Episode 36: ServiceNow's Data-Driven Approach to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Learn how ServiceNow leverages data to drive diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Chief Equity and Inclusion Officer at ServiceNow Karen Pavlin discusses the importance of measuring and tracking DEI progress, along with the impressive results and impact these efforts have had on the organization.

Chris Riback: Karen, thanks so much for joining. We are looking forward to talking with you.

Karen Pavlin: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

Chris Riback: So let's start with you and your journey into this space.

Chris Riback: Is perhaps by your own description, not what one might consider to be a typical path to where you are. So tell us about it.

Karen Pavlin: Great question, Chris. I have been in this role at ServiceNow for about a year and nine months, and my career has not been linear at all. In fact, I spent most of my career on the business side in the technology sales and digital transformation side at Xerox, and then I moved on to several roles at a center. But fun fact, and also one that is both foundational and inspirational anchoring for me is that Bill McDermott, who is current CEO at ServiceNow, was my first boss and sales manager 30 years ago. I'm dating myself right now. It was my first job right out of college, and he was that first person to give me a seat at the table when teams back then weren't so diverse, and he was that one inclusive leader that I got a chance to work with at the time. He was the youngest sales manager at the company and then soon went on to become the youngest member of the executive management committee.

But he was that one that kind of set the standards for me as an inclusive leader and what a team looked like, an inclusive team long before it was a thing. I went on to spend about 20 years at Xerox. Bill, spent 17 years at Xerox and then went on to spend a short time at Gartner, then went on to become CEO at SAP. But I spent several leadership roles at Xerox, and then I moved on to join Accenture as a managing director and a client account leader within the financial service business business transformation role. Working a lot with our system ecosystem partners, including ServiceNow with a plus one role as an exec sponsor for inclusion and diversity. So for me, spending so many years on the business side, I truly saw the business case for DEI and also just having diverse teams was just table stakes for me.

And understanding how critical it is to having and being able to foster a culture of belonging. It drives talent, investment, brand strength, financial performance. But fast forward in 2020, like many others, I had that moment of reflection and like many other great companies who were not afraid to have courageous conversations around race. After the murder of Juris Floyd, I was also one of those leaders that were at the center having these brave conversations about race. And for the first time, and I describe it, I was at this place in my life and career where I took off the mask I put on my soul and I found my voice to have these conversations across differences. And that led me to a calling and also of the center seeing something in me that quite frankly, I hadn't seen myself, but always had the passion to do in that way, I feel like D and I found me, they asked me to take on the role as AD and I leader for North America at a wonderful place that was anchored in a culture where people were encouraged to be truly human. I was in that role for about a year until the opportunity came knocking at my door and I had the opportunity to come full circle with my anchor leader, bill McDermott after 30 years coupled with the opportunity to work with the incredible chief people officer, Jackie Kenney, who actually started her career and practically grew up at Accenture, then went on to Walmart to join ServiceNow. So again, it was this sort of roundabout journey, but that landed me at ServiceNow and in my career as a chief faculty and inclusion officer,

Dr. Alexandria White: There's so many great nuggets in there and I have to go back. So me and my business partner, Diane Flynn, we just wrote a book, 50 Questions Inclusive Leaders Ask.

When you said that Bill was already there, that he was already able to identify and make sure that inclusion was a part of his professional mantra. Tell us a little bit more about that, because that's so timely, it's so relevant in being an inclusive leader. So what did he do? What did he teach you in regards to being that inclusive leader? Because yes, it sounds great, but what are the tangible things that you learned from Bill and that you have utilized as you do this work?

Karen Pavlin: Yeah and I think it's a really important thing to know that in going back like 30 years, especially in the world of technology, there were not that many women and women of color that were selling. And at the time it was print technology, so it was managed print services, it was copiers, it was printers. Bill had this incredible vision to bring a team that was fully diverse. I mean, it was 50 50 gender parity and also a team that there were two other people of color that were on our team. So it was being able to bring a team that was able to work together and he understood the value, the business value of bringing a diverse team together and also a team that was able to bring out the best of each other. And that really set the standard for me of what a diverse team really looked and felt like. So talk about setting the standards,

Chris Riback: And Karen, what about for you, having grown up on the business side, you said that DEI found you, but at the same time you had a personal calling of sorts. It seems I couldn't agree more with Alex's characterization that in your opening narrative about yourself, there's just so many nuggets in there and so much nuance that we all feel and the winding path that all of us can have as business people, as professionals, and the different sides coming into this role. From that business perspective, did it require a change? Was there something that you had viewed about inclusion when you were a business person that you maybe are seeing differently now? How would you speak to the business person, Karen, from the perspective as the DEI hat wearing Karen that you are today?

Karen Pavlin: I think one thing that we all sometimes forget is that we're human first. When I talked about that sort of the epiphany and happening for me and that ability to kind of share my voice, I never really talked about who I was. And I always talk about the fact that in those conversations that I was having around races at a time, I was able to kind of share my own identity story, my own beautiful melting pot of a family, and the upbringing that I really talked about at work for the first time, I was seeing the magic of sharing your own identity stories is the magic of connectivity and which is a key from a business perspective because it unlocks so much. And I hear Bill talk about this, and he's always talked about this. He said, you've got to know the person. As a matter of fact, in one of our leadership sinks, he was talking about customer first.

And it's not about just knowing your customer, knowing what your customer, what keeps them up and knowing what they're passionate about and also knowing what's also important to them, but also sharing in that moment is also contagious at some point because when you let people know and understand and have that peek inside of who you are as a person, that creates this effect that is magnetic. So in business, I think that people often forget that you're human as well. So that's what happened to me and also just caused me to certainly gravitate to people and become people first.

Dr. Alexandria White: I love that storytelling is the new currency, the importance of a single story, whether it's identity, intersectionality, socioeconomic status, geographic status, all of that contributes to how people view you and if they're going to buy in, if they're going to go to the employee resource group because they know about the people who are leading it, if they're going to go along with your wellbeing initiative, your Wellbeing Week initiative that you all do at ServiceNow, people need to know who they're going to follow and that you just can't be a suit. And so when you showed a little bit about yourself having that balance, what are some of the takeaways and some of the great things that happened with initiatives, with the Wellbeing Initiative, with the Women's Equality Initiative with ServiceNow? What are some other things that happened?

Karen Pavlin: I'm going to kind of go back to where I'm anchored in my mission, and then I'll talk a little bit about some of the programs and where we're going. But our approach is really spreading the mission, and I talk about my three Bs. It's about being bold, being brave and being benevolent, and also not being a witness, but being bold means starting with listening and learning. So having those courageous conversations and getting to know the whole person as a team member. Going back to the conversations that we were having, those brave conversations like shame on us, that started in 2020, but in many cases they did. Being brave, getting comfortable, being uncomfortable. So having that heart to speak up when you experience or spot bias or unfairness happening. So being brave enough to be able to speak up, being benevolent, but sharing your empathy and compassion.

This is something that we didn't talk about in the workplace for so long, but this also includes being self-aware and being curious with race and not judgment. So being able to ask questions across differences and not judging people, and then also just not being a witness anymore to other people's lives, but being able to lift and empower. One of the questions that I asked, I actually met Jackie Kenny in a panel that I was doing, and this is how the whole Bill connection came about, and I asked the question, I said, who is that one leader that lifted you when they were climbing anchoring on the Mary Church? Trull quote. Everyone went around and answered the question, and I said, it was Bill and Jackie answered her question. So I said, it's also, it's like, don't be a witness. Lift those people up and you're lifting people up at all levels, for sure.

Alexandra, you mentioned employee resource groups. We established resource groups, and we call them ebg, employee belonging groups. We established them in 2020, and the thing that you have to be aware of, people are saying, wow, 2020, just 2020, you have to keep in mind, ServiceNow has only been a publicly traded company since 2012, and at 2012 we only had 2000 employees at that time. Today we have nine belonging groups that 42% of our 21,000 people belong to include our API or Asian Pacific Islander at ServiceNow are black at ServiceNow, interfaith Latinx, which we call Unidos Peoples with Disability, which we have now actually just called True Ability to Void, more inclusive of people that are neurodiverse and other aspects of disability are pride at now, veterans at now, women at now, and this year we just added families at. Now last year we held 60 EBG events globally. So that's just one example of some of the ways that we are including along with having courageous conversations and other programming. I love Employee Belonging Group,

Chris Riback: And so Karen, take me even more practically because yes, whether it's an employee belonging group or an employee resource group, we hear it quite often how effective those types of engagement and support areas can be both to support folks, but also to help companies forward. When you are engaging with senior leaders, talking to them about their business requirements, about their p and lss, about their operations, about their future growth, what are those conversations like? How do you contribute to those? Are there any tangible tactics that you talk with them about to implement because they're running businesses? This has to be part of their standard operating procedure.

Karen Pavlin: I know that we hear this over and over again, but this is something that we share with our senior leaders and I will say at ServiceNow, and also it's important that you hear it at the top. You hear it at the lower and mid-level, manager level as well. But d and I is not just a corporate initiative, but it's a moral imperative and a company-wide responsibility. It's everybody's responsibility within the organization and everyone has a part to play in de and I initiatives, and it's just not going to work unless everybody plays a part. So I needs to be woven into everything we do across all levels of the company, including our leadership team. So Bill is an iconic leader. He surrounds himself with diverse leaderships because he believes it's certainly the way to lead, and you'll see it, it's communicated in our town halls.

We have what we call our ServiceNow live SNL sinks that happen once a quarter, so you'll see it demonstrated. In fact, in our town halls, which is done globally all over the world in our SNL, we are intentionally showing up with people that are diverse, whether it's the presenters, you'll see somebody that's early in career, it's by ethnicity, gender, you even see people with disability presenting on the broadcast. So in addition, we position all managers to play a crucial role in promoting d and i. So we encourage leaders to lead by example. Like all of our managers actively demonstrate inclusive behavior and championing diversity within their own teams. So this includes having, and I'm just going to be very, very tactical and share some examples, quarterly growth conversations, and these are conversations that happen every single quarter along with ongoing what we call stay conversations with all team members and sharing real time feedback and also giving managers the tools to have these feedback discussions, especially across differences.

Again, they're not always easy to have, especially with a company that's had such hypergrowth as ServiceNow. As I mentioned before, over the past, during the pandemic, we have grown from 9,000 employees to 21,000 employees in such a short time. Most of our people are hired during the pandemic, so we need to have these tools that translate. Managing in a remote environment translates into managing into a hybrid environment. So how do you give your managers the tools to be able to manage proximity bias, how to hold meetings that are in person and hybrid. We also encourage our managers to take part in, for example, we have a virtual reality series training where you can actually use the Oculus glasses of virtual reality technology that puts people at the center of experience bias in the shoes of others, and then talking about it in a non-judgment zone. We also bring programs through our employees to provide opportunities for professional growth and development, our mentoring programs, our coaching programs, advocating for themselves. We've seen a lot of incredible results. We solve a lot of work to do, but we've seen a lot of rate return our investment with these programs as well.

Dr. Alexandria White: Okay. So everything that you said is amazing. How are you getting these people? How are you getting them to know about ServiceNow? I mean, when I think about recruitment, when I think about talent acquisition and companies going into, in my other life, I was a college professor and my students are looking for companies like these. How are you opening the doors and attracting diverse talent?

Karen Pavlin: We're showing up everywhere, everywhere we can early in career programs, global internship programs. We just actually kicked off a program called Discover ServiceNow where we're tapping into not only juniors in college, but sophomores in college, internships in May of 2022, we kicked off a program called Rise Up for ServiceNow, which is a program to reach out and skill 1 million people on our platform by the end of 2024. We are also partnering with a lot of, from a talent and recruiting, you'll see us at Afro Tech, you'll see us at a lot of the HBCU programs. So we are showing up in places where we need to be, to be quite honest, especially from a diverse perspective.

Chris Riback: The range of programs that you've identified feels pretty extraordinary, rise up, ServiceNow, different opportunities. You're reaching out to your business leaders as you described. You just described reaching out as well on the other end of the spectrum to new employees and even pre-new employees with interns and that sort of thing. At the same time, you mentioned a moment ago, you think about the ROI ON that. That's an area where I think business leaders would be very interested, would really benefit from any secrets or tips that you have around how do you best measure ROI on these programs? Is there anything specific that you can maybe point to on any of the programs that would be a nice takeaway for any listeners?

Karen Pavlin: I absolutely love this question, especially with my business background. So organizations can't truly embody DE and I without fully understanding their current state. Through data. I mean data, data. When I landed in my role, my number one takeaway from all that I learned over the years, you can't manage what you can't measure. So it is data is king, and with that, it drives accountability, evidence-based decision-making. It's also progress. That's why at ServiceNow, our progress starts with data. Every single approach really starts with how we measure from both quantitative and a qualitative perspective. So we do employee voice surveys, demographics, performance, hiring, and data by region. That gives us insight and develops evidence-based mapping, and this data helps us to identify the gaps in every process, roadmaps, and also just helps us fix those trouble spots. For example, when we're looking at hiring data from AD diverse perspective, if we are seeing that we aren't getting enough candidates through the pipeline, then we will adjust.

We do a talent equity assessment, and with this formal assessment of our talent management process, we can identify the outliers to data, which helps us pinpoint specific processes, policies, and areas of the organization that we need to focus on. For example, we investigate areas like our hiring rate, what our attrition looks like by demographic rate of promotion, by demographic and also function, job level, and also region. It's like our GPS where we need to focus, and one of the key areas that we learned through the assessment that we did was we needed to focus on women in leadership. So we actually went through and focused on improving gender diversity. We needed to put more women in leadership roles, and we needed to figure out how do we do that? How do we position our leaders with development programs? So with that, we developed a program called Power of 10, putting nearly a thousand women in 2022 through 2023 into cohorts.

With that. So far we've seen a steady growth and representation of women and women in leadership globally. Incredible. Like right now, we're exceeding our goals on women in leadership. Another example that we put data into action was we needed to make meaningful progress and necessary change. We had a gap in progression within our URG community. So we implemented a nine-month leadership development program through a program called Strive for our early in career in mid-level, black and Latinx employees. We took a hundred participants through this program. It started with the 360 assessment, customized learning experience along with individual coaching. Through this program, we saw incredible results here as well. Participants here had lower attrition rates and higher promotion rates coming out of this program compared to those that did not go through these programs. So we are also co-sponsoring a lot of the same learnings and mentoring programs and working with our ebg as well all the time. So those are a couple other examples. I mean, we also are focused on region. We did a program in APJ as well. Data showed employees needed stronger career development, so we launched what we called an APJ Learning Fest, which was a month long learning sprint where we created safe space opportunities for employees to share perspectives and best practices to help strengthen culture of belonging, realizing that there's very regional nuances to DEI learning and experiences along the way as well.

Dr. Alexandria White: Excellent. Is there anything, Karen, that you would like our listeners to know about ServiceNow? Is there a new initiative that's coming out? What are you looking for next year? Yes, we are already on the downside heading into next year that you'd like our listeners to know about.

Karen Pavlin: I'm excited to be a part of a company, a culture. I mean, as you all are hearing, AI is at the forefront of so much. We're becoming an AI first organization. We've been investing in AI for years and continuing to expand generative AI across our platform. So I'm excited where that's going to take us into the future. I'm also really excited that it is going to certainly help to propel d and i and our efforts forward as well. I mean, we are a company that is absolutely committed to d and i. I'm proud of our leadership. I'm proud of the direction that we are going and heading and solid foundation for sure. So thank you so much for having me.

Dr. Alexandria White: Thank you.

Chris Riback: Karen. Thank you. That's an incredible range of programs and initiatives. I'm really struck by not only how much you have going on, but the way that it's really, it sounds like trying to reach out to the full range of audiences in terms of seniority levels, location, and all of that. Thank you for taking the time with us today.

Karen Pavlin: Thank you both.