As disgruntled employees share stories of mistreatment at work based on gender, race or politics, workplace tensions and company reputations are increasingly being hashed out on a public scale.

The trend is pervasive in startup hot spots like Silicon Valley, where Uber and Google are the latest tech giants to experience a company culture crisis after negative employee experiences hit the press. But the risk is everywhere, even in emerging technology hubs like the Triangle. Along with notoriety comes expectation and responsibility.

Triangle stakeholders understand that it takes a strategic, non-flippant approach to compete with other growing tech hubs while fostering a startup culture that embraces diversity and provides meaningful work for local people.

This is the spirit behind a new series of events put on by the Research Triangle Foundation, and bolstered by a partnership with Inspiring Capital, a New York firm that provides consulting and funding to social impact ventures and projects.

Called The Future of Talent, the series aims to educate and equip Triangle-area companies and executives to build healthy and appealing culture within their ranks.

The series complements a mission of both Inspiring Capital and RTF: to help companies provide meaningful and fulfilling work for people, and to grow the bottom line.

The end goal is to make sure local companies are able to solve workplace challenges, to engage existing employees, and attract new ones. In doing so, they should also ensure social equity and fair treatment to all.

The organizations have already hosted two events. Future of Talent organizer and RTP Director of Company and University Engagement Lisa Jemison says they are giving executives the venue to “look with laser focus on their talent, to help each other and find solutions.”

Open and honest discussion promotes healthy culture

At Future of Talent’s monthly events, execs from RTP-area companies like Cisco, Fidelity Investments and Lulu.com meet behind closed doors to discuss a key workplace issue like gender equality, diversity or generational differences.

Their employees join together in a separate room to discuss the same issue and plan how they’ll bring up concerns, praises or comments about the topic to company leaders in a later, conjoined session.

As these meetings commence, a mediator takes notes on participants’ comments to inform the larger discussion. When the two groups reconvene, they discuss how each can align their strengths and motivations with the needs of their organizations and the surrounding community.

A past Future of Talent session focused on the topic “Demystifying Millennials as Future Leaders.” Credit: Anna Rhyne/RTP

Inspiring Capital’s role is to compile a white paper after each event combining the ideas, comments and potential future policies brought up in the discussions with data relevant to the topic. The organization also uses the results to select topics for future events.

A pilot event in May addressed how gender bias takes shape in a workplace, particularly as women are reentering their careers after months or years of being a primary caregiver.

One startup to participate was Durham’s InHerSight, an anonymous workplace feedback platform to measure how companies support women employees. Founder and CEO Ursula Mead attended the closed-door session alongside executives from other companies. She says the experience reminded her the power of bringing key stakeholders into a discussion to share perspectives, challenges and ideas.

“Having the two groups meet separately, but at the same time and in close proximity fostered a shared sense of purpose and intent, while also encouraging open and frank discussion,” Mead adds.

The second Future of Talent event (in June) focused on how companies and Millennials could better work together to improve the internal operations and, ultimately, partner with one another for the good of the company.

Future iterations in the series include “Transition from Higher Education to Work,” held at The Frontier in September, and “Pipelines of Diverse Talent,” taking place in October.

Jemison says RTF is continuing to engage with the companies that have already participated, but the organization is also seeking leads for new ones. About a half dozen companies haven taken part so far.

An unplanned, but fruitful partnership

The focus on talent is an example of one of Research Triangle Foundation’s “unplanned partnerships.” The nonprofit foundation has made it a tradition to include a line item in each annual budget for opportunities that fit with the RTF mission but aren’t expected. They give the foundation flexibility to be creative and pursue interesting new projects.

The Inspiring Capital partnership is a perfect example, Jemison says.

Inspiring Capital was founded in 2012 by Nell Derick Debevoise, an experienced nonprofit executive. She saw a need to instill the foundations of business (strategy, finance, marketing and operations) into nonprofits to help them activate the growth they need to succeed.

The firm (a certified B Corp meeting socially-focused business standards) provides consulting, risk and growth capital, and access to talent to post-concept phase not-for-profit organizations, such as Venture for America, Worldfund and Youth INC. It also hosts a handful of fellowship programs for professionals, undergraduates, women and MBA students.

Inspiring Capital’s relationship with RTF began last year as Debevoise wanted to extend an MBA fellowship program to the RTP area.

Debevoise says Inspiring Capital hadn’t considered a formal geographic expansion at the time, but was drawn to the “incredible active role of the universities in the area, a burgeoning and active B Corp community, and a forward-looking philanthropic and public sector committed to sustainable development.”

These components align with Inspiring Capital’s model, driving realization that the Triangle was “an ideal place” for the firm’s first physical expansion to a new region.

Debevoise says the very first meeting with the RTF team “revealed the extent of overlap between our goals and their focus areas: women in the workforce, university partnerships, and sustainable economic development.”

Though the MBA fellowship expansion to RTP hadn’t come to complete fruition just yet, the meetings were the starting point for the The Future of Talent series.

After establishing a common ground, the two entities drew up a partnership that made sense for both parties. The event series would extend Inspiring Capital’s mission to the Southeast and boost RTP’s role in facilitating growth within the local tech community—its employers, talent base and stakeholders.

In The Future of Talent series, Inspiring Capital’s role is to conceive the programming and subject matter. This helps RTP stay neutral on the discussion points, and point to the white papers as the outcome of each event.

Jemison says the purpose of the series is “not just to have a conversation and be analytic about the data points.” The series goes further than that by enabling RTF to better understand who they’re in service to, helping Duke, NC State, UNC and its hundreds of companies “build, program and put together talent.”

In sync, the partnership helps Inspiring Capital tap into RTP’s resources and, by extension, the Triangle’s talent base, university presence and startup hubs as it expands to the area. Its goal is to work with local nonprofits and social ventures in a broader capacity in the Triangle, and to bring its programs here.

Successful events so far show relevance to Triangle companies

The event series is fitting well with a collective local commitment to foster a diverse, talented and multidisciplinary workforce that, at its core, is representative of the region as a whole.

Across the Triangle, there are conversations underway around diversity and inclusion, with startup hubs and companies reporting their successes in recruiting, attracting and retaining talent.

The RTF effort continues that momentum and encourages open lines of communication between company executives and their employees around issues that could divide them.

Gender equity in the workplace is one of them. The whitepaper produced after the pilot event cited some alarming stats. A 2015 McKinsey & Company study revealed that while 74 percent of companies report that their CEOs are committed to gender diversity, less than half of employees are convinced that gender diversity is actually a top priority for their CEO. Only a third view it as a top priority for their direct manager.

By tackling the topic head on, discussion during the event led to proactive ways companies could recruit and retain mid-career women.

One idea outlined in the whitepaper is to design a program that identifies high-potential women and encourages them to create personalized development plans to stretch their own assignments, job rotations and mentorship opportunities with senior leaders.

In a statement about the partnership and the results of the first event, RTP Marketing and Special Projects Manager Julie Terry wrote that the talent gap discussed at the event “is one that can be addressed when employers and employees consider the kinds of skills that can quickly be learned by professionals that have been out of the traditional workplace.”

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Following through in the long term

The Future of Talent is taking issues out of company board rooms and generic email memos, and providing a physical space for companies and employees to hash them out.

As a result, they’re brainstorming actionable solutions together and informing other companies on how to do the same.

That is precisely why the Future of Talent is designed as it is. Jemison recalls Inspiring Capital and RTF wanted the programming to be “meaningful and impactful…not just another networking event.”

The organizations hope to continue the program indefinitely as former participants return to the events, new companies join and new topics are brought into discussion.

In the extended future, Debevoise says Inspiring Capital will be establishing a place within RTP’s planned expansion project, bringing its existing programs and fellowships to a new location in the South.

She envisions the partnership evolving into a “continuation and growth in our joint programming to help RTP companies and neighbors thrive in the twenty-first century marketplace, with particular regard to how they’re attracting, developing and engaging talent.”