Five Good Ideas to foster IDEAL principles at your workplace

Elizabeth McIsaac: With Five Good Ideas, we are drawing on the expertise of our network to make the non-profit sector more effective. Our speakers provide practical and concrete ideas that you can wrap your hands around and apply to your own work. We believe, obviously, that today's topic is a big part of that mission. Diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility strengthen organizations. And while most, if not all of us on this webinar will agree to that, we also know that it requires hard work to carry it out and to achieve the benefit. Change doesn't happen overnight, but as our guest speaker has put it, when a workplace is inclusive, both the organization and the employees thrive. Today's session is part of an ongoing commitment to learning and adapting. We're very lucky to have Ingrid Palmer with us today. She'll be the perfect guide. She's the head of IDEAL at Realize, Canada's leading non-profit on HIV and episodic disability education and advocacy. Episodic disability is something we'll learn more about today. As a visually impaired former foster kid, she has committed her life to combating ableism, challenging bias, promoting universal belonging, and debunking myths and stereotypes of stigmatized identities. She's a champion for housing, education, poverty reduction, disability rights, and child welfare issues. She has supported government, corporate, and community organizations with community outreach and equity development. She is a beloved ally and friend of Maytree and we're delighted to have her here today. Ingrid, thank you for joining us. Ingrid Palmer: Thank you so much Elizabeth for that wonderful and lovely introduction. I am so honoured to be here with all of you today. Elizabeth McIsaac: Well, we're lucky to have you. And so let's get right to it. How does IDEA — inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility — lead, the L in IDEAL, to belonging? How do we go from IDEA to IDEAL? Ingrid Palmer: It's such a great question. Let me start with the fact that for far too many employees in Canada's landscape, it's not a question of whether or not they will encounter discrimination or stigmatization. It's not a matter of if that will occur for them during their daily activities and that includes their workday. It's merely a question of what form is it going to take today? What am I going to have to combat today? So on top of ableism, many employees with disabilities are also combating ageism, sexism, faithism, sizeism, misogyny, all other forms of discrimination and prejudices that even include discriminations on accents, on clothing, on appearance, and even food. And so these ongoing instances of exclusion happen even in the presence of IDEA measures. And myself, as you heard in the introduction, as a Black person with a disability who hasn't always been considered to adhere to gender expectations and with a history of foster care, I am quite familiar with that experience of “excluded inclusion.” Meaning it looks great on the surface, but if you are only spoken to in your workplace in the rollout of your job, only when it's necessary,.if you try to engage in conversation and only receive one word or short answers, if you feel that you are merely being tolerated in a space where you spend 5, 6, 7, 8 hours at, then without any real authentic feeling of connection, that is simply not good enough. Belonging is a necessary component of our humanity and no one should be denied that fact. In my work and in my personal life, in my engagement with peers in the disability community, I have often heard it shared about the feeling of being in workplaces where IDEAL principles are present and given, but where there is no connection or belonging. Employees with disabilities have made it clear that when possible they will leave areas of employment when they don't feel that they are truly able to bring their full selves to work. When you are discriminated against singularly, meaning that perhaps you're only facing one form of discrimination, it's actually quite common for people in another scope to take on that role of the oppressor. So perhaps you in your lived experience understand what it means to come up against homophobia or heteronormativity. But in another space, you are projecting racism or you're projecting ableist tendencies. And perhaps you are a person who lives with disability and is quite familiar with what it feels like to encounter ableists. But you yourself in another capacity are projecting discrimination on other groups. So it's important to understand intersectionality, to be intentional about belonging in ways that are outside of own personal scope of understanding. Because in one instance, we can be the person facing the discrimination, and in another instance, we can be the person projecting that discrimination. And so that L in the acronym IDEAL for me really bookends the principles really nicely because all our work and efforts in inclusion, on diversity, on equity, accessibility, accommodation has to lead to belonging. It has to lead to people feeling that they are free to be who they are, that they have really authentic and meaningful interpersonal relationships in their workplace, that on their teams, they feel supported. They feel that they are able to give and to add to the workplace in the ways that they are talented and interested, and that they're also supported in the ways that they need. So that belonging component we have found in our work was the missing component that really needed to be added. Elizabeth McIsaac: So important, because it really goes much beyond just being nice and kind and it's really about practices that get put into place. Accessibility is part of this. And you talked about disability as one of the layers of intersectional identities, but in the opening we also mentioned episodic disability. Can you talk a little bit about that and how does that layer into this? Ingrid Palmer: Thank you so much. So episodic disability for a lot of people is a relatively new term that people aren't really sure about. "What does that mean?" But once you've heard about episodic disability, many of us realize that, "Oh, we're actually quite familiar with that." So the typical definition or typical understanding that people have around disability is that disability is something that is permanent, that it's persistent all the time, and that its impacts are felt rather steadily. But that's not true for all disabilities and it's not true for all people who are experiencing disability. There are certain experiences and conditions of disability where people are experiencing periods of relative good health and wellness and there really isn't any negative impact on their capacity and their ability to navigate. And then there can be periods where there are conditions where you have flare-ups, and where there is experience of limitations, where there is experience of challenges and increased adversity. And so in these cases, people with episodic disabilities need to have accommodations that are fluid and that are flexible and that will kind of remove and rotate with what they're experiencing. And so it's really important that we in our work are always open and willing to learn more about what we think we know about. So it's important to expand our knowledge on disability because not all disability looks the same. We know that some disabilities are visible. We've really gotten a good understanding on knowing that some disabilities are invisible, that no two people with the same disability have the same experience. So it's another component of that understanding is to understand that some people with a disability have fluctuating periods of good health and also fluctuations where they experience more poor health. And with these fluctuations, it can be a worsening of symptoms and then an improvement and then a worsening again. Or it can be a gradual worsening that doesn't actually ever improve but keeps getting worse. And so the accommodations that employees need are also going to change. And some examples of episodic disabilities include, but are not limited to, fibromyalgia, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, multiple dystrophy, anxiety, depression, arthritis, epilepsy, HIV, hepatitis C, lupus, long COIVID, chronic pain, Crohn's disease. And so that's not an exhaustive list by any means, but those are some examples. And people living with complex and chronic illness may not actually even identify with the term disability, but that in no way means that they're not entitled to protection and accommodations under the law. The law is very specific that, regardless of whether or not someone identifies with living with disability, that they're protected under law to have accommodations. You likely know someone living with an episodic disability, you may be someone living with an episodic disability, or you may be caring for someone that you love that has an episodic disability. So it's really important that we continue to learn about and expand our understanding of what it means to be living with disability. There is no right way to be disabled. There is no wrong way to be disabled. And as I said previously, no two people with the same disability necessarily experience the same impacts on their lives. So it's really important that we are always willing and open to have conversations with individuals about what their individual experience is, what their particular needs are. Sometimes folks feel like, "I know this now. I've got this. I've worked with people with this particular condition for a long time and I don't need to ask any more questions. I've got it." And it's really, really important that we never think that way, that we just know it all now. It's really important to have continuous and ongoing conversations with individuals about what they're going through, what their needs are, and to ensure that the supports and accommodations that we are providing are actually meaningful at that time because what we were doing before it could be working and perhaps there are changes that need to be made. Elizabeth McIsaac: So that sort of consideration and reflection on the particularity of experience segues nicely into your next good IDEA, which is around understanding intersectionality and intersectional barriers. That's a term that's getting used a lot these days. Can you take us through that? Ingrid Palmer: Yeah, and I'd like to explore this bit with a share on and a project that I had the honour of leading over 2023. So in my role as a principal IDEAL advocate, I realized over 2023 we launched a project called the IDEAL Community Consultations Project. And in that, we partnered with 12 disability-serving organizations across the country so that they would hold focus groups within their own particular intersectional communities to find out about those really nuanced experiences of barriers for people living with disability and employment. And part of the objective of this project was to increase the capacity of employers to respond effectively to the challenges facing people living with episodic disabilities across the country. And so we partnered with a variety of organizations that serve seniors living with disabilities, youth living with disabilities, women, Indigenous people, Black people, Asians, all different types of intersections, and they all wrote individual reports which were wrapped up into a larger part. And I just want to share with you some of the things that came out of these individual reports. We all know that a lot of seniors now are still working longer out of necessity. And so a lot of seniors with disabilities really spoke about discrimination on that end, about what their capacities were because of their age. We heard from women living with disabilities about their experience of gender-based violence, and we know that women with disabilities are actually disproportionately represented in violence. And so women spoke about the impact of gender-based violence on their ability to retain employment and to receive important accommodations or to even disclose their need when that type of experience is so stigmatized. There was no surprise in hearing that anti-Black racism and anti-Indigenous racism is alive and well. That's something that we absolutely know. What we did find out about from Black Canadians with disabilities and also from the 2SLGBTQI+ community was that Black women, Black non-binary, and Black trans folk disproportionately experienced discrimination in the workplace. We heard from Asians living with disabilities about the impacts of having to live up to that model minority stereotype and how they felt really pressured to mask their disability because it just wasn't acceptable both culturally and from that stereotypical expectations on them. We heard about entrepreneurs with disabilities, the lack of support that exists for them, that the few grants that are available from the government are for people with disabilities who are looking to be employed. But when it comes to entrepreneurship that there was nothing. There was a lack of support and aid in that end for people with disabilities. We heard about how critical peer support is and how much people really wanted to have the ability in organizations through ERGs or through affinity groups to come together and support each other and be in a space where they already felt understood and didn't have to explain and could help one another manage some of those challenges that are in the workplace and be a source of support for one another. And these are really critical areas that employers need to hear about because we really found that there really still is this monolithic view of the experience of disability. It still is incredibly, largely centered around largely white male cisgendered mobility disability. And we know that that is far from the truth, but we are still finding that when it comes to developing policies and procedures that there just isn't enough intersectionality with that lens really leading the way. And so it was really important to be intentional about learning about the varied and disparate experiences of people with disabilities and understanding how, depending on the identities that are carried, how different the adversities and challenges to obtaining and retaining employment can be. So it's really important that we continue to really keep that intersectional view lens and willingness to continue to learn on our efforts. Elizabeth McIsaac: Very rich unpacking of intersectionality. Thank you, Ingrid. So part of what you began to allude to I think was the importance of accommodations on the part of the employer. So can we talk a bit more about that, because that's where some of the solutions lie? Ingrid Palmer: Yes, and so I want to start off with the point about really revolutionizing how we think about accommodations. I mean the tendency, besides some folk thinking of accommodations as some form of special treatment for people with disabilities, we've heard from community is this attitude, this necessity of gratitude on the part of employees with disabilities. And we really need to understand that accommodation is not some type of favour that workplaces are doing for people with disability. It's a mutually beneficial act. It's a win-win situation. It's something that is positive not only for the employee with the disability, but for the organization. When people are met with the equipment, with the environment, with the flexibility and with whatever it is that they need to be able to do their job to the fullest, then both win. The organization wins. It's already been statistically proven that inclusive and supportive workplaces see a drop in absenteeism and in sick days and see morale grow, see an increase in productivity and outcome. So it's really important that we start thinking of accommodation as something that is for both parties, for everyone, and it's not something that is done only on the behalf of people with disabilities. All employees have the right to receive whatever it is that they need to do their job and to understand that there is no one-size-fits-all, that different folks need different things, and we also have to really normalize the need. Need is so stigmatized as if it's a dirty thing when the truth is that none of us are successful on our own. We all have areas where we excel in where we strive, where we lead the pack, and we all have areas where we need varying degrees of support because our skill or anything else just doesn't lie in that area. So that's also a thing that I would like to see moved away where need and support is something for only one category of person. It's not at all true. Everyone has needs that need to be met and supported, gaps that need to be mitigated, and it's really about time that we really rethink our thinking on accommodations and needs and see that as a good thing. And when we create workplaces where everyone feels safe to disclose, to say, "I need this" and to access accommodations, those workplaces thrive for everyone. Right now, 75% of employed people with disabilities say that they would not disclose that, and that's because of how stigmatized it is and how much fear and lack of belief there is that they will be adequately supported, that they won't suddenly be seen as incompetent. We've certainly heard that employees who disclose and something happens, whereas before it would be, "Oh, that was just a mistake or this happened" that all of a sudden it becomes attributed to your condition and your capacity. And so we really need to work together to create spaces where everyone feels like they can bring their full selves to work, that everyone feels that it is safe, okay, and that they will be met with openness, generosity, and curiosity when they express a need for accommodations. Elizabeth McIsaac: I think we're going to come back to that in the Q&A. I'm pretty sure we're going to come back to that in the Q&A, but before we do that, you're describing this very much as a continuous process. It's not finite. So for your fifth good IDEA, over to you. Ingrid Palmer: My fifth good IDEAL is to get rid of that notion that one day it's going to be done, that you're going to get this IDEAL thing to that perfect state and there won't be any more work to do with that. This work is ongoing. It's continuous. We need to consider that it's lifelong. There is no end to it. It's complicated, it's messy. It can be slow, but this is an area where there are legacies of harm, there are legacies of distrust and for good reason, and that takes time to undo. Conversations around IDEAL need to continue. We need to continuously be grappling with what it is in our landscapes and our environments that are negatively impacting folks, that are holding people back, and that looks different from workplace to workplace. There's never going to be a one-size-fits-all that's going to work with everyone, but it's so important that we continue to engage in learning, in up-skilling in these deep, reflective, often uncomfortable conversations that in the end will build our capacity on managing discrimination and injustice and really increase our knowledge and our understanding about the varied lived experiences of our fellow human beings. It's really important that we don't have these one-off training sessions where we collect information and then it kind of sits in the dust and never really gets implemented. It's really important that we understand that our learning, our understanding, and our engagement has to be a continual process. There will always be something more to learn, something more to understand, other ways in which we can do the work that we're doing better. We can't get it right all at once. We are humans. We're only humans. But the point is that when we have a commitment to this work, that means that that commitment is ongoing, that we're always reflecting on, "Okay, this is where we're at here. Who is still not being served? Is there anyone missing? Where is it that we are falling short?" And that can only happen when we are committed to the work on an ongoing basis. Elizabeth McIsaac: So put it into the DNA of your organization that this is what we do going forward? Ingrid Palmer: Yes. And that has to come strongly, clearly, consistently from leadership. It has to come from the top. Another gap that we see is when we are having these types of trainings is that the CEO isn't there, the ED isn't there, senior management isn't there. Oftentimes it's sent to frontline workers to be doing this type of training, but everybody needs it. Finance needs to be doing it. Everybody in the organization needs to be involved in this work and training together. And when employees see that management is there right from the top committed and in it, that gives permission for implementation. There are so many times when I have heard folks say, "Yeah, we got this training," but that psychological safety just isn't there. It's never going to be implemented no matter how much training is done, if folks don't actually feel that they have the backing of senior management and words are not enough. Words are part of it, but we need to see it demonstrably shown from leadership that we are in it too, and that gives permission for others to really begin to implement what they're learning. Elizabeth McIsaac: Very powerful ideas. Ingrid. I said I wasn't going to look at the chat, but I've been glancing at the chat and there's just a lot of applause happening there. I think your words are resonating with a lot of people, and so we're going to do a bit of a Q&A based on we received a number of questions before the session, more than 30 questions. There's already questions pouring into the Q&A, so I'm going to upfront and manage expectations. If your question doesn't get asked, it's not because it's not important. We just have a limited time. So I'm going to try to collect some themes from what I've been hearing and there were a number of questions around how do you get started? And someone framed it in terms of what's the first action for a DEI committee, but is it even, do you start with a DEI committee? You've just talked about the importance of leadership at the very top. If you were to give advice to an organization, small, medium, or large that's not actively doing this, how do we get started? Ingrid Palmer: I always say that the start is with that conversation, and it can be in your meetings that you have already. We have team meetings, we have staff meetings, we have AGMs. We have these moments already set into our routines where we get together and we talk about things and start that conversation there. Where do you think that we need to start? What do you see is the first thing that we need to do? And everyone's going to have a different answer. We know that. But the point is to get started collecting that feedback from as many people in the organization as you can. Form those groups, committees who wants to be in on this work, start having those deep dives, start looking at what should be prioritized first and hear from as many people as you can and then make a move. There are so many people that sit and think, "I've got to have this perfect. I've got to have this all figured out before I make a move because I don't want to make a mistake." And those are organizations that end up not doing anything at all. And I'd really like us to take the perspective of Thomas Edison, right? We need to take his perspective. He said, "I didn't fail a thousand times", 2000 times or however many attempts it took him to create the light bulb. He said, "I learned that many times what didn't work." And that's the perspective that we need to take. We need to gather as much information as we can, as much insight from as many folks, make a plan and make a move. Mistakes teach us. We learn from it. It's a continuous basis of being reflective and making a plan and then trying again. People with disability, we know this and this is part of the reason why we need to be in leadership in this work. We need to be at the forefront because we completely understand trying something, it not working, and trying again. We live in that. That's our world all the time. But that's how we have built our capacity, our creativity, all those wonderful things that we are known from came from going ahead even when we didn't have all the answers just giving something shot, making our own wraparounds. We live in that. And so that's another reason why we need to be at the forefront of this work. It doesn't mean that we have all the answers. It doesn't make us responsible for coming up with all the solutions, but we do have really important insight. And so we need to be at the front, but everybody has responsibility in this work. Inclusion, diversity, equity, accessibility and belonging is everyone's responsibility. We all have a role to play. We all have gifts to give in this work, but it's hard work. We also have to understand that some of us, sometimes we need to jump off that bus. We've given all we've got. We need to take a break, we need to move away. That's okay. New folks will come in and bring their perspective and somebody one day will be like, "Oh my God, it's right there. That's what we need to do. This is where we need to move next." And we just keep the ball going. We've just got to start someplace and do something and not get bogged down in, "I don't know what to do, so I'm not going to do anything." Please, mistakes are a good thing. We need to learn to be more generous with one another. We're not perfect beings. Every single one of us step in it sometimes. If we're afraid of stepping in it because someone is going to really knock us down and we won't do anything. So I think that we've also got to learn to be gracious in this work and forgiving and be willing to remind, to correct. It's okay to be corrected. It's okay to correct, but we don't have to bash each other to death over things either. We've got to learn to grapple with these difficult things and it's tiresome and it's energy draining and it's hard and it can be hurtful, but we can recover, we can repair, and we can continue. And I really think that working together in that way is what does us good and it's what keeps the work, the movement going forward. Elizabeth McIsaac: Great answer. And you covered a bunch of other questions in that, so thank you. A question that is coming about three or four different ways is how do we move from being well-intentioned, to being performative, to being substantive? And we can get lost or stuck in the conversation. How do we ensure that we're moving the marker further ahead to a point where it's having real impact for people? Ingrid Palmer: Yeah, I think it's being aware that that can happen. We all have experienced where this work can be circular and we're expending a lot of energy and we're not getting anywhere. We are dressing that doll in the new clothing, but it's the same doll and we haven't actually done anything. And so like it said in the question, I think when we are aware that that can happen and we're constantly looking at what we're doing. "Okay, we said we're going to do this. Is it working? Has it done anything? Why hasn't it? Is it because we haven't given it enough time? Is it because we're expending a lot of energy in the wrong place?" We've just got to be willing to continue to look at it and to be open about it and to keep revising and pushing ahead. I think it's what we've got to do. It's so hard to give just one concrete answer because it depends on exactly what we're working on. But I think when we are aware that we have to be aware, that's a big step right there. And so the point is to constantly be looking at what we're doing and are we doing the right thing and to make adjustments when we need to, but to keep going. There's a tension always between making incremental steps and making really revolutionary changes. Some people see it as either way, and I'm always that person who says there's never any one way. They're all right. We need to both be completely demolishing systems and the norms and the way we've been doing things, and we also have to be doing things incrementally. And I think as I said with the conversations, when we are having these conversations, we're getting to understand both sides. Management and leadership is understanding lived experience, lived experiences are understanding the ties that are binding leadership. And so as we continue to have these conversations and grapple, we're coming up with small things that we can do, and then we'll also have to be gathering people to do the larger work that's going to take more time. That maybe means it's a huge policy change. It's going after government who's maybe binding organizations and saying, "You have to do things this way." We need advocacy groups that are fighting that, but we need things that on the ground in the instant day-to-day that we can do as well. So it's never one thing. It's always multipronged. We need to be doing things on a small scale and we also need to be trying to do things on a large scale. But there has to be that understanding that it's always going to be a multipronged approach. There are going to be some things that we can change right away, and there are going to be other things that are going to take a lot more time, but with consistent and persistent pressure, that change will come. Elizabeth McIsaac: So you've been talking about speaking out, keeping the conversation alive, pushing forward, pushing forward even if you make a mistake. People are afraid of making mistakes. What you've described is having courage, and sometimes people are not in a position of being the decision maker or in a position of leadership where they feel empowered to take a lead in that conversation. How do we begin to build that courage, to build that momentum within the organizational culture? Because some of what we're talking about is changing the culture of the organization so that there is a sense of trust that you won't be afraid to... I mean, earlier in your presentation you talked about 75% of people not asking out of fear, not asking for accommodation. So how do we begin to tackle that? Because that's sort of the elephant in the room in some ways. Ingrid Palmer: Everything is about changing the culture. Culture is everything and everything is about changing the culture. And you're right, and it's about making these tangible steps that show folk that you really are trying to make a change. For instance, when we talk about inclusivity and attracting and retaining diverse people, and we say that and we have job postings that say, "Equity denied groups, yeah, please apply." And yeah, it says that in the words, but are people actually experiencing that? When are we going to start revolutionizing the process in terms of maybe we don't need to have these paper or digital resumes that are really barrier-ridden for some people depending on their conditions. How about we have audio files or video submissions of resumes? When we start implementing really different open and give people choices on how to engage with us, those things are what show that we're really trying here. We are really willing here to put our money where our mouth is and to do things differently. And those are little changes that are, they may seem like they're really difficult to implement, but they're really not. It's about a mindset change. So when we start to revolutionize our processes even in little ways, and we put our money where our mouth is, when things don't go right, instead of just throwing everything away and saying, "Forget it, it doesn't work." We take the time to fix what went wrong. Those are the things that will show employees that begin that culture change and begin to build that trust. Because we have to understand, as I said earlier, that there are legacies of harms in organizations, in institutions. And just because we suddenly say, "Oh, we want to be different and we're going to do things differently", that doesn't make the belief there, but we have all these time constraints. We want things to happen and to change instantly. And the truth is that that harm and that repair and that building of trust and relationship takes time. For people to actually believe that it's real, it has to be tested. And so we have to implement these changes. We have to build that trust and relationship within organizations and bring about that culture change in ways that people can believe in. And as we start to do that, you'll start to see those effects. More people will want to be involved and to be engaged. More ideals will come through, that will lead to more implementation. And what I am thinking and hoping is that that snowball effect will take place, but we really have to work at the pace of the trust in our organization. How are you building that rapport and that interpersonal relationship with your employees? We have to have moments of engagement that are outside the formalities of our work. And we all know that workplaces have events. And it comes back to that whole belonging piece. When you are able to engage with your supervisor, your managers, your co-workers in unstructured ways, and find those points of commonality. Your kids do this. You're looking after an aging parent. Oh, you like anime. And it seems like blasé. But those experiences and connections come back into the formalities of work. Now when I'm looking at my supervisor, I don't just see this person that seems superior and cold. I remember that, "Oh, that's the person I was joking with at the event last week who told me that really great joke. Or I found out that both our girls are big into gymnastics." And so when I'm back at the workplace now, my perspective on you isn't the same as it was before. So we need to find these ways of building relationship that are both formal and informal because they flow into one another and they really impact our work, how we relate to one another, how we think about one another. And this is a whole learning process for a lot of us. And so we have to value all the varied ways that this work rolls out. It's not all in training, it's not all on the job, it's not all formal, but it's all beneficial and necessary and worthwhile. I'm not sure if I said that really clearly. Elizabeth McIsaac: Oh, you said a lot very clearly. That was great. Thank you. But I want to push you a little bit further. So we are talking, as you said, this is about culture change and moving that forward. How do we measure this stuff? How do we know that we're being successful, that it's moving forward and not going around in circles? How do we know that the accommodations that are being made are proving out and really supporting people? Do we need to be tracking this? Do we need to be evaluating this? Ingrid Palmer: Absolutely. You always get asked about this measurement piece and measurement, of course, it's important. Data is extremely important. Finding out if what we're doing works is the only way that we can make really meaningful and tangible improvements. And we do these surveys, employee satisfaction, belonging, all kinds of things. But you're going to find it in other ways too, in your productivity, in the absenteeism, in the retention. It shows up in many ways in the willingness to engage in areas that are outside of the formal duties of your job. There are so many different ways to measure this work, and they're all valid, but measurement isn't the end-all and be-all, and I say that even though it is also extremely important. I still always keep coming back to the conversations piece, to the discussions piece and to that being really the place where we find things out because a lot of people tick things off on paper that they don't really need, but when you're having this conversation about, "Oh gosh, how is this going?" That's what I'm going to hear. "Oh my gosh, it kind of works, but it's really a pain this way. It actually causes me more stress and more work." Or, "I'm really trying to wrap my head around this part in supporting this person or accommodating this and this thing that we did seemed like it really worked, but now this has come up." I think those really genuine, authentic conversations are where we really find out where people are, how they feel, because the surveys and things are great. I don't necessarily always think that people are honest in surveys and hearing about how productivity is a good way of measurement, but productivity is also another area where we need to change and revolutionize our perspective on productivity and what that means and how it looks like and how it operates. Because the historical way that we have been valuing how people work, accomplishment and commitment is actually part of the way in which we are ableist and how we disempower folks. So the more choice that we can give people in outcome productivity and not really just looking at hours in or quantity, it's the quality of the productivity. I know I just segued into something else there from the question, but our perspective on productivity is also a really important component to this work, particularly for people with disabilities. Elizabeth McIsaac: Absolutely. And I think it's really important to frame it that way. We can talk about the duty to accommodate the legal obligations. That's all there, but I think it lights something up in the employer in another way when you begin to really show the win-win of how this makes for a stronger organization and outcome. Someone has asked this question and is there a risk of fatigue? Of the conversation sort of being, "Here we go again", and how do we mitigate that and keep it vibrant, relevant, important and urgent? Because it is urgent. Ingrid Palmer: It is urgent. And oh my gosh, is there a risk of fatigue? Absolutely. Absolutely. This work is absolutely fatiguing. It's repetitive at times. It can feel pointless when you don't absolutely see that you're getting anywhere. And sometimes it's a matter of looking at kind of shaking up how you do things, what you're looking at, bringing new people in. There's so much different components of experiences I think to learn about. And there's always these topics that are, for lack of a better word, trending at the time. And everybody kind of jumps on that bandwagon and that can get beaten to dust. But there's always so much more. I mean, there's always people who are not being heard about, thought about, taught about. Right now, it's still the deaf and hard-of-hearing community. It's still people with sensitivities. And we're talking a lot about neurodiversity now, and not that we shouldn't, but there's always one or two that are like the thing right now, but there's still so much more. And sometimes we can start hearing from others because when folks see their realities being reflected in learning and training and in conversations, it also adds to building that trust that we're being considered. And so sometimes we have to lay something down for a bit when it gets too much, then that doesn't mean that the work has to stop because there's so much to do. And sometimes when we move to something else, it actually ends up opening a perspective on the very thing that we were working on before. And I've certainly found that when you're talking about gender diversity, that it can give you a moment into racism or something like that. So I think it can be a matter of not letting something go, but opening up to another component for a while in the knowledge that that new thing can still add perspective onto the work that you were doing before. But fatigue is a real thing in this work, and that's why there is really that importance of self-care that we need to step away. We need to take a break. We need to ensure that we are doing things that replenish our soul, and this work has to be fun. One of my good friends and leaders in this space, Heather Walkis, she always says, "If changing the world isn't fun, why do it?" And that's true that we have to sometimes remember that there are components to this work that we've got to be having a good time as well. We've got to be laughing at stuff that happens. We've got to be taking moments to celebrate, to dance, to share food, to go to that cultural event. This work isn't all about sitting, having conversations, digging into the tough stuff. It can be a lot of fun too. It can be going to an event together, having a buffet at a particular restaurant and learning more about food, a culture, attending someone's religious celebration. We've got to find ways where this work is also rejuvenating, but where it's also filling our soul, because there are many ways that we can do that as well, but we got to find ways to enjoy this as well. It can't all be about fighting. Elizabeth McIsaac: I couldn't ask you for a more perfect way to conclude this presentation than to find joy in the work. Lots of questions unanswered, so my apologies to those of you who had questions still in the pipeline. The work is hard, to Ingrid's point. It can be fatiguing, it can be difficult because there's toxicity and challenges and barriers, but I can't put it better than Ingrid just did. Find the joy in it and make this something that is transformative, even if it's in small steps. Thank you, Ingrid. It has been a real pleasure talking to you today. And I know I echo the sentiments of the virtual room.