Summary: At CLA, we promise to know and help our people. While our culture goes hand-in-hand with inclusion in the workplace, we also understand that our people may have found themselves, or may find themselves in the future, facing harassment in the office.<br> CEO Denny Schleper connects with Linda Rubenstein, leader of the Diversity and Inclusion Council, and Pat Bowes, director of People Solutions, to find out what preventative measures the firm is taking in 2018 to prevent harassment, and what steps you should take if you experience treatment that doesn’t align with our culture.<br> [00:00:02]<br> {music up}<br> Narrator: Welcome to “Own the Promise,” a CLA podcast created to share what guides every decision we make and every relationship we cultivate.<br> [00:00:17]<br> Denny: Hello, CLA family. This is Denny Schleper coming to you. I hope everyone’s reporting season, tax season, busy season, or preparation for busy season is going well.<br> I think we are having a phenomenal start to 2018. We have all of the industries doing well today, the service lines doing well, and really the majority of the geographic locations within CLA doing extremely well. I met with the board of directors and the leadership advisory team in Albuquerque, and one of the comments that I had mentioned is, you know, we are really operating probably in very good times, and our goal — probably all of our goals as a CLA family — is to continue to do all the things to keep that moving forward.<br> Obviously, there’ll be outside influences that’ll continue to give us challenges, but we’ll address those challenges. I think they key is to make sure that we aren’t creating our own challenges within CLA, and what I mean by that is that we continue to live the CLA promise, we continue to create opportunities for all of our clients, and creating opportunities for all of us here at CLA.<br> [00:01:36]<br> But obviously, there’s things that always do come to my mind, and there are things that sometimes concern me as to how are we really addressing certain issues within CLA? And one of those lately has been the whole harassment issue within our society that we’ve all heard of, and we’re aware of the many, many stories and the #metoo influences that are in our marketplace today. CPA firms, professional service firms, we’re not immune to this type of thing, and so I just started wondering and concerning myself as to how much of this is happening within CLA.<br> What are we doing, not only as leadership, but all of us, to make sure that we have the type of environment and culture that will really make this the place where everybody wants to be, everyone feels good, everyone feels inclusive, no one feels harassed within CLA, and also, hopefully, in the rare occurrences that it does happen, the firm is able to react in order to keep that environment and culture the way that we want it to be.<br> I’ve asked Pat Bowes, who heads up our people solutions group within the firm, and Linda Rubenstein, who heads up the D&I council, and really have a discussion around this issue within CLA. Pat Bowes, I’d like to start with you and just ask you, Pat, from what you experience across the firm, how prevalent is it that reporting and so forth comes to the HR group, to the people solutions group, really addressing or trying to address some of these issues?<br> [00:03:27]<br> Pat: Thanks, Denny. You know, as you mentioned, we’re obviously observing an issue here that’s societal in nature, and while we’ve got a really strong culture and a culture that we’re all proud of, as a part of that society, this is something that we’re certainly not immune to.<br> However, with the question about how much volume there is internally, I’d have to say that the volume is fairly low around the firm.<br> [00:03:58]<br> Denny: Pat, obviously,
