Michael Aminov
JeanCarlo Maldonado
Isabella Ferrara
St. John's University
Charles Wankel
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By helping promote diversity, inclusion, and equality in the workplace, New York Life Insurance (NYL) targets the UN’s SDGs 5, 8, 10, and 16. These are 1) gender equality, 2) decent work and economic growth, 3) reduced inequalities, and 4) peace, justice and strong institutions, respectively. Essentially, the company sets a strong focus on making every employee feel fully welcome despite their differences. This way, the company improves in their goal of reducing inequalities.
The goal of the company in this area is to make workers feel welcome and accepted despite everyone’s differences. NYL has created different organizations to help people discuss their differences (and how it impacts them and their work). For example, there is BOLD (Black Organization for Leadership and Development). There is also NYL Pride, to show that the company supports people of all types of different sexual orientations. Interestingly, Stanislav remarks about how there was nothing resembling NYL Pride in his company back in his earlier years working there. Additionally, the company has LEAD (Latinos for Excellence, Advancement and Development). There is also The Women’s Initiative. If one were to look through the company’s website, it is evident that NYL gives millions annually towards achieving their goal of helping minorities, women, and members of the LGBTQ community be represented at work. All of these NYL programs are here mainly to show the company’s support of these groups of people.
In addition to this, they also hold formalized discussions. Here are excerpts from the company’s diversity and inclusion page on their website. “For several years, the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Center for Awareness and Advocacy has hosted a Coming Together Conversation Series, encouraging respectful dialogue and promoting a safe workplace forum where employees can share their perspectives and feelings on challenging issues. Employees participate in an annual educational challenge that inspires them to think about diversity and inclusion in new and different ways. The Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Center for Awareness and Advocacy hosts a yearly campaign to encourage employees to engage with one another and learn about diversity and inclusion-based topics (2021’s topic was social justice). "Our focus is on improving representation among Minority-owned Business Enterprises (MBEs); (LGBTBEs); Disabled- owned Business Enterprises (DBEs); Veteran-owned Business Enterprises (VBEs); and Service-Disabled Veteran-owned Business Enterprises (SDVBEs)" (www.nyl.com).
As society headed in the direction of being more progressive, NYL, especially as a major player in the insurance industry, since its inception in the mid 1800s, realized (and realizes to this day) that it has a responsibility to promote equality and to openly welcome people from all backgrounds. The focus to do so was not only due to societal pressure, however. A company can gain many financial benefits from diversity. For example, people from different backgrounds may have different approaches to solving a problem, and may bring a more efficient solution to the table. If only a few groups of people are represented at a company, the company is heavily limited in terms of talent available to them. Also, relationships with vendors might be improved if the vendors’ diversity group is (heavily) represented within the company. Surely, NYL had and has all of this in mind when deciding to make it clear that they gladly accept all of their employees’ differences.
Overall, Mr. Musheyev mentioned some impressive statistics that came from NYL’s decision to focus more on diversity and inclusion. He mentioned that a strong figure of 87-90% of employees feel proud to work at NYL. Stanislav recalls how back when he started there was not much of a presence of women in the Board of Directors. Now, half of the Board of Directors are women and people of color! He also mentioned that people from (quite literally) all sorts of backgrounds could be found working at NYL.
From the company's website, 42% of the company’s workforce are people of color. Their total assets under management has consistently and steadily grown from $313 billion in 2011 to $684 billion during Q2 for 2023 (more than double in 12 years) (www.nyl.com). It seems evident that perhaps focusing on diversity and inclusion really has helped the company both with its reputation as well as with the financial aspect.
It is interesting how Mr. Musheyev reflected on his own personal experience. He made it clear in the interview that when people feel that the company respects (and appreciates) their employees’ differences, the employee feels a lot more welcome and happy, and is likely to produce more and to be more efficient. He remarks how back when he was applying for work in 2001 how a company he was interviewing for said that employees must be at work from Monday through Friday with the typical 9-5 schedule, with no exceptions. This company clearly was not willing to respect that Mr. Musheyev (as an Orthodox Jew) was different and that he must leave work early on Fridays to prepare for the Sabbath.
Unfortunately, they lost a good professional, someone who would be capable of completing the challenging FSA route, someone who would prove to be a real help to NYL in his days. I was surprised when he mentioned that when interviewing with NYL they mentioned in the interview that he could leave early on Fridays. As such, he (and others in similar situations) clearly felt a strong sense of welcoming, and was pleased to help out the company to the best of his abilities. NYL made the right decisions in this area, helping them retain skilled employees and a good name.
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