CBRE Group, Inc. (CBRE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, everyone. Welcome to today's webinar. We're glad you're here. My name is Annette O'Hanlon. I am the Chief Corporate Responsibility and Diversity Officer at S&P Global. It's my pleasure to moderate today's conversation in our webinar titled Beyond ESG with the Evolving DEI Landscape. Today's webinar is part of a series called Beyond ESG, which gives us the opportunity to take this conversation beyond some of the standard or typical conversations and topics of ESG. Before we ask our guests to introduce themselves, I just want to cover a couple of quick housekeeping items. We recognize that today's conversation and the topic today is of great interest, so we want to make sure that we are able to interact with you and answer your questions. So make sure you can submit them. At the bottom of your screen, you will find the widgets and the icons for the Q&A, so please use that chat box. We'll do our best to get to as many questions as we can. It's also -- we will take the end of the session survey, which is quite important for us. It gives us a good marker and benchmark for what's hitting the mark and where we might want to do more, so please take the time to fill up the survey. I think that's really important. And you also find a resource box. So if you look under the resources, you'll find some additional reports and interesting commentary that we might cover during some of the conversation today. So you'll find all that in the resource widget. We're being recorded, and this is going to be available on demand and you'll be able to catch the replay once we conclude. If you have any technical issues, please just refresh your browser. That's kind of the best way to do it. But if you have further issues, use the Q&A box, and we'll come back to you and get you sorted with our technical team. So with that, we have some smiling faces on the screen. Let me now turn it over. I'd like to welcome both Tim and Natalie to let them introduce themselves before we jump into the conversation. So Natalie, can we start with you?

Absolutely. Pleasure to be here. My name is Natalie Kernisant. I'm the Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer at Morrison & Foerster. It's a large law firm with over 18 offices across the world, Asia, Europe and the U.S. I've been at Morrison & Foerster for nearly 10 years now. My sort of area of expertise within the firm is managing our talent management processes as they relate to our diverse and women talent.

Great. Thank you very much. Tim?

Annette, pleasure to be here. My name is Tim Dismond. I work for CBRE. CBRE is the world's largest commercial real estate services and investment firm. We have over 100,000 employees, over 500 offices and operate in more than 100 companies. I've been with CBRE for 14 years, and in 2020, I became our company's first Chief Diversity Officer. Less than a year later, that role expanded to become the Chief Responsibility Officer, also a first for our company. And now, I have oversight of several of our global ESG programs across the company, and of course, that includes diversity, equity and inclusion.

Fantastic. Well, great to have you both. Thank you so much. I thought we'd start with a quick poll of the audience. I think it's just a nice way to get a sense of where folks are on the DEI journey. We have a number of angles and numbers of questions to get -- kind of come at the topic. So if everyone could just take a quick moment and give us a sense. Doesn't have to be precise, these are just kind of broad brush strokes on where you might be in your own respective organizations on -- with aspects to DEI. So is it early days? Are you shaping? Do you feel like you had a big push in 2020, and now you're plateauing? Are you gaining traction? Do you feel like you're still in a role, would be fantastic? And how are you in terms of embedding kind of further into the business? So if everyone could just take a moment, we'll take a look at those results. Another second to bring those in. Okay. We'll give that a second.

While that's coming through, Natalie, you mentioned in your scope of responsibility is the importance of diverse talent. So let's go to that question, and we'll come back to our poll results maybe. We know that having a diverse workforce is critical. I think some of the selling that we might have done years ago is a bit more recognized and kind of more of an understood path. However, some of the conversations I'm sure you're having, many folks are having, is the pace at which that change is happening. And so I thought if you could just take for a moment and talk with us a little bit at Morrison & Foerster, kind of what steps you take to find and attract those candidates? And then when they're in-house, once you have them on board, what does it take? What are you finding challenging on the retaining and the developing and the growing of folks that are more diverse, both on the female front and race and legacy front?

Yes, both excellent questions. I think the challenges differ depending on the seniority of the talent that you're hoping to attract and retain. But I think the universal challenges that we all experienced in the recruiting space, at least, has to do with the lack of transparency in the lateral market, particularly for the more senior talent that you're looking for. Sort of the specificity of the need. So as compared to our recruiting efforts for junior talent where we descend upon our university partners and have a pretty open field and full transparency into the candidates if they're interested. I think the lateral market poses challenges in terms of looking for a particular practice, a particular geography, a particular book of business. And then also, when we're looking for an open position, finding diverse and women talent there, also simultaneously looking at that moment. So the lateral market for us presents a number of different challenges when we're seeking to hire diverse and women talent, and I think those are sort of universal issues. I also think the lack of representation can serve as a barrier of diverse representation at -- your organization can serve as a barrier. Unfortunately, Morrison & Foerster is in an industry that isn't particularly diverse as it stands, and so it can be a hard story to tell when you're trying to attract diverse and women talent when you don't have a tremendous amount of role models that illustrate what success looks like, and that success is possible within the organization. I do think Morrison & Foerster does a very good job. Like I said, particularly at our junior levels, so that sort of takes us to the question you had about retention and development, and sort of what we're doing and what our challenges are in that space. I think as -- especially for our women attorneys, as they mature in their career, they face issues of unconscious bias. There are perceptions in the professional space that women are somehow less committed to their profession and more committed to home life, and so we do see, in our industry, that come to bear in terms of perceptions. I think also, unfortunately, a lot of our diverse and women talent are turned to and relied upon for more of the institution-building activities in their organization. And so we find that a lot of our diverse women talent are called upon to recruit, to mentor, and that can be a significant drain from the time that they can spend developing clients and bringing in billable work, but it's equally as important to the life of the organization. And so at Morrison & Foerster, we've deliberately found ways to sort of level that balance by providing billable hour credit for diversity and inclusion work. So at MoFo, as of this year, we've started providing credit in kind for the billable work that they do when they are doing these institution-building activities, diversity, equity and inclusion, mentoring, recruiting and the like. We also have tried our hardest to build programs that allow folks that have taken time away from work to reenter big law, so we've partnered with a lot of external organizations on reentry programs that help sort of support women and parents and others who have taken time away from practice to reenter a big law and upskill, and all of those things. So it's a very conscious effort, I think, of the firms. Some of the other things that we do in an effort to support our diverse and women talent and retain them is we've created a mentorship and sponsorship sort of initiative at our firm called MoFo Navigate, and it's basically designed to support women and diverse individuals at the firm as they progress in their career. So at every stage of their career, they are provided a different sort of support system, whether it's a liaison when they first enter the door at MoFo or a mentor in their more junior years or a sponsor as they approach partnership. Once they're into our partnership, we then provide another liaison to help them acclimate to being a person of color or a woman in a large law firm in the partnership. And so we are very sort of thoughtful about the experience that our individuals are having. And I think that to come full circle helps us in recruiting talent in the end, right? So I think diversity, equity and inclusion is very much about the individual experience. And as long as we're treating our people well and supporting them and listening to their needs, I think that helps you when you go back out to market and try to attract more talent.

That's really great. I love the solution building and the challenging the status quo, like the billable credit model to allow people to take the time to, I guess, contribute in that way, right? Making those paths a bit easier. I think that's fantastic solutioning for something that I think has been challenging for a long time in the industries that are on the billable model, it is really great. So I see we have successfully have our poll up. Let's just take a quick look, and then I'll toggle over to you, Tim. Okay. So it looks like we have -- I'm on a very small screen today, sorry. It looks like we have gaining traction as our primary, primary thing, which is great to see. And I think no matter where you are, for folks that are still forming, I think these networks and connecting with folks that are further along in the journey, I think is great. And then to me, I will say for -- at S&P Global, sometimes it's just the topic that we haven't cracked, right? We're not firing on all cylinders in every single corner of DEI, right? So there's always something to learn in the networks that we build and the connections that we make to kind of understand it. I think it's just always good to have. Okay. So I think you can move beyond the poll. Tim, I'm going to come over to you, if I can. I think we have some interesting conversations as we were prepping for this, and I want to make sure that we tackle this. So give me just a quick second. Okay. So, Tim, one of the conversations we stumbled into in our prep was about how do you activate in-house, right? That's really, really critically important. But more than that, how do you have an impact that goes beyond your 4 walls? Because lines are getting really, really blurry between community impact, outreach that we do, partners that we choose to partner with, partners that we choose to increase partnerships with, and I think we're finding that we want to be able to tell that story equally as well. So I guess for you, I would ask like how do you, at CBRE, how do you evaluate that? How do you understand the ROI of that, and then how do you actually share that progress back with your stakeholders?

Thanks, Annette. Great question. So in terms of evaluating impact, our focus has been on outcomes. Going beyond the conversations, as important as those are, and words. And even actions, I think there's a lot of ticking the box that takes place. So if we focus on outcomes and we measure our progress along the way, that's been a critical component of our strategy and approach. So for DE&I, we have 3 primary objectives or outcomes that we're seeking to achieve, and the first is strengthening our inclusive culture, and the measure for that is around our annual engagement survey. We have 3 questions that are specific to DE&I, and we want to be in that top quartile. The second is increasing the diversity of our workforce, and we look at that globally as it relates to gender. In the U.K. and U.S., it's a necessity, and we're making progress on measuring, collecting the invisible diversities as well. And we do that at multiple levels, and obviously, by different business segments and lines of business. So understanding and setting specific goals around that is very, very important to our success. And the last is being a catalyst for economic impact in the communities where we work and live, and our primary measures for that is around our supplier diversity spend. We're looking to increase that. We made a pledge to spend over $3 billion by 2025. We've -- we're well along our way to meeting that. And then the other is just expanding the impact and reach of our philanthropic efforts. In terms of sharing, there are many ways that we do it, and I just want to start that I'm a big enabler of this. And when I stepped into the Chief Diversity role, I added specific, dedicated communications, and they've been a huge enabler for us. Internally, we do have an executive diversity dashboard. We have QBRs, D&I toolkit. We've got a robust intranet site that we continue to develop. We have weekly internet stories, of course, are customized globally by country, and we also leverage our 18 EDRGs. We now have over 19,000 members and allies that are participating in those groups, and we have over 60 local DEI councils and task force, so that's a big part. Externally, it's primarily through our annual Corporate Responsibility Report and several ratings, indices like the Dow Jones Sustainability Index and the Bloomberg Gender Equality Index. We're also quite active in social media. So I think the crux of your question though, and that is around the ROI. And we know that companies with successful ESG, and specifically the S programs, deliver superior results. And there's lots of research that shows that companies that do this right have better business outcomes. They are outperforming the stock market. They have double-digit growth and higher revenues and margins. We know that their employees are more motivated and energized. We're better able to attract top talent and retain them. And engagement scores, and this is a stat, there's some research, is 12% higher. We know it's the right thing to do. Companies that do this well also have more delighted loyal, satisfied customers. And I've got some statistics, maybe I'll get into them later, but it sums up that we know consumers are more willing to purchase goods and services from companies that are paying attention to corporate, social and responsibility issues. And that is, in fact, a strong ROI. We continue to build out that case to make it very personal and relevant to CBRE, and we're seeing that pay dividends.

Phenomenal. So I think you've made the business case for everyone on the line today. So those stats and those stories and that data, I think, are so important. You also have a really impressive traction in terms of how your employees are engaging. So I think this conversation around how do you push and how do you understand to build the education, the awareness and the activation throughout your entire organization is so key, right? It can't be the sole responsibility for the top of the house. And so maybe I'll start with you, Natalie. Can we talk a little bit about how we increase ownership kind of deeper and broader in the organization? And how much of that is an ask and they -- we'll respond, how much of that's leaning in and then influencing that has to happen? How do you activate in-house at Morrison & Foerster?

It's a great question. It's something I think many folks in my role grapple with every day, right, because it's -- diversity, equity and inclusion work is a marathon. It's definitely not a sprint. And it's extremely important for senior leadership to be a champion and a proponent and really support and articulate their support for diversity, equity and inclusion. But where the rubber hits the road and where diversity is felt is on the ground in our offices, in the hallways as folks interact with 1 another. So it's extremely important to make sure that everyone feels like it's a part of their responsibility as a member of your organization. And so 1 of the things that we always say is, yes, we have full support and -- from our leadership team, and we have a global strategy, but it is every day informed by the opinions and the pressure points and the feedback that we regularly collect from our employees. So it's really important, I think, to be in touch with what the pressure points are on the ground so that when you design your diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, they're really speaking to the needs of your community. So at Morrison & Foerster, 1 of the things that we're often doing is conducting town hall meetings. So our leadership team, myself, we have a Diversity Strategy committee and a Women's Strategy committee made up of 20 leaders from across the firm. But there are always sort of landing in our individual offices and having conversations dedicated to diversity, equity and inclusion, asking what is it that we could be doing better? Where are we doing well? What do you want us to stop doing? And then -- so the qualitative feedback that we get from things like town halls and from surveys that we execute regularly. And from summits, we often bring our diverse individuals together in 1 location from across our 18 offices to have conversations about diversity, equity and inclusion. So that qualitative feedback, coupled with the quantitative feedback that we're constantly monitoring our metrics around diversity, equity and inclusion, our numbers, our recruitment, our attrition. And specific to offices, practice groups, departments and having conversations with leaders about that information. But I think together, the power of the quantitative and the qualitative is what, I think, keeps your initiatives and your strategy fresh and relevant in the lives of your individual employees. I think another thing that we focus here on is embedding accountability into our systems. So in the last year, we've started requiring unconscious bias training for all of our new members. So anyone who joins the firm goes through an unconscious bias training. Anyone who goes on campus or participates in our lateral recruiting efforts, they also have to go through sort of a mini unconscious bias training in the recruiting space. We also embed metrics around inclusivity in our evaluations of our associates. This year, we launched inclusive interactions training across -- inclusive interactions across difference training for all of our new partners. So all emerging leaders are not only well versed in bias, but we're using the same common language so that we can interrupt bias in our meetings, in our evaluation sessions, and we can all use the same common language and feel comfortable and safe to do so. So that's how we tackle it at the firm. But again, it's a constant -- you've got to keep your foot on the gas constantly and be listening to your people, I think, at the bottom.

Thank you for your example, Natalie. They're -- sometimes we're looking for them, well, how to? Because we all know we need to do it, but these are really good, concrete policies. Sorry, Tim, go for it.

I was just going to say, you would had a thought that Natalie and I coordinated. I was going to mention 4 things, and you addressed 3 of them. It definitely starts with commitment at the top. Leaders have to do it. They have to embrace it and be role models around it. And then it needs to be included in the employee annual performance objectives, incredibly important, and then robust training, moving to activity-based. So it's 1 thing, right, to roll it out, encourage everyone or mandate them to take it. But it's pretty cool and more impactful when, for instance, a hiring manager is opening up a rec and they have a short video that they can watch that reminds them of best practices, right, during that recruiting and hiring process. So building in little things that are reminders, that reinforce, is critical. I'll end just on the investment side and its investment in people, processes and technology for people. Our DE&I team started with 3. We've grown tenfold. We almost have 30 now. All of the folks don't report to me, which is important. Supply chain, a supplier diversity, a global leader was funded through my organization, but reports up, dotted line to me. We now have 5 folks that are focused on that spend, in addition to experts that are embedded within the business. From a process standpoint, I already talked about communications from a process standpoint, I have a Center of Excellence. It's a person that's trained at Six Sigma, and we're learning to approach things globally and to make sure that there is a process supported by technology. And we've invested in lots of technologies and partnering with our human resources organization around TA recruiting. We also have dedicated DEI recruiters. So thinking about things holistically and making sure that this is more than a moment, it's a movement, and you have to address some of those institutionalized practices in order to ensure, right, the continuity of our success. And again, focusing on those outcomes and measuring results, we can show, right, that the data proves that these actions are having a high correlation and putting us closer to achieving our goals.

Fantastic. I'm seeing quite a bit in the chat, I'm going to follow up with the -- 1 for each of you. Tim, 1 of the questions that came through was about how do you tackle the middle managers? It's great to have the support from the top, but when we see that large layer of middle managers that we need to activate, any tips and strategies for that?

It's a lot of the same, I will say, being able to isolate and understand. A lot of the things that Natalie pointed out was because she understands her business and she's using data to develop specific programs. So just as it relates to hiring, I'm going to give an example. I mean, we hear from the business, we need to hire someone yesterday, right? And you say that maybe the average time to fill a position, maybe it's 30 days, right. At a very fast cycle, ranging up to 45 to 60 days. Well, when you are embedding an expectation that you will have a diverse slate of candidates and a diverse hiring panel, that has a possibility of taking additional time, right? And so if managers want to move quickly, well, the question is, well, how many people have you hired? Where have you looked? Where are your markets? Let's work with you on building your succession plan. If you are hiring 10 people a year in a particular market around a particular trait, let's set up partnerships with local organizations. Let's be very strategic in how we're doing this and not be reactive and say, I can't find anybody. There's no one, no one applied. And -- right? I don't have time to wait 2 weeks or 3 weeks to find someone. Well, why don't we start at the beginning of the year, right? Let's put ourselves in a -- in a better position. So that was just 1 example of, right, how do you bring that to life. But having right DEI objectives and the way we organize, we have a DE&I leader for each of our business segments. That helps to have someone that they can talk to. And again, I can't under speak to the importance of our employee business resource groups. They do a phenomenal job in helping us drive our objectives and missions.

Yes. I mean, if I could just piggyback on to that. I agree with everything that Tim said. I think 1 thing -- I mean, obviously, I'm at a slightly smaller organization, but 1 thing that we focused on at Morrison & Foerster is really creating opportunities for leadership, not just at the highest levels but all throughout the organization. And so what I mean by that is we have -- I mentioned earlier, but we have 2 strategy committees. One focused on our diversity, equity and inclusion efforts as it relates to race and sexual orientation, and another as it relates to women and gender. And the way we've structured those committees, it creates opportunity for leaders all throughout the organization to plug in and stay connected to their peers and provide feedback back up the chain. So we have affinity networks, which -- or ERGs, as you would say. But each of our affinity networks has a leader who is technically a middle manager and a more senior sponsor, and those folks are charged with different things based on their population -- the population that is most similar to them. So someone you would call our middle manager here at MoFo would connect with their peers, keep a pulse on sort of what are the pressure points for that community as it relates to inclusion, and sort of feed that information up the chain so that we have specialized programming for each level that is responsive to the things that we're hearing are most pertinent to them and most salient in their day-to-day lives. So that's 1 way we sort of try to encourage and energize people all along the organization, and we found much success with that, so.

That's great. Now there's 1 coming in that I think ties into some of the efforts that you've done there. It's around the kind of the reaction to or the impact of mandatory unconscious bias training. So can you talk a little bit about any pushback you might have received in some of the on-the-ground sentiment as you roll that out?

Yes. So to clarify, we don't have mandatory unconscious bias training across the board. But we do, as part of an introduction to the values that the company adheres to and supports in the core of who we are, we do have trainings that sort of acclimate folks to our environment. And so in the onboarding experience, everyone is asked to go through unconscious bias training as they would, our marketing training, our business development training or whatever other training they're doing. So it's a regular part of that training, and I think that it helps level set and acclimate folks to how important the diversity, equity and inclusion are at this organization. Once you're in the organization, like I said, there is a mandatory training. It is often offered and strongly encouraged. And there are champions in each office that try to get people to attend, but it isn't mandatory in that sense. And then beyond that, when you go to on campus, it's just another part of training. But for our emerging leaders, our partners, it's embedded in all the training that they have. So we haven't had much pushback fortunately because it isn't sort of like every 2 years, you have to do this training. There's just many opportunities. And for the small pockets of populations that are sort of required to go through it, it's -- isn't called out something that's separate and apart from any of the other training that they are required to do. So it's framed in a way that I think is digestible and that folks are okay with, so we've been fortunate not to get much pushback. The other thing I'd like to say is when you do sort of create mandatory unconscious bias training, there is the risk of inciting like bitterness or sort of a negative reaction to that, so that's why we prefer to just embed it in sort of the onboarding training and natural points where people are getting trained rather than requiring it across the board at some normal cadence.

Helpful. Very helpful. A question in from Melanie in the audience. Tim, this is -- we all talked about it, quite honestly. This is the global, local question. So the question for you was at CBRE, how do you manage some of the local and the regional initiatives and ensuring that they're tied into your overall strategy? Can you talk a little bit about how that happens?

Sure. I'll just acknowledge the great programs do have a strong DEI global strategic framework, but they absolutely must be locally relevant and driven. And there's no single approach mindset, it just -- it won't work. And a great example of that would be in terms of representation, diverse attributes can be different in each country. And this can have a significant impact on how companies can collect, use and report on diversity data. So specifically at CBRE, we're able to report on gender globally, ethnicity within the U.S. and U.K., But for many other attributes like disability, LGBTQ, such and status, there's still opportunities for improvement. Our approach was we wanted to understand what we had, what we were able to collect and how, and we engaged a law firm. And we went to looking the data. We understand for the 24 countries where we have the most employees, we know what we can do, where we can store it, how we can use it. Some of them require different databases. We can't ask certain questions, so I think that's step one. Understand what you can do, assess your risk tolerance. And then engage, right, local teams, set up employee resource groups, and then you use them to drive an agenda. We also have some operating guidelines. There's just a lot of toolkits that we create to enable and empower them. But it is a challenge. It's still a work in progress. We're definitely more mature in some areas than others.

Thank you, Tim. The evolving nature of DE&I, right? I think many of us find ourselves in this spot. We certainly would agree on the S&P Global side. Maybe we could toggle -- I just like to toggle to a poll. We're going to come back because there's a lot of questions about actual metrics you gather and the regulatory landscape, so I don't think we want to go and double-click there. We could spend quite a bit of time, but I do want to talk a little bit about DEI measures when we come back. So maybe we can toggle to the quick poll, I'd love to get a sense from the audience about what you consider priority. Now there are a lot of priorities, right? We know this. But as you look at 2023 in terms of what you're framing up as your kind of critical item, if we can bring that poll up, we can talk through what each of us thinks is most critical. So maybe I'll just throw a few things out, we'll get started on the one of this. And then if we're able to get audience reaction, that would be fantastic. So some of the priorities that we labeled were investment. We should be at the right level of investment for DEI and that it didn't wane following 2020 here, specifically in the U.S. That we were creating opportunities for all, making sure that we're inclusive and really considering a very, very wide lens when we look at representation. Reporting disclosure requirements, which are hot and heavy, I think on the waterfront right now with so many things pending and kind of the increasing expectation of our stakeholders on reporting. Communication, Tim, you mentioned the hiring of communication folks and what -- how critical that was. So I think telling that story, and Natalie you talked about how do you tell it both in-house and out-house, so communication would be the other one. And then I think there's a host of priorities kind of right in front of us. So I'd love to talk for just a little bit about what 1 area, from each of you, you would deem as kind of in your top 3? Let's now pick 1 at the very, very top. Let's call it in your top 3, 1 of the things you're keeping your eye on. Natalie, can I start with you?

Yes. I mean, there's so many. But if I had to pinpoint one that sort of keeps me up at night, it's probably reporting. Particularly in the legal industry, our clients have been critical and super supportive of diversity, equity and inclusion, and have pushed law firms to really do better and to do more by asking for a whole host of information and really getting down to the substantive experience that each of our attorneys are having on what matters, which has been tremendous in terms of raising resilience of the topic and getting folks to lean in who aren't traditional or normally involved in the conversation. And so that has been great. But on the flip side, there are sort of unintended consequences that happen internally, and those are things that I think are top of mind for us as an organization. To be more specific, many of our clients are requiring a whole host of information. All the information is very different. So we have a small DE&I team here, a team of 5, which I thought was tremendous until I heard Tim's expansion. So I'm lagging, but we have a small team. So in order to be able to process and respond to our clients about all of the nuanced information that they're asking, which is helpful in a larger scheme, it does sort of take internal resources away from the day-to-day of DE&I work at the firm. And so we're very mindful of that. I think beyond that, too -- and so I think that underscores what Tim had mentioned earlier, the importance of investing in the DEI space and making sure you have the framework and the support to execute on all of your initiatives and your goals. I think also, some of the unintended consequences of the reporting is it has the ability to create sort of what I call transactional investments or engagement in DEI internally at the firm. So culturally speaking, there's a lot more people talking about it, but they are sort of popping up and saying, hey, we need to have a diverse team. I need a couple of more women, a couple more of this, a couple more of that. And I think speaking about diversity, equity and inclusion in that manner sometimes has a negative impact on the folks that are diverse and who are walking through the halls. So we have to be very sensitive to both the good work and the good energy that's coming in from our clients, but also managing how that actually affects talent on the ground in our offices. So that's what keeps me up.

Understandably, right? Thinking -- some of what you put forward is, we're both nodding, Tim and I, on the other side, thinking a lot of folks are on the same boat. Tim, how about you? What's 2023 priority?

Yes. This was probably 1 of the most difficult questions because you said 1 word in sight. I went with belonging, although data does keep me up at night sometimes as well as some other things. But belonging because at its core, when our employees can show up and bring their authentic selves to work, I know they will show out and deliver great results for our clients, our company and the communities. And this gets to -- back to the ROI issue. ROI is there, so getting this right is absolutely critical to our long-term success. So a lot of what I do is around purpose, storytelling, focused on culture and enabling others, right, to execute on some of our investments and resources within this space. But again, just fundamentally, we need our employees to show up their authentic selves to be included, feel safe because we know when they do that and they're included, we're going to be -- right, we'll be industry-leading, without a doubt.

Awesome. I love it. I love it. One of the groups is asking -- or 1 of the participants is asking, they have low representation numbers, but want a feedback loop from those colleagues without adding extra burden or asking and signaling them out -- or singling them out. So what tips would you give for someone who's trying to understand better what could be useful without adding kind of added pressure to those groups? Natalie, can I lean your way?

Yes, absolutely. I mean, 1 of the things that we've done, honestly, because of -- out of recognition of the tremendous contribution that are diverse women folks provide for maintaining our DEI efforts is the billable hours credit. So somehow recognizing that in a tangible way whether it's with a stick, with a carrot or with recognition or compensation, but recognizing the contribution. So I think that's helpful. But beyond that, making it -- embedding in your culture this idea that, one, everyone is diverse. Everyone contributes to the conversation around diversity. There are just more visible forms of diversity that impact folks because it's perceptible, and so it triggers unconscious bias and all the like and microaggressions, and so it impacts their experience as they walk down the halls. But other forms of diversity are equally as important and equally as meaningful in terms of contributing to a diverse and inclusive environment. So once you sort of level set and sort of change the lens so that everyone feels like they're part of the conversation, then I think the expectation is that everyone contributes. Everyone provides feedback on what their experience is. And then once you have the data, you can start to look for trends depending on whatever the characteristic is. But I think it's really about trying to -- try and get everyone to lean into the conversation and everyone to carry the baton at different stages in the game. One of the things that we do at MoFo is we have an allies network. So we have our affinity networks, our ERGs, but we also have a network that is created for folks who don't fit traditionally into 1 of the other groups, and they come together to learn about how to be more active and engaged allies and sponsors and upstanders in our environment. So everyone is contributing to D&I. And so then when you go to ask any particular group, it's just normalized. The engagement in this space is normalized. Hope that's helpful.

Very, very helpful. That's great. Tim, I'd love to talk just a little bit about what you measure. I have 2 or 3 very specific questions that have come in for you on whether or not your regional folks are double hatting, what measures you're looking to measure and how do you quantify some of your progress. That's a lot, so take whatever angle you'd like on that.

So there are so many different metrics and what we measure. But if I just -- if we think about belonging and inclusion, creating that culture and the employee engagement survey. The 3 questions, the 3 DE&I questions that all employees are answering, and we had I think it was over 80-some percent participation rate, which was very good, it's -- we have a work environment that is accepting of diverse backgrounds and ways of thinking. I can be myself at work, and I feel like I belong at this organization. So those are the 3 questions. We have significant improvement year-over-year. We are above the -- we're over 75%, considerably over but just shy of top quartile results. And so if we say -- if we see improvement year-over-year, that would give indication that we are making movement or having progress. Another metric is around -- a big component of our business is selling real estate solutions for our clients. When I first started this role, about 30% of my job -- and by the way, I spent 10 to 11 years within the business segment. I was a Division President within our outsourcing business. I am supporting businesses win. Clients want to talk about what we're doing within DE&I, so I started tracking the number of opportunities in client meetings. We have a solutions toolkit that we created. We have talking points with decks to enable leaders to actually do the presentation so they don't have to ask someone on my team. There's just lots of ways we can engage. We will get to a point where we're quantifying that and showing the impact. We know when we win because of it. Our clients will tell us. And we also know when we were disadvantaged. You'll say that, too. You just can't show up at a meeting as a homogenous group, right? There has to be diversity. I think our clients are pretty sophisticated. They look and they expect that. Those are just 2, and I'm happy to share at another time or offline some of the other metrics that we're using. But we are very data-centric. We are using data to make good decisions because there's too much demand on our time, and we've got to focus on the things that we believe are going to move the needle most.

Fantastic. That's great. So I'm watching the clock a bit, and I want to make sure I see a lot of questions coming through. I would say, and I'm certainly willing, I know that Tim and Natalie as well, like any of these questions that you want offline that we can help with, shape with. Things like specific questions, specific roles, makeup and composition of committees, some of these that are coming through, happy to handle some of those offline. I think in 1 of your earlier comments, Natalie, you talked a bit about transparency but also the accountability piece. So I will say at S&P Global, 1 of, I think, are game changer for us in helping us just advance and progress the way we need to has been the degree of people analytics, understanding data, the insights we can draw from having more regular whether you call them a scorecard or a report or a quarterly business for you, whatever those are. Having that granular data, being able to slice and dice it and present it back to individual leaders not just at the top of the house, but being able to go into their leadership teams in top to manager A and manager B, right, and say, John, this is what your data is showing us. Having those conversations has been hugely impactful and has been able to help us understand where we have on hot zones and pockets that we need to address, and also to know and trying to figure out what we're doing well and how do we scale that a bit more. So can you talk a little bit about how you guys manage, I guess, the information flow to the businesses and how you guys are looking to hold folks accountable?

Yes, absolutely. So my team, in particular, we are looking at data all the time, and we're reporting both to the Board, to our ERGs, our affinity networks, to our affinity groups, which are actually locally organized and comprised of our associates, so our more junior talent, we're reporting out that data all the time. And so there are conversations that are being had about what the data means and there's opportunities to add color. Like I said, the qualitative is equally as important in my view as the quantitative. But there's opportunities to add color to that all along the way. So I think it's extremely important to rely on the data but also to tell the story to communicate broadly and in depth, right, then we can slice the data in many ways. We look at -- we look at things that are -- how many folks are promoted to partner while on maternity or while on parental leave over time to ensure that there aren't any biases sneaking into our processes. Another way that we sort of emphasize accountability is as part of our mentorship sponsorship program, we meet first the leadership of all of our practice groups and all of our departments, but then we also follow up throughout the year. So quarterly, the D&I team meets with each department, each practice group, looks at their diversity data, the raw numbers and the diverse folks in their groups, how those individuals are being staffed on different clients, different matters. We also look at sort of -- we have in-depth conversations about each of our diverse and women associates to understand what they're -- how they're performing and what we can do to support their development and their progression. And then we embed accountability metrics in evaluations. I think that's key and extremely important. At the end of the year, all of our attorneys, they are asked how do they contribute to diversity, equity and inclusion at the firm, and be specific about that. And to the extent that isn't a part of their evaluation or they can't call attention to how it looked in, that is -- that does impact how they are evaluated at the firm. And so I think there are a number of ways to increase accountability, both with sticks and carrots. And I encourage everyone to think creatively about their organization and what would work and how to embed D&I in those spaces. One other thing I might mention is even in our recruiting processes, so when we go -- when we debrief on our interviews, there is typically someone in the room that is -- that understands sort of DEI issues there to catch bias that may sneak into the conversation. So we try to be thoughtful about what are the points where evaluations are being made, what are the points that are... [Technical Difficulty]

Give Natalie a second. Network connectivity. Tim, why don't you...

What she said is the -- it requires a carrot and a stick, but I'll emphasize the carrot first. Carrot works much better. You have to have a stick, but a carrot works much better.

I find asking the question in the right forum or rewarding than the team that has managed to push gender over 50% or really, higher, at a rate for some population. Calling that out on the right meetings can go so far, right? They put the energy and the time in, they found the right partner, they put the right people out in the field to do the recruiting, right, and they've been managing to move the needle in some ways. And I think I'm with you. I think the carrot goes an awful long way. Can we talk for just a second, Tim, on the ratings and rankings and some of the assessments and surveys that we do throughout the calendar year. There's a much bigger emphasis on the human capital side, human capital metrics, social capital metrics. One of the participants is asking, like, how do you take in some of that feedback and couple that with what you're learning on your employee engagement survey and some of your other internal feedback loops to tell your story? Can you talk a little bit about how those things come together at CBRE?

One of our investments, again, is in the Center of Excellence. So when we get those results, the employee engagement results back, we are able to see them by business segment, line of business, by gender, ethnicity. And hopefully, we'll be able to do it by disability and a lot of other attributes that we now are able to track. So understanding those results and then looking at correlation, so we have all sorts of data points in terms of representation, markets. The same thing in partnering with our ethics, compliance, governance, just putting all of these different data points together to analyze to help drive the initiatives that we think will put us closer to our outcome-based approach. One of the things specific to the indexes, we have a team that reviews, looks at the questions, looks at the feedback. They say, how can we do better specific to this particular index? And does that align with the initiatives that we think, right, will best position us to be successful as a company? Generally, there's alignment. But being very intentional and focused on those is a key component, right? I mean, you just don't take the survey, you study the survey. It's no different than, right, taking the bar exam for law school or the MCAT. You have to understand what is important and what they're asking, and then you look at your own internal capabilities. What are you able to do, what are you funded with the resources that you have, what are you able to achieve? And then you execute against it and hold yourself and others accountable and recognize those that are excelling or doing well, right? There are a lot of champions out there. And giving them praise and recognition, as you mentioned is critical.

That's great. I'll mention our team spends a lot of time out in the functions, partnering with them on questions that relate to their area of business. So rather than just going, let's just take talent acquisition for a moment. Rather than just going and asking for the data, grabbing the data, doing the survey, getting the survey results. Creating that holistic feedback loop to say to them, last year, we scored an X. This year, we scored a Y. The benchmarking report which we're paying for because it's valuable, tells us what we could dial up here and here and here and dial down here, build that feedback loop back to the stakeholders across the business. In some cases, it's 80, 90 people. It takes time and energy to create those loops, but that's how we use some of the ratings and rankings in-house to be able to, one, use the outside-in view. So it's not just the DE&I team and just the sustainability team at their door. But how can I feel like, well, this is just a reflection of the work that you as a team do. And I think the time and the energy for that is so, so important.

Yes, well said. And you have to be proactive because that takes time, so you have to understand when it's due and then give yourself at least 6 months plus to actually organize and execute against it. I think you said it so precisely, well, done.

Well, Tim, I'm going to wrap it. Thank you for this. The questions in the chat. We will do our best to come back on, but thank you for engaging, for those of you that are on the line. We had a really good session. So I just want to remind a couple of you -- welcome back, Natalie. Perfect.

Sorry about that.

No worries. Your question was spot on, and Tim picked up beautifully. It was great.

Thank you, then.

So we covered a lot today, but if you have follow-up questions, please use the Q&A. We're happy to take them there. You have resources that have been put in the resource tab. I encourage you to each take a look there, some of the external reporting that each of our organizations have done. But everything will be replay, and you can access this at your convenience on demand. You also will be routed when we close out today to the survey form. If you would please just take a moment to complete that survey, that's really, really helpful for us. So thank you to the production team that's helped us run this on the back end. Thank you to Natalie, Tim. Both of you, fantastic guests, and love to have you back. And to all of you that joined us on the call, really just appreciate your time today. So thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.