Diversity 2019: Carmen Jandacek

PUF:What is your role at Arizona Public Service?

Carmen Jandacek: I have the privilege to do a job for the organization that ensures we act in an ethical manner. I am a steward of the culture and our values, ensuring that our organization adheres to our values. I serve as a resource to leadership, and teams that require ethics guidance. I do a lot of training in this space.

I run a hotline where people bring concerns to my office, and we investigate those concerns. We help employees get resolution on their concerns. 

It's making sure that our employees always know that there is a place to go if they have a concern, or if they feel that our values aren't being upheld in the way that we have articulated. I help enforce our Code of Ethics and Business Practices, and it is wonderful that I am able to help employees every day.

My entire career has been in either HR or ethics, so I have been part of diversity efforts and initiatives with this company as long as I've been an employee here, since 1996. From a personal perspective, I am the chair of one of our employee network groups. I see how important the efforts that companies make toward diversity and inclusion help engagement.

PUF:I hear about these network groups or specialty groups. They're important because once you hire a certain kind of person, you want them to feel they're accepted, and they have role models.

Carmen Jandacek: Absolutely. I look at diversity as the company's job, to make sure that we have a diverse workforce that represents the communities we serve. Once they get into this organization, then all of us as leaders of the company, and as employees of the company, need to make sure that people understand how to belong, and how they can contribute to the company.

One of the ways we do that is to find areas of commonalities where they feel a sense of belonging. We have nine different employee network groups where people can attend meetings, go to events, or network with people that are similar to themselves or different than themselves.

The beautiful aspect with employee network groups is they are inclusive. Every person, no matter who you are, can participate with any one of the groups. 

One of the classic examples is, we have two different women's groups. They are Women in Search of Excellence and Women in Nuclear. Our women's groups are only successful if the group is open, inclusive and invites men to participate, which we do. This allows us to educate and develop different areas of diversity and inclusion in a collaborative rather than singular effort.

PUF:How do you include young people in an organization where a lot of the workers have tenure? 

Carmen Jandacek: We have people who have worked here, on average, fifteen to twenty years. It's hard to break into that. Onboarding programs and leadership inclusion is so important in creating the pathway of meaningful contribution and feeling like you belong. Belonging is an important area where we can move the needle on engagement.

PUF:What is APS doing in workplace diversity, and is it starting to show some good results?

Carmen Jandacek: APS is a really good place to work. The company has put a variety of different strategies in place to make sure our workforce is reflecting the communities that we serve. Even the network groups help with that because we go into the communities and talk about APS. We share with them all the different opportunities in working at APS and the jobs that we have available.

We're starting at the intern level. We're starting at the apprentice level. We're working to ensure that our workplace has all of the right components to be successful. All the research shows that diverse organizations have a better return than those that aren't diverse.

PUF:Why is this such a big payoff for the company?

Carmen Jandacek: It is such a big payoff because we evolve the thinking in the room and beyond, from a linear approach and a myopic approach. If you have all people that think the same, that look the same, and are from the same backgrounds, we may come up with a narrow set of solutions.

When we engage diverse employees into a decision-making process, we end up with a much better, broader solution. It provides a great opportunity to be better, and to compete better, by ensuring that we have the best diversity.

PUF:I imagine this takes a lot of work and cooperation.

Carmen Jandacek: Yes. It does. With diversity and inclusion, part of what comes with that is ensuring respect and civility. When you bring an incredibly diverse group of people together and make a decision, you're going to need to make sure that we all understand and respect each other.

You can't take that for granted in an organization that it just comes naturally to people. It's constantly working, and helping our leadership, to help them understand how to create and cultivate an environment where being challenging is welcomed, and where looking at things from different optics and a different lens is completely okay.

It's one matter to get the people here working for us, but then we need to make sure that they're feeling heard, they're invited into the conversation, and that we aren't creating an environment that is exclusive. It's creating the space for people to stop and say, I want to hear what you have to say. It's the focus on listening and not so much the focus on talking.

PUF:In every utility, a lot of the people are not full-time employees. They are contractors. Only about thirty percent of the people that work in our industry are direct employees. How do you address utility spend?

Carmen Jandacek: It is challenging when you have a large contingent workforce, and when your employees are integrated in a variety of different ways with that contingent workforce. You are working with a variety of suppliers and employers. We have the same expectations when it comes to inclusiveness, respect, civility, and diversity, regardless of who you are working for.

We have an expectation of our employees to uphold our values and to expect them back.

PUF:Looking out three to five years, what are your aspirations for where this is going?

Carmen Jandacek: We're going to see in the next five years that inclusion is moved to the space where diversity is now. That it's an expectation. That if you cannot cultivate that as an organization, you're not going to be successful into the future.

Utilities Spend and Workplace Diversity 2019 Conversations:

• Ralph Izzo, CEO, PSEG
• Richard Mark, Chairman and President, Ameren Illinois
• Charles Matthews, CEO, Peoples Gas and North Shore Gas
• Christine Carmody, Senior Vice President, Eversource Energy
• Doreen Nichols, Vice President, Eversource Energy
• Carmen Jandacek, Director of Ethics, Arizona Public Service
• Laron Evans, Diverse Business Manager, Burns & McDonnell
• Michelle Word, Business Diversity Director, Burns & McDonnell