IAM602- President Addresses Issues of Harassment and Discrimination

Stephanie Davis has been on the front lines addressing issues of harassment and discrimination within organizations of all sizes for more than 20 years – both as an employment attorney in New York and since joining Employment Practices Solutions (EPS) in 2000. EPS collaborates with organizations nationwide to build respect through high-quality training, objective and unbiased complaint investigations, human resources and employment law expert testimony, and a wide range of human resources consulting services.

In her role as a consultant, Stephanie delivered thousands of training sessions and investigated hundreds of workplace complaints of all kinds from sexual harassment to retaliation to bullying. Currently, Stephanie leads EPS as its President. She received her B.S. in Political Science from Barnard College and her J.D. from the University of Oregon School of Law.

• CEO Hack: Approaching things in a neutral manner, with goals in mind
• CEO Nugget: Thinking about the WHY of your business rather than focusing on WHAT
• CEO Defined: Getting to my background and translating the experience into guiding and inspiring a team

Website: http://www.epspros.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/employmentpracticessolutions/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/epspros
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/employment-practices-solutions-inc-/?viewAsMember=true

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Transcription

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of.

This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:29

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Stephanie Davis of Employment Practices Solutions, also known as EPS.

Stephanie, it's awesome to have on the show.

Stephanie Davis 0:41

Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.

Gresham Harkless 0:42

Pleasure is all ours. What I want us to do, is read a little bit more about Stephanie, so you hear about all the awesome things that she's doing.

Stephanie has been on the frontlines addressing issues of harassment and discrimination within the organization of organizations of all sizes for more than 20 years, both as an employment attorney in New York and since joining EPs in 2000, EPS collaborates with organizations nationwide to build respect through high-quality training, objective and unbiased complaint investigations, human resources and employment law expert testimony and a wide range of human resource consulting services.

In her role as a consultant, Stephanie delivered 1000s of training sessions and investigated hundreds of workplace complaints of all kinds from sexual harassment to retaliation to bullying. Currently, Stephanie has led EPS as its president, she received her BS in political science from Barnard College and her JD from the University of Oregon School of Law.

Stephanie, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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Stephanie Davis 1:42

I am.

Gresham Harkless 1:43

Awesome. Let's do it. So I wanted to kick everything off and kind of rewind back. I know, I read your bio, and I wanted to hear how everything got started. What led you to your current position now?

Stephanie Davis 1:51

Okay, so I, as you relate, I didn't actually start EPS myself. EPS was founded in 96 by two employment attorneys, Pamela Fagan, and Laurie Jones, who are still heavily involved with our organization on its board. So I reported to them, but they were practicing law in Dallas practicing employment law. And they saw a need among their clients for proactive services designed to prevent some of the problems that they were encountering, so designed to promote respect in the workplace, essentially. So as a result, they quit practicing law and started EPS.

As you mentioned, it's a consulting business primarily focused on training to, prevent problems in the workplace, and investigations into complaints about workplace behavior. And it's since then, almost 25 years later, we have about 25 consultants nationwide, and we've got a much wider-ranging or wider range of consulting services. And I personally joined in 2000, as a consultant, I worked at EPS as a consultant for about a decade, providing mainly training and investigations. In 2010, I assumed this role, this leadership role where I oversee all aspects of the business.

Gresham Harkless 3:20

Awesome. Well, I definitely appreciate the founders, obviously, for believing in you, continuing to carry on the spirit and everything that is very much so needed in today's world of helping out with harassment and discrimination and just for organizations, especially, because I don't know if this has been a result of maybe the growing awareness of these issues going on.

I'm not sure if that's where more services come from, but I think it's definitely something that's needed in this day and age and will probably, sadly, continue to be needed.

Stephanie Davis 3:56

You know, our consulting company was originally structured around the workplace and issues related to the employment context. But over almost 25 years, we've really brown-branched out to other contexts as well. So we will work to promote. So our mission is to promote respect. We'll do that in whatever context that we're called to do so in. But others that have come up time and time again, outside of the workplace, our schools, so we do a lot of work in the educational context, and places of worship and really any other community that's interested in fostering respect, we'll work with them to come up with a plan in that regard.

So while our services involve really any kind of consulting that that relates to human resources or the law or fostering respect as a general topic, we do have core service areas and you mentioned some of them. There's training, we do very high-quality, customized training on any topic ranging from fostering respect to exploring common, conscious biases. Lately, we've been doing a lot of work on diversity and inclusion, we'll do Management 101 training for people who need to know how to work within the laws and manage other people. So it goes on and on. But that's the first bucket.

The second bucket is investigations. So well, we are the independent third parties that come in, to look into concerns that are raised, so that they can be assessed in a neutral fashion in determining you know, what did or didn't happen based on the facts. And then the third bucket is more general, it's consulting, which often but not always takes the shape of expert advice and testimony when there's litigation. So we'll come in and opine as to whether an organization did the right thing, under a under a set of circumstances.

Gresham Harkless 6:04

Nice, definitely sounds like you guys kind of cover all the bases. I love when you were explaining the foundation of the organization and how you're the president. Almost my mind automatically went to kind of like the golden rule. I think that prophesies also in line with your overall mission is like treat to treat others the way you want to be treated.

As simplistic as that is, it manifests itself in so many different ways. It's great to hear that, of course, it sounds like you guys do the training to make sure that you know, people are maybe more on the offensive or aware. But then at the same time, if those issues Brewer are turned into something you have also those services that help out with that as well.

Stephanie Davis 6:44

Yeah, I mean, and people come at training from all different angles, sometimes they really are being proactive, and they want to keep a good thing going.

Gresham Harkless 6:53

Right.

Stephanie Davis 6:54

Other times, you know, we're called in to do training under a consent decree. So there's been litigation, there's been bad stuff has gone down, and they need to fix it. And we've brought in, under, a mandate to do training. And the same thing with investigations. Sometimes organizations really want to be proactive, we feel no one's made a complaint, but we just feel things aren't right, in a particular department, can you come in and do an environmental assessment, and maybe we can get ahead of things here?

Other times, you know, there's, there's a lawsuit, there's a there's not only a complaint, but the person has filed a lawsuit, and we are called in to look into what happened. So we try to provide we try to achieve our mission, our mission of promoting respect, however, we're called to call into an organization.

Gresham Harkless 7:48

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I don't know if you know, that was part of the steps I was gonna ask you exactly. I know, it might, of course, vary depending on when you're caught in how you're called in. But I know, I heard you mentioned that environmental assessment, I think you called it, is that kind of like the first step? Or like how, clients usually, or typically will work with you and how everything gets started if they need help?

Stephanie Davis 8:12

No, not necessarily. I mean, it really runs the gamut. We, you know, we are called by we are called by clients, most often based on reputation. So we were referred to other clients or a client has used us and we've made a good impression, and they want to use us again, but they come at, you know, come from other directions as well. Sometimes they Google us, they are in a panic, and they need to do training that is compliant with New York's law, which says that they have to do training in the next month, or whatever the case may be.

Or they're under the gun because somebody's you know, they've gotten a demand letter from a lawyer saying this person feels they were treated unfairly, and they don't have any idea what happened, and they don't have the internal resources to manage it. So there's not really one path to EPS. But, you know, we approach things, we try to approach things always in a neutral manner with the goal being let's find out what happened. Let's try to get people to get along here better and, and get and get back to being productive in their jobs.

Gresham Harkless 9:24

Nice. I definitely appreciate that. Now, I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. That could be like a word of wisdom or a piece of advice or even if you can hop into a time machine, what might you tell your younger business self?

Stephanie Davis 9:38

Okay, so I think my best answer is it's not something that's original to me, it's just something I've heard, in fact, I, I believe it was Simon Sinek. I think I watched one of his videos and it's, it thinks it's, and at EPS we've been talking about this a lot because it really shifted the way we looked at how we help our client. It's thinking about the why behind your business rather than focusing on the what.

When we keep returning to our mission, which is promoting respect, that's what drives everything else and it really helps us identify and come up with solutions for the challenges our clients face.

Gresham Harkless 10:21

Awesome. I absolutely love that. Now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different, quote and quote, CEOs on this show.

So Stephanie, what does that mean to you?

Stephanie Davis 10:32

It means getting to be allowed to take my background, practicing law, and then providing surface services as a consultant. So taking all that background, and translating that experience into guiding and hopefully inspiring, this really incredible group of smart and dedicated people that I work with, to a person everyone at EPS is passionate about collaborating with organizations to tackle issues that are often uncomfortable, that are that are challenging and thorny, but we all want to do it, because we know that our efforts can make the organization stronger and better. I get to lead all these people doing that great work. So that's the privilege that I'm allowed to do in my work life.

Gresham Harkless 10:32

Yeah, that's absolutely awesome. I'm glad you use the word kind of privilege, because getting the opportunity to kind of, as you said, before, you know, even be passionate about what it is that you're doing. But as you said, it really gets to affect a tremendous amount of change in organizations and the people within their organizations as well, too. And of course, the people that are on your team that are able to kind of think of these creative ways to tackle problems and creative ways to provide, solutions and services to tap out the clients as well, too, is definitely something that, you know, is a blessing and something that's really awesome that you've been able to do.

Stephanie Davis 12:04

Yeah, and I think everybody at, you know, in the EPS community feels that that way. And I would just add that. I think that in this wake of me too, and where we are, as a larger culture, what we do seems more mission-critical than ever. We very much look at this moment, as an opportunity as a crucial opportunity for all of us to keep valuing and working toward the goals of respect inclusion, and empathy. And, you know, we hope that EPS continues to be a key resource and helping people to arrive there.

Gresham Harkless 12:47

Yeah, absolutely, it definitely sounds like it as well, too. As you know, again, you have that strong why, and I think that's something that especially with more people having, I don't know if I want to say a platform, but a way to kind of speak out a lot more about things that are, related to inequality, or discrimination or harassment, or whatever exactly might be going on. Now, we not only have that platform, but we also have, great organizations like yourself that are able to kind of tackle and help us to make sure that we are creating, you know, respect all across different aspects of our lives.

Stephanie Davis 13:21

Yeah, that's right. And, you know, again, I think that we're all passionate about this, we all think it's important to not only have the conversations that are hard, but that and that need to be had, but to create safe opportunities to have those conversations. And, you know, that's not something that only EPS can do. We can all think about that and make that happen.

Gresham Harkless 13:50

Absolutely. Well, I definitely, you know, appreciate again, and hold the awesome work that you're doing. And of course, I appreciate your time. What I wanted to do was pass you the the mic so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you want to let our readers and listeners know. And then of course, how best they can get a whole view and find out about all the awesome things you and your team are working on.

Stephanie Davis 14:10

So I guess I would just refer your listeners to our website, which is E P S pros.com EPS P R O s.com, www dot epspros.com. I would also refer your listeners which is on our website is great. There's a ton of really interesting information. We have white papers and actually a whole library of podcasts that I think are really worthwhile in my humble opinion. But a recent one sort of captures what we do and the challenges that 2020 likely will bring for all of us. So I urge people to check it out on our website.

Gresham Harkless 14:55

Awesome. Well, thank you so much against definitely truly appreciate that. We will definitely have the links and information in the show notes as well too so that everybody can follow up and click through and see the white papers on all the awesome work that you guys are doing but appreciate you again and I hope you have a phenomenal day.

Outro 15:10

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community.

Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless.

Thank you for listening.

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