Events
IAGA SUMMIT 2019 San Francisco, US
Jan Jones Blackhurst, Executive Vice President, Communications and Government Relations, Caesars Entertainment Corporation
Previous to joining Caesars, Jan Jones Blackhurst served two terms as mayor of Las Vegas, from 1991 through 1999. She’s a Stanford graduate and attended the School of Food and Marketing Management at USC. The first ever female mayor of Las Vegas, Jan is a trailblazing pioneer and advocate for women.
In November 2017, Caesars Entertainment announced a commitment to achieve gender equality among its leadership ranks by 2025. In support of this effort, Caesars began work with the Billie Jean King Leadership Initiative (BJKLI) as part of this enhanced commitment to ensure workplace fairness and continue to foster an environment that promotes diversity and inclusion.
Using California’s recently enacted statute requiring all publicly listed companies headquartered in the state to have at least one woman on their board of directors by the end of 2019 as a starting point, this panel will explore how the global gaming industry has an opportunity to set a better example of effective socially responsible programs by moving beyond “minimum requirements” and pursuing equitable treatment in everything from executive compensation, ethnic and gender diversity and inclusion and more. We speak to the panel moderator, Jan Jones Blackhurst
How do you mandate for diversity? Gender, race, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, thinking style, and generations? How do you write rules and regulations for this?
Tere are a series of rules and regulations both state and federal around gender, race, sexual orientation, disability etc. I think a company has to look at this holistically so that diversity and inclusion becomes a business imperative. If you are an inclusive culture then you're employees are going to feel respected and appreciated, and that they have a voice, which results in a positive attitude to their work and much better outreach to customers. What you find is that inclusive cultures get much higher scores from their customers, because their employees are happy, since they are working in environments that embraces them.
You need to be culturally sensitive to who your customers are, it's not just about diversity through employees, it's your customers as well. Customers want to see themselves in your business. Corporations must be aware of how to be culturally appropriate. Caesars has conducted a tremendous amount of work, launching an initiative 18 months ago that aims to be 50/50 by 2025, with equal representation of women at all levels of the organisation, both horizontally and vertically, with race and ethnicity within those goals as well.
Te reason why the enterprise rallied around this goal P48 NEWSWIRE / INTERACTIVE / MARKET DATA
is that more diverse senior management teams have much higher operating outcomes and higher EBITDA. However, it takes a real focus, because you need to change the culture of the organisation in order to change representation within the business.
Can you be inclusive without being exclusive?
Tere was a little bit of rumbling within the company when we introduced our 50/50 initiative. We had white male colleagues discussing the dilemma of others ‘taking their jobs,’ but the fact is it's not ‘their job’ - it's ‘a job.’ We're not looking to change the meritocracy, we want to make sure that when filling roles we have a complete roster of representative and qualified candidates that comprise the entire spectrum. We need to ensure that when making a decision, we're not making that call from a limited pool of candidates. And in making the case that diverse teams equate to higher performance, we enlist the help of male ‘allies.’ Men in the company get involved in helping to drive the initiative and make the case for why this is important not only for the business, but for their partners and children too.
How do you leverage diversity to create high performing environments?
A diverse perspective makes for a better decision. If you are hiring a person that looks like you and thinks like you, then you’ll always approach decision-
The operator viewpoint: the expanding mandate of CSR
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