Diversity at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and in the industry as a whole isn't close to where it needs to be, according to the company's Chief Diversity Officer Aisha Washington.

“As a Black woman in a leadership role in corporate America, I am acutely aware of how my identity has a cosmic effect on my experiences with systems in society and in the workplace,” Washington said in an interview with SDxCentral. “I have been met daily with assumptions and given minimum levels of trust, credibility, and respect for the same work or in some cases a higher caliber of work than my counterparts.”

During a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) session at the recent HPE Discover event, she was joined by SUSE Chief Communications Officer April Moh and author Malcom Gladwell to discuss the state of enterprise diversity in tech.

Gladwell opened the session with similar statements on assumption. “When we talk about diversity and inclusion,” he said, “we're talking about fairness, right? We're talking about: what does it mean to create a workplace that offers everyone an equal shot at all of the opportunities that are available within the organization?”

Gladwell referenced his book, Blink, discussing how in the classical music industry the concerning favoritism within the musician selection processes eventually led to blind auditions in the 1980s. Historically, and up until a generation and a half ago, classical musicians were all white men. But the minute that blind auditions were implemented, women started getting hired.

“[Maestros] let the evidence of their eyes get in the way of the evidence of their ears,” he said. “They let whatever blatant prejudices they had about women interfere with their ability to truly hear women play classical music.”

“The open audition was embedded in the culture of that domain, but they were willing to change it,” he continued. “And not only that, they were willing to accept the results. They didn’t throw it out – they made it happen. They said, you know what, we may have been doing [it] this way for generations and generations. But we've suddenly discovered a flaw in the way that we allocated important positions in our world.”

Washington described this type of demographic favoritism as an often overlooked inequity across many industries. “Identifying not only as a Black woman, but as a mother, caregiver, and military family provides me, like many others, an intersectional lens. We have to develop a cultural blueprint that supports this intersection,” she noted in the interview.

Washington shared a “DE&I report card” on Juneteenth marking HPE's progress and needed work in supporting diversity’s advancement.

The report card began with “points of pride,” happily announcing that in the U.S., U.K., and India [where a majority of their workforce is located], HPE has closed the gender pay gap. Additionally, in the U.S. they also report the same for racial minorities as compared to white counterparts.

“It’s so common for team members to identify with more than one diverse demographic,” Washington wrote, “and we must use these moments to take stock of the whole picture, where we’ve been successful, and where we need to make significant systemic change.”

DE&I takes ongoing and continuous attentiveness, she explained in her report card. “In fact, neither HPE nor the industry as a whole are close to where we need to be.”

Washington stressed at Discover’s session that DE&I often doesn’t come with a results-based strategy, asking, “how do we capitalize on the momentum? How do we keep the journey going?”

Progress plans are in place at HPE, according to Washington. “Our diversity targets are tied to incentive compensation for our executives, our diversity scorecard progress is reviewed quarterly with the board, and the HR and Compensation Committee monitors HPE’s DEI efforts to ensure compliance with equal opportunity employment requirements,” she said in the interview.

“In addition, we expanded our Management by Objectives (MBOs) around DE&I to be more aspirational and expansive, going beyond workforce representation, to now include culture, belonging, and equitable outcomes.”

Last year, HPE instituted a new recruiting requirement “mandating that a minimum of one candidate from a diverse background be short-listed for all roles and that diverse interview panels be used,” Washington explained.

Their enterprise partnerships include the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering, the Executive Leadership Council, and the Hispanic IT Executive Global Council, as well as historically Black Colleges and Hispanic Serving Institutions and Universities. Washington says HPE plans to continue expanding partnerships in the upcoming year.

Advancing talent pools also means digital inclusion, Washington says. HPE resource members volunteer at events like HPE Code Wars, an online coding competition for grade 8-12 students. These groups aim to volunteer 3,000 hours to STEM education advancement and digital inclusion next year.

Another major goal shared in the report card was to double the Black and Hispanic executive headcounts and for their executive population to be one-third female, all by 2027.

Washington closed the DE&I session by saying, “[DE&I] takes leadership. It requires us to be comfortable being uncomfortable… When we’re uncomfortable, we’re growing and we’re developing. And we don’t have all of the answers, but we have to be bold. Empathy and trust is a business imperative, it’s a team imperative, it’s an imperative as an inclusive leader.”

She asked all industry leadership positions to reflect, “What kind of leader am I? What kind of leader do I aspire to be? Allow your teams to make you a little uncomfortable. Sometimes dig in where you haven’t historically spent time. Be a catalyst for continuous change.”