WASHINGTON–In what could be among his final remarks as a member of the NCUA board, Rodney Hood told an audience here he considers the agency’s DEI Summit to be among his proudest achievements.
Launched as a one-day event while he earlier served as chairman, Hood—whose term is expired and whose replacement, Tonya Otsuka, has had her nomination hearing and is awaiting confirmation--noted the Summit has now expanded to several days and drawn a large group of attendees from across the credit union community. Hood credited current NCUA Chairman Todd Harper for helping to push the event to the “next level.”
“When we talk about DEI, most of us recognize that this isn’t something that’s completely new,” Hood told the meeting, held at the Capitol Hill Hilton. “We’re all well aware that a great many forward-looking government and business leaders began making the case for greater diversity in recruiting, hiring, and staffing, as a response to changing demographics, at least a few decades ago.
“However, I do think we can recognize that what is new is the salience that DEI issues have taken on as they’ve become more elevated in the public consciousness over the last several years,” Hood continued. “That’s an undeniably positive trend, and it’s why we need events like this summit to continue moving these ideas forward and putting them into practice in our day-to-day lives.”
Moving to ‘The How’
Hood said he looked back over remarks he gave at the inaugural DEI Summit, which was held four years ago, where he cited the benefits of DEI when it comes to productivity and organizational performance, something he said is well known.
“The challenge for us now is the how – that is, how do we implement DEI principles into our daily work lives and business operations to foster an environment that embraces people of all abilities, promotes inclusivity, and ensures that everyone has an opportunity to thrive in the workplace?”
He noted the meeting included discussion around that challenge, including strategies for recruiting and retaining young professionals, or using publicly available Census data to better understand the needs of marginalized and under-served communities within a CU’s field of membership.
Other Positive Developments
Another positive development, Hood said, is the recognition of the needs of formerly justice-involved individuals – “that is, people who may have had a long-ago criminal record, often for minor offenses, and who have paid their debt to society and are looking to reintegrate into the workforce.”
To that end, he noted one of my first actions as chairman was to advance the “Second Chance” regulatory reform to provide credit unions more flexibility in extending hiring opportunities to applicants with past criminal records, an issue the agency board again addressed at its most recent meeting.
Hood said he has also been pleased to see recognition given to people of faith and older workers; the latter, he said, often face “subtle stereotyping and discrimination in the workplace.”
‘Never Said it Would be Easy’
“One point we should recognize in all of these particular examples I’ve just listed is that the work we need to do will be necessarily challenging. No one ever said DEI would be easy,” Hood said. “In fact, to sincerely embrace different perspectives and backgrounds requires a great deal of creativity, empathy, understanding, patience, and goodwill. It forces us to challenge ourselves to build the strongest, most resilient organizations we can build. That’s where events like today can be so important to help us better understand how to navigate these priorities in a way that is beneficial to our workers, our members, and all of our stakeholders.”
According to Hood, NCUA as an employer has sought to model those DEI ideals in its own operations.
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