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What makes a job a great place to work? A sense of equity and ownership, says Michael Bush, the CEO of the conveniently named Great Place to Work. They're a global consulting and analytics firm that produces the annual Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For list, the 100 Best Workplaces for Women list, the Best Workplaces for Diversity list, and dozens of other distinguished workplace rankings around the world. Michael's new book is A Great Place to Work for All: Better for Business, Better for People, Better for the World, and he's brought to you today by Amway. Amway believes that ​diversity and inclusion ​are ​essential ​to the ​growth ​and ​prosperity ​of ​today’s ​companies. When woven ​into ​every ​aspect ​of ​the talent ​life ​cycle, companies committed to diversity and inclusion are ​the ​best ​equipped ​to ​innovate, ​improve ​brand image ​and ​drive ​performance.

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MICHAEL BUSH

Michael C. Bush is CEO of Great Place to Work, the global consulting and analytics firm that produces the annual Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For list, the 100 Best Workplaces for Women list, the Best Workplaces for Diversity list, and dozens of other distinguished workplace rankings around the world.

Driven by a love of business and an unwavering commitment to fair and equitable treatment, Michael joined Great Place to Work as CEO in 2015, bringing 30 years of experience leading and growing organizations. This includes serving as CEO of Tetra Tech Communications, which he grew from $40 million to $300 million in revenues. Michael is a former member of President Obama’s White House Business Council and a founding board member of the private equity seed-fund, Fund Good Jobs, which invests in small inner-city businesses.

Since 2015, Michael has expanded Great Place to Work’s global mission to build a better world by helping organizations create Great Places to Work not just for some, but For All. Under his leadership, the firm has developed a higher standard of excellence that accounts for fair and equitable treatment of employees across demographic groups, as well as executive leader effectiveness, innovation, and financial sustainability.

Michael has led the firm’s migration to a SaaS-enabled survey platform that offers real-time predictive people analytics. This allows leaders to take immediate, targeted action to improve their leadership and financial performance.

His new book, A Great Place to Work For All (2018) outlines the compelling business and social benefits that come from these efforts. He is also a frequent speaker on great workplaces, diversity and inclusion efforts, and the connection to business results.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Michael Bush: We choose not to talk a lot about diversity and inclusion. We’re not running from the topic.

We actually feel like we’re addressing it head on using analytics and revenue and profit to drive the conversation versus some moral imperative. And what that means is that it’s not about fairness and equality alone, it’s about equity, which is about people getting – if you treat someone as a person they need a little more of something than perhaps someone else.

And actually if you treat everyone the same you are not going to get the best out of everyone.

So equality can be used, in fact, to exclude people and to make the environment a place that certain groups of people don’t want to be in because you’re treating everyone the same. That’s just not the way humans work.

You know, I have two kids. One of them might need (when they were young) violin lessons. Another one might need dental care. Well the dental care costs a lot more than the violin lessons, but they both got something that they needed but it wasn’t necessarily ever equal. But it’s addressing people where they are.

We also find that diversity and inclusion, once you bring up those words tension goes up in the room, because what happens is when you say that what people think is race but they don’t want to talk about it because they don’t know how to talk about that.

So they awkwardly talk about diversity and inclusion and the problem that needs to be addressed gets diluted. We begin to talk about – we can’t talk about race so then we just say “people of color” and “people majority” because we can’t say “race”.

And then we talk about men and women because that’s easier than race. And then what about the di...

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