Olivia Leigh, executive vice president, portfolio operations and people at Macerich (NYSE: MAC), participated in a video interview at Nareit’s REITworks: 2023 Conference in Las Vegas on June 28-29.
Leigh offered advice for companies in the early stages of setting priorities for building a diverse and inclusive talent pool. “You really need to know your workforce,” she said, because identifying that baseline is key to developing strategies to attract and retain diverse talent.
Other topics Leigh discussed included ways to make existing employees feel included, valued, and engaged, and what sort of training or accountability should be in place for supervisors in order for companies to maximize their efforts.
Meanwhile, Leah highlighted fresh practices REITs can use to attract and recruit diverse candidates. She noted that Macerich has challenged itself to think more about what transferable skills or core competencies potential candidates need. She stressed the importance of thinking about how we can “change our paradigm about what we think we want from experience in order get a broader candidate pool, because otherwise we’re going to be stuck in a self-fulfilling prophecy.”