Strength in diversity

The U.S. Small Business Administration’s Office of the Inspector General faced unprecedented challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, but a diverse staff was able to weather the storm. Inspector General Hannibal Ware details how his organization built a diverse workforce able to withstand tough times and how other organizations can do the same.

Two years ago, my organization, the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG), faced a challenge like no other. A global pandemic required us to work remotely, changing everything about our day-to-day operations. While much of the world was slowing down, we were ramping up at lightning speed to oversee the colossal disbursement of more than $1 trillion in loans from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program (EIDL) to small businesses across the U.S. affected by COVID-19. But we rose to the challenge, and we couldn’t have succeeded in overseeing this significant pandemic-relief program and combating the fraud accompanying it if it hadn’t been for a work culture built on diversity and inclusion. (See “Paycheck Protection Program,” U.S. Small Business Administration, and “Biden’s new SBA head on Covid loans and financial relief businesses can still get,” by Eric Rosenbaum, CNBC, Aug. 11, 2021.)

Our diverse group of nearly 180 auditors, criminal investigators and support staff conducted successful pandemic oversight because of their commitment to our mission of providing independent, objective oversight to improve the integrity, accountability and performance of the SBA. This diverse group worked together and innovated agile methods of detecting and reporting real-time problems with internal controls in the PPP and the EIDL, while simultaneously bringing fraudsters to justice. By alerting the SBA in real time about the lack of internal controls, we were able to mitigate the tide of fraud and help ensure that money was reserved for eligible businesses.

It takes all types

Our work of rooting out fraud, waste and abuse might sound grand, but the daily work of indictments, arrests, analysis, quality assurance, report drafting, case management, interviews, emails and multiple daily meetings can overwhelm even the most enthusiastic fraud examiner, especially during difficult times. Yet, staff at SBA OIG were engaged and prepared to execute the mission, even when social-distancing requirements during the pandemic meant that we couldn’t see each other face to face. This is a testament to our dedication to inclusivity and intentional focus over the years to create a culture that could sustain enormous shifts in workloads and work-life balances. We committed to driving organizational change on the premise that our people are the most valuable assets, and everything blossomed from there. When we designed our strategic plans to prioritize employees, we looked to hiring diverse and talented subject-matter experts who aligned with our values.

In the anti-fraud field, it pays to have a diverse and inclusive organization. How do these attributes help fight fraud? Think of it this way: When you have a single brain operating with a certain worldview about how best to interview witnesses or present evidence, you might have ideas that aren’t right for every situation. When you have multiple brains wired differently come together, though, you can approach complex problems with innovative solutions. Regardless of the field or industry, organizations that seek diverse viewpoints have higher rates of innovation and make better decisions, and there’s strong research suggesting that organizations with a diverse set of employees are more profitable. (See “Want a More Innovative Company? Simple. Hire A More Diverse Workforce,” by Ben Schiller, Fast Company, Jan. 12, 2018, and “The Business Case for More Diversity,” Dieter Holger, The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 26, 2019.)

Doing better

Building a diverse organization starts with understanding your organization’s current level of diversity. Organizations can measure and share data about the racial, ethnic, cultural, religious, socio-economic class, gender, age, sexuality, (dis)ability and education-level composition of their employees. The U.S. federal government is working to hire a more diverse workforce; however, there’s room for improvement. For example, in 2020, 63% of SBA employees had worked in the federal government for 15 years or more. (For more about diversity in the federal government, see “2020 Office of Personnel Management Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey.”) That’s a significant percentage of people who’ve been shaped by the depth of their experiences knowingly — and unknowingly. Recognizing this, we’ve invested in unconscious bias training for employees to increase awareness of their biases and to reduce the likelihood that their biases are affecting the quality of their work.

When organizational leaders place a premium on diversity and create a safe space for all individuals to share thoughts and ideas, organizations can truly thrive and innovate. This begins with recruiting talent. Using objective tools such as behavioral assessments not only can lead to better qualified candidates but also guard against biases that may find their way into the hiring process. The OIG has invested in such tools to identify the best talent to accomplish its mission.

In our five-year strategic plan, one of our goals is to cultivate and maintain a culture that inspires innovation, high performance, self-leadership and accountability. Our objectives include:

• Ensuring the OIG recruits and retains a diverse, high-performing and outcome-driven workforce.
• Fostering an inclusive organizational culture that inspires employee engagement, cooperation and fairness.

To achieve those objectives, we support employee participation in advisory groups, use surveys to assess the OIG’s working environment and employee viewpoints, and provide leadership that strives to promote diversity and inclusion. We’ve tied these measures of success to our employees’ and executive staff’s performance plans. Each year, we measure our progress to see how close we are to achieving our goals.

Change begins at the top

Leadership is the essential component of a diverse and inclusive organization. An inclusive leader is one who acts with compassion and authenticity and rewards the behavior they wish to see in their employees. Leaders should be role models and promoters of growth and should be outspoken advocates for employee engagement, diversity and inclusion.

Investing time and resources into determining the ideal environment in which your employees thrive bolsters creative thinking and growth in your organization. You can make these investments go the extra mile by exploring how equitable your current policies and practices are. Here are some practical questions and considerations that can help you determine how equitable your organization’s policies are:

• Consider intersectionality as you assess diversity in your organization. Intersectionality is a framework for understanding that people’s experiences with discrimination are interconnected with their race, gender, sexuality, physical ability, ethnicity and social class. (See “What is intersectionality, and what does it have to do with me?” YW Boston Blog.)
• Are there policies that are helping or hindering growth for certain groups of people?
• How are different groups disbursed across positions? Are there certain demographics concentrated in particular departments?
• If you’re operating in a remote or hybrid work environment, are you unconsciously favoring employees who aren’t family caregivers for new projects? Are you favoring employees who come into the office? Do your employees have equal opportunity for training?

There are many more questions that can start a conversation about diversity, equity, inclusivity and accessibility in our workplaces, and thankfully there are now many resources and trainings available that can help promote growth in this area. (See sidebar at the end of this article.) If we want to be resilient fraud-fighting organizations, then we need to build work cultures that value diversity in life experiences and thoughts. When another crisis occurs, which inevitably will, I want my teams ready, and that means putting into practice those inclusive behaviors right now. Fraud favors no one, and neither should our organizations. To examine complex cases of fraud, we need creative ideas from diverse individuals who are engaged and empowered to make change and find solutions. “Engaged” and “empowered” are fundamental characteristics of a resilient culture.

Disasters will strike, so we need to be sure that an examination of our equity and inclusion practices is constant. This means being reflective of our past and keeping an eye towards the future. I believe SBA OIG is on the right path by proactively seeking inclusive practices that will lead to equity, but there is always room for improvement. Each of us, no matter what position, is invited to become inclusive leaders in the workplace. The commitment to making change at each level is what makes organizational impact long lasting.

Hannibal “Mike” Ware, CFE, is the inspector general of the U.S. Small Business Administration and chair of the ACFE Board of Regents. Contact him at Hannibal.Ware@sba.gov.

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