How and Why to build an Inclusive Work Culture

//How and Why to build an Inclusive Work Culture
loconsolo paints' team

How and Why to build an Inclusive Work Culture

Most customers who shop at Loconsolo Paints’ Coney Island location in Brooklyn, New York, speak Russian or English, not usually both. To be able to best serve the customer base in the area, executive vice president Jonathan Chiaro recently prioritized job applicants who speak Russian.

“Those two languages in that particular store are ones we home in on because those would help us best serve our customers,” Chiaro says.

The company, which operates four paint stores in New York, serves diverse communities with varied requirements. Serving multicultural customers well requires hiring diverse employees—in culture, language and gender.

Key questions Chiaro asks prospective employees during every job interview include, “Is English your primary language?” and “Do you speak any other languages fluently?”

But according to Chiaro, even if all of Loconsolo Paints’ customers were from one culture, the company would still benefit from stretching its norms and becoming increasingly inclusive.

“Every time we’re open to change, we get better for it,” Chiaro says.

Read on to learn about the company’s history, how the operation has evolved over several decades and how its leadership team navigates the benefits and complexities of leading a multicultural team of employees.

Land of Opportunity

Chiaro’s grandfather John Loconsolo was an Italian immigrant who started a paint contracting business with his father in the 1920s in New York.

“Painting has been a job that a first-generation person coming into the country could do,” Chiaro says. “We’ve seen that with my family and with the waves of Italian, Hispanic and Russian immigrants coming here.”

Chiaro’s grandfather and great-grandfather built a thriving business. Their contracting company painted the original World Trade Center and every major bridge in New York City.

The first Loconsolo Paints store, opened in the 1950s, served as a source of paint and other supplies for the family paint contracting business.

The paint contracting business supported John Loconsolo’s growing family and myriad employees. But he had eight daughters and no surviving sons. Passing on the family name and the family business to a son were culturally important to him.

Without a son, he chose to sell the paint contracting company in the 1990s and kept the store.

“He didn’t feel like any of his daughters would go into the business, but my aunt said she wished she had the opportunity to have a more proactive role,” Chiaro says.

The Present

New waves of immigrants, changing times and younger generations of Loconsolo’s family growing up in the company have brought positive progress to the business, Chiaro says. He and his cousin Paul D’Auria now run the operation together.

Loconsolo Paints had one retail store and six employees when Chiaro and D’Auria took on leadership roles in the company. They have focused on growth, adding more locations and expanding the staff and customer base.

The paint retail company now has four locations and about 30 employees representing 14 different nationalities and speaking nine languages.

The employees are representative of the communities where the stores are located, since Chiaro intentionally hires people who live near the stores.

“We are in a community of first-generation immigrants, so it’s easier to find people in the community who meet our needs,” Chiaro says.

As community members, the workers are serving their diverse neighbors.

“One of our goals has been to create a diverse store environment because that’s what our customer base is,” Chiaro says. “Customers want to feel comfortable and speak in a language that is comfortable for them.”

When possible, the team matches customers with the salespeople in the stores who fluently speak their language.

“The more diverse we are, the more ability we have to make the customers comfortable and keep them coming back,” Chiaro says.

Hiring a Diverse Team

Hiring from a diverse community naturally results in a diverse employee team if the store leadership is open minded, Chiaro says. He still views the paint industry as a great launching point for first-generation immigrants.

Loconsolo Paints doesn’t hire based on where prospective employees are originally from, but Chiaro does try to hire within each store’s community so the workers’ commutes are short and staffing the store’s early operating hours isn’t difficult.

He also wants the employees and customers to be able to relate to each other well so customers feel more at ease shopping at Loconsolo Paints than at competitors.

“When we evaluate someone, we look at their experience and personality,” Chiaro says. “Are they friendly, energetic? Are they looking to learn? Do we think they’re going to be reliable and trustworthy? We then narrow our candidate pool down by who might associate better with the customers in the specific area. What are the needs of the store to serve our local community?”

Chiaro and D’Auria require employees to have at least some English language proficiency because they don’t speak multiple languages and need to feel confident their employees understand them well enough to be trained on store policies and procedures.

However, they can be flexible to hire the right people. Chiaro would be willing to bring in a translator’s help, if necessary, but that hasn’t been needed yet. A current manager on staff spoke very little English when Chiaro first hired him, but Chiaro saw potential and offered grace for the social cues the manager didn’t pick up on because his English was so limited.

Already having someone on staff who speaks a person’s primary language would make it easier for Chiaro to hire a person with limited English skills.

“We take it all on a case-by-case basis,” he says.

Leading the Team

Training and leading a diverse team requires patience, mutual graciousness and a willingness from Chiaro to learn about other cultures so he can help different people work together well despite cultural differences.

Culture-related clashes are rare among employees, but his team has always been able to work through differences with a little coaching. For instance, when an employee from Peru and an employee from Chile offended each other and argued about a historic battle between their countries, Chiaro was able to respect the pride each person had for their country while encouraging them to get along.

He has also had conversations with employees about cultural differences in communication. A Russian manager wasn’t intending his voice to sound angry, but some workers felt like he was yelling at them.

“Different cultures have different experiences,” Chiaro says.

His patient leadership begins in employee training when he is learning how best to teach new hires to mix paint and master other tasks before he knows the new staff members well.

Chiaro needs to know employees understand him well enough that they can follow instructions. Teaching product knowledge can be simpler than teaching how to mix paint or provide good customer service because many manufacturers provide product information in multiple languages.

Chiaro tries to demonstrate every task and explain processes very slowly in English when he isn’t sure an employee has strong enough English to comprehend him quickly. Then he pairs the new employee with an experienced staffer who speaks the same language, if possible, to work together until the new worker is competent enough on their own.

For example, if Chiaro isn’t sure a newer hire can capably mix paint without making mistakes, he will have the new person repeatedly watch a seasoned employee do the task.

“You have to do a lot of hands-on work, visually showing what you want, be patient and allow people to make mistakes,” Chiaro says. “You do a lot by trial and error. You have to watch carefully for any areas where you think a mistake might become a major issue with a significant financial impact.”

The effort required for such patient training is worthwhile for creating a cohesive team that can serve a diverse customer base full of professional contractors, many of whom are first-generation immigrants.

However, the characteristics Chiaro looks for in employees transcend differences such as ethnicity, culture and language.

“In general, people work together really well,” Chiaro says. “We look for people who will be patient, calm team players.”


Translation app on SmartphoneNurturing Inclusion on Your Team

Diversify your marketing. Find out what local TV, radio, newspaper and other media sources operate in your community in different languages. Learning what’s available may be as simple as asking your employees what TV stations are their favorites in their preferred languages. The staff at Dale Hardware in Fremont, California, identified where to advertise and then had employees who speak Mandarin appear in a commercial on the Chinese TV station.

Use technology for quick help. When communicating with co-workers or customers who don’t fluently speak your primary language, use a mobile app to help translate what they’re asking and what you need to say. Dale Hardware employees have used Google Translate and Apple’s Translate app.

Make your store environment inclusive. Adding directional and product department signage in all of the languages spoken locally makes your store more shoppable and welcoming for customers who don’t speak English as their first language.