It is interesting the amount of soul-searching that’s going on in North America, both on the political and corporate front, as I discovered on this recent trip which started in Las Vegas, continued to New York and now headed for Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for Phocuswright, which begins tomorrow.
At Explore 19, Expedia’s annual partners conference in Las Vegas last week, senior politician Colin Powell spoke of how immigrants, like his father, had built the country and how the hospitality industry would not be able to function without them.
In his Broadway musical, “American Utopia”, which I caught over the weekend, pop star David Byrne told the audience that his show would not be possible without immigrants. “I myself am an immigrant, my parents brought me here when I was six, and we have musicians here from Brazil and France.” Out in the foyer, crew members were encouraging people to register as voters.
“You can’t have 20pc of the population – average age 57 – voting on your behalf,” said the musician who started his “Reasons To Be Cheerful” media -platform two years ago because he was getting so depressed and angry with all the bad news in the media.
Profit over Purpose: Corporations have to heal economic divide
Photographed by Adam Shane Productions on a Nikon D5.
Back at Explore ’19, chairman and media magnate Barry Diller told Robin Roberts, host of “Good Morning America” of the need for American corporations to put purpose over profit and to take responsibility for healing the economic divide in the country by paying employees fair wages.
“For the first time, we have a generation who’s lost hope in the future – that they won’t be able to have a better life than their parents,” he said, noting that the American dream had always been built on the promise that if you work hard, there will always be better opportunities.
His comments are reflective of the transformation Expedia Group is undergoing – not only in the way its business units have been reorganized but also in how it is realigning workplace practices in tandem with current times.
CEO and president Mark Okerstrom called on the audience to sign the CEO pledge to support the new purpose statement issued by the Business Roundtable (BRT) in August, which covers sustainability, corporate social responsibility/ community impact as well as diversity and inclusion.
He said so far travel companies formed only two percent of those that had signed and his team was collecting pledges on-site.
Diller said the economic divide had been caused by corporations reaching too far for the last dollar and not paying workers fair wages. That has caused the hope for a better tomorrow to be nearly extinguished. “Those who lead have to lead. The concept of hope for the future has to be restored,” he said.
Hitting the right shots in diversity and inclusion, according to BJK
Photographed by Adam Shane Productions on a Nikon D5.
Diversity and inclusion were key themes explored at the conference in various sessions including an interview of tennis icon Billie Jean King by Melissa Maher, senior vice president, marketing and innovation.
While King acknowledged the strides that had been made in diversity and inclusion – “people can be whoever they want to be now, things are more fluid – from life to gender” – there were improvements still to be made.
She recalled the moment in her career when she was outed by the media. “I lost all my contracts and it took me 20 years to recover from that. Now people are more inclined to accept and celebrate differences.”
Her advice to everyone, women included, is to “be authentic”. “When you are not your authentic self at work, you don’t do well,” she said.
She admitted she struggled with her own parents. “They were homophobic, they had a hard time but it took me so long to understand myself I felt I had to give them time too.”
She observed there were still things to be fixed in the workplace when it comes to gender diversity. “Women are hired for performance, men for their potential. Everyone should be hired for their potential,” she said, adding, “Everytime a woman leads, they think we are leading for women – it’s really irritating”.
Her life lessons – relationships are everything, keep learning how to learn and be a problem solver.
Beyond diversity and inclusion, there were also discussions around how social and political events had to be managed for their impact on the workplace. From social activism around climate change to political events in the UK, US as well as Hong Kong, you could tell this topic resonated well with an audience of executives grappling with similar issues in their respective markets.
Photographed by Adam Shane Productions on a Nikon D5.
Nikki Humphrey, senior vice president, people, of Virgin Atlantic recounted how when she was in her previous company in financial services and the Brexit vote happened, “it created a massive divide in our company and we had to watch out for inappropriate behavior” such as a staffer telling foreigners it was time for them to go home.
“You cannot ignore these issues if you want to create a truly inclusive workplace.”
Blair Hamilton Taylor, partner at Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC), where he is part of the firm’s People & Organisation Practice, encouraged the audience “to seek opportunities where you are the minority in the room. You need uncomfortable conversations to be authentic”.
He said that to create an authentic, listening environment, leaders had to “listen to your people, they will drive the shape, it is not to be driven top down”.
Workplaces also have to be made more caring – for example, Humphrey related the example of having mental health workers in male-dominated departments such as engineers to deal with mental depression.
Expedia Group has set up employee network groups around various interest groups such as disabilities and LGBT to create a more inclusive workplace. However Maher said one had to be careful that such initiatives did not backfire, for example, among “white male executives who now ask ‘do I have to be part of a group to be heard’?”
Having attended the past four Expedia conferences, the change in tone was discernible. Perhaps the shift in agenda was also due to the fact that customers were paying for the first time to attend the conference and Expedia had to dial up the event a notch – it certainly was an impressive production – but the fact remained that these are different times in corporate America.
Economic concerns remain prevalent. Alan Pickerill, CFO, said it was hard to predict if a recession was coming but he cited a global survey which showed a majority of CFOs expecting a recession in their markets by third quarter 2020. The percentage was highest among CFOs in Africa and Asia.
In his meet-the-press session, Okerstrom, speaking about the state of Google SEO headwinds facing the business, said, “The headwind has been there for a very long time, and we are building strong direct customer relationships, and we have seen direct business grow. We are making sure we grow at healthy rates and get through this bump in the road.”
In his conversation with Robin Roberts, host of “Good Morning America”, Diller spoke about the need for “sensible regulation” as he called out Google as “the market power that totally controls what anyone searches for and it gets better at search every year”.
“However if you are an advertiser – we spend $3b a year on Google and that’s fine – however it’s not very nice to compete with us in our own business. That’s what Google has done. We had free search in the past and that’s disappearing.
“We don’t begrudge them the money they make, but we don’t want them to compete with us using our money.”
As someone travelling through the US, though, things haven’t changed that much on the ground. Transferring in San Francisco for a two-hour connection to Las Vegas is still a heart-in-your-mouth experience. Immigration and security queues are long and slow. You can pay $115 for the expedited CLEAR service but I noticed those who did still ended up in the same lines with everyone.
While standing in line at security, I overheard an American man asking two young local girls carrying Jewel-branded shopping bags – they had been with me on the same flight from Singapore – “So what did you think of the waterfall?” he asked.
“Amazing, and the airport – the best in the world. Why can’t ours be like that?”
I guess more soul-searching is needed for answers to that question.