating an atmosphere of inclusivity from a broader geographic imprint. This goes beyond equal employment opportunity and addresses such things as the multi-generational workforce. “There’s a very different language here across generations. How do we act inclusively with each other? As professionals we need to embark on that dialogue,” she says.
Mascoma Bank has worked with CoAlign, an internal employee resource group formed in June of 2020 to educate and inform team members on diversity and inclusion practices and provide leadership development opportunities to prepare for the changing work and life culture. “DEI is essential to survive as a business. It is not only about race, ethnicity and gender, and all the other characteristics that need to be protected as we diversify. We must be proactively inclusive as we work together to change the culture.”
Eames says that as a Mexican American woman with years of experience in the human resources field who is committed to DEI, she sought Mascoma Bank out because of their involvement in community issues and their focus on people. “[We] have a leader in Clay Adams who is an integral part of how [we] do the work,” she says, adding that she is proud to be a woman of color who is part of the senior leadership team. “We have a lot of DEI trainings that happen so employees understand our environment and learn about underrepresented voices, for anyone who feels there’s an opportunity to close the gap.”
Closing the DEI Knowledge Gap
Moore says there is often a knowledge gap with learning and development and that when an organization reaches out to him for support, one of his first jobs is to determine where they are in the DEI journey. “Companies may be at different places on that journey. They may already be in a DEI space, and I help them navigate waters, raising awareness at the leadership level. The goal is to help the organization figure out what they do not know and to define what DEI is and isn’t, and to overcome misconceptions.”
Moore says there is a strong business case to be made for having a foundation of DEI practices in workplaces because it fosters inclusivity and speaks to an organization’s values. “Ultimately it’s about creating environments where people feel as though they belong and can bring their full authentic selves,” he says.
An important part of allowing people to be authentic at work and to bridge knowledge gaps, Eames says, involves creating avenues of communication for employees. “Clay has a dedicated email called Making Sense where employees can voice their concerns,” she says. “And he responds.”
Port City Pretzels DEI Commitment
Port City Pretzels, founded by Suzanne Foley in 2015, was the 2022 winner of the NH Diversity Workforce Coalition DEI award. The Portsmouth-based company employs 25 people, and Foley says she and her employees live DEI every day. Foley says she believes it’s easier for a small company like her own to implement change. And it has been a journey for Foley as well. It took her awhile to be comfortable talking about the company’s diverse workforce publicly because she was never looking for accolades. “Over time I’ve learned that what we’re doing can rub off on other companies,” she says, explaining that Port City recently recognized Down Syndrome Day and that she has always been open to working with people with disabilities and formerly incarcerated workers from the beginning. “We always try to find the right fit for our employees.”
Zulauf refers to Port City Pretzels as another “phenomenal company” that lives and breathes DEI every day. “[Foley] has folks with developmental disabilities, significant mental health issues and other challenges. Some of these people may not be successful in other workplaces, but [Port City Pretzels] makes it work,” she says. “And they don’t even call it ‘making accommodations,’ you know, they just call it ‘making it work for people.’”
Foley says there are many myths around accommodations for employees with needs. She shares with other employers that accommodations are not onerous, expensive or complicated and that productivity has never been an issue. “We want our employees to feel good about things, and we’ve had a lot of the same employees for a while now,” she says.
Foley says her company has worked with a large pool of employees drawn from vocational rehabilitation centers, Easter Seals and Pathways, and the company has provided internships for high school students. “An interesting thing is starting to happen,” Foley says. “More and more, I’m finding parents and caregivers are reaching out about working here. That’s unbelievable the way it’s happening.”
Foley says she never imagined the business would take off the way it has. It went from a family recipe she thought would be a tourist item to being in the shelves of Walmart and other national wholesalers. She recognizes that her business wouldn’t exist without her employees. Today, those employees fulfill a number of roles tailored to their needs and those of the company in a 10,000-square-foot production facility in Portsmouth. “Whether they have disabilities you can see or not, whether it’s members of the LGBTQ+ community, they feel comfortable, and I’m glad to provide this. I would hope people want to move toward that culture.”
Creating Cultures with a DEI Focus
The same spirit of focusing on people’s needs and creating a diverse, equitable and inclusive workplace at Mascoma Bank has been happening for a long time at Northeast Delta Dental, a dental insurance provider in Concord, says Vice President of Human Resources, Ryan King. Northeast Delta Dental, which has 215 employees, has been addressing DEI long before the events of 2020, King says. “For years, Connie Roy-Czyzowski [vice president of Human Resources] and Northeast CEO Tom Raffio have taken DEI seriously,” he says. “It has been a long journey and a fruitful one.”
King says DEI is a “living breathing process we believe in” and that when it comes to training and implementing DEI initiatives, “It is not a ‘check the box.’ It’s what we’re doing, and our focus never comes off these issues.”
That focus involves annual training sessions, lunch-and-learn sessions, as well as acknowledging the importance of multi-generational workforces, King says. The company recently participated in an eight week session on diverse topics relating to DEI issues with NH Businesses for Social Responsibility called “The DEI Workplace Innovation Challenge.” The session included virtual one-hour meetings as well as breakout groups where participants discuss relevant topics and initiatives. “It’s all voluntary, and we’ve had good involvement,” King says, adding that Northeast Delta Dental has worked with Moore at the Mars Hill Group and James McKim, founder of Organizational Ignition, who also provides DEI training and consulting. “We’re very fortunate DEI is so ingrained and that we don’t have to sell it to our employees.”
King says people working for Northeast Delta Dental have a voice. “Tom loves to say he would never say anything in the boardroom that he wouldn’t say in the mailroom,” he says, adding that turnover has been low and that the less flexible a company is, the less wide a net they are able to cast to attract good employees. Currently, 50% of Northeast Delta Dental’s employees are working fully remote in the areas of customer service, finance and claims.
Gabrielle Owens, director of marketing and recruitment at Boothby Therapy Services, a Laconia-based firm with more than 200 employees that provides therapy services in schools, says the company seeks to be a leading employer of individuals from diverse backgrounds and that increasing diversity is central to its vision statement. The owners of Boothby Services identified the need for a DEI initiative in 2020, she says. “The long-term goal is not a one and done,” Owens says, adding that because of the shift to remote work, the company has been able to hire more diverse candidates from outside NH. “It has been three years now and we’ve spent a lot of time doing internal training for those in managerial roles on how to execute the initiative, and now we’re putting that into action.”
Alisha Semprebon, an occupational therapist and related services manager at Boothby Therapy Services, says the annual business plan has shaped the company’s goals around the initiative. “It’s not just training, it’s also looking at systems, reports or documents, looking at the website to create a lens that is inclusive and represents diversity.”
Boothby Services completed a company-wide training with a national consulting group that has reinforced what Owens and Semprebon refer to as a culture of kindness. “I learned a lot from this and didn’t realize I had bias,” Semprebon says. “With DEI, it’s so personal and each of us has our own continuous journey."
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