oracle | diversity & inclusion 2021 and beyond a D&I expert panel

Learn more: https://oracle.com/events/virtual-sum... What does a successful D&I program look like in practice? Hear about the diversity and inclusion initiatives that Schneider Electric, Fujitsu, and Oracle have prioritized for 2021, including the biggest challenges facing their workforce.

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Dan Schawbel | Managing Partner Workplace Intelligence 0:05

Today we're going to be talking about addressing diversity inclusion in the workplace going beyond the benchmark. Diversity Inclusion is one of the biggest trends for 2021. And so I talked to 10 diversity inclusion leaders from some of the biggest, most prominent companies in the world to get their perspectives on this important topic. And they impact over 1.5 million employees, and probably even more customers from everywhere in the world and represent so many different industries, from hospitality to manufacturing, renewable energy, energy it. So we're really capturing some of the best practices and some of the biggest challenges that they have faced, as well as the solutions to address the diversity and inclusion needs of their workforce. There's been a big difference when you look at where we work with diversity, inclusion, and where we are right now. And some of the things that we're really hopeful for, for this year. If you look at even last year, you know, diversity inclusion was not as prioritized, we lacked some transparency. And a lot of this is changing. Now you're seeing so many more companies publish their diversity data in a transparent manner. We're going from companies that didn't have sufficient resources to companies that are now prioritizing and investing in diversity inclusion initiatives. Instead of figuring out you know, how to measure the ROI of diversity programs, these companies are really being thoughtful about the different metrics that are going to prove to executive management and to the general public, that they're really making a difference in a really substantial way. And with this transparency, and with all this buy in, we're really hopeful for the future of DNI and all the diversity officers that I talked to at the highest levels, are very excited that they're going to be able to champion their programs this year and for the foreseeable future. DNI has made a huge impact on businesses. In fact, McKinsey has done some of the best research in this field. They found that organizations with the greatest diversity outperform those that have the little diversity by 36%. In fact, other research they've done shows that with more diversity and inclusion in the workplace, you have more creativity and innovation when especially when it comes to ethnicity and gender diversity. It really makes sense because diversity challenges your ideas, having diverse people around you makes you think and creates the discussions that lead the big breakthroughs for any organization. Successful DNI programs that have been implemented by the 10 DNI leaders that I interviewed our job swaps, talent marketplaces, local councils, er G's, which are employee resource groups, different ways of building community with people who might look, act or have different ideas, the new online assessment survey tools, there's so many different ways in which you can start to be accountable for diversity initiatives, and actively promote them through your organizational culture. And that's one of the big differences from the past to now is that organizations aren't just thinking about diversity inclusion as being a department or one figurehead, like a diversity Chief Diversity Officer, but something that should be spread within the organization and ingrained in the corporate culture. When I asked all these leaders for their view of the future of DNI what they said was, their role shouldn't even exist anymore. In fact, if organizations are doing all the right things, workplace cultures that fully embrace DNI will no longer need their leaders and their programs because everything will be solved and the workplace will be diverse. And there'll be diversity, not just from a, you know, entry level standpoint, but all the way up to the C suite, and even the board. And that's where all this can go if organizations start today to do the right things. And with these discussions, we want to continue that conversation with today's panel. And now to further discuss how companies are supporting, promoting and measuring their DNI initiatives. I would love to welcome our panelists. First Tina cow mylon from Schneider Electric, Kelly Metcalf from Fujitsu Tracy Wade from Oracle. Thank you so much for being here. Please introduce yourselves.

Kelly Metcalf | Head of Diversity Inclusion and Wellbeing | Fujitsu 4:35

Hi, everybody. It's great to be talking to you today. I'm Kelly Metcalf I head of diversity, inclusion and wellbeing for Fujitsu across Northwestern Europe.

Tina Kao Mylon, | Sr VP | Talent and Diversity | Schneider Electric 4:46

Hi, everyone. Great to be with you today. My name is Tina cow mylon. I'm head of talent and diversity for Schneider Electric and I'm based in Boston.

Traci Wade | Sr Director Diversity and Inclusion | Oracle 4:56

Hello, everyone. Thank you for having me today. I'm Tracy Wade. I lead diversity and inclusion for Oracle and I am based in the Washington DC area.

Unknown Speaker 5:05

My first question goes to Tina, Tina, what are your 2021 diversity and inclusion initiatives? And why are you focused on them?

Unknown Speaker 5:13

So 2021 is no different from any other year when it comes to diversity, equity inclusion for Schneider Electric, but probably, especially with the events of last year. And various fronts were accelerating and doubling down even more. So one of the things we really want to focus on for 2021 is how do we address more outcome metrics, Dan, with what we're doing in di, a lot of what we've been doing in the past, I think you could say we've done a lot of activity, a lot of training, a lot of programs, a lot of policy work. And for us, now it becomes more important than ever to deliver certain outcome metrics that we want to highlight. And one of the examples that we've given, and that's one of the reasons for Schneider Electric that we've pushed on, is really making sure that what we do is tied to our Sustainability Index and diversity index, which we declare to the external market. And one of the big ambitions we have for that is really making stronger progress when it comes to gender, and gender, both in the hiring frontline middle management, and senior executives when it comes to balanced gender representation, in our case, increasing the number of women. And another one, as an example is also in light of all the disruptions in the marketplace, and really trying to drive more equity for our folks. One of the big priorities this year is to launch our open talent market, which is a global, ai driven open market that really matches supply and demand, especially when it comes to mentoring projects and role risk opportunities. This is we believe, a hard metric that our employees are pushing for, which really demonstrates equity of opportunities, especially around career. So those are two starting points. The list is long, Dan, but I just shared a couple of them.

Unknown Speaker 7:05

I'm really happy brought up that diversity inclusion. It's not like we're we just started caring about it last year. This is something that has been in discussions and there have been chief diversity leaders and executive who have focused on diversity inclusion issues for ever, it's just now like, what you're saying is, hey, we're starting to measure this, we're starting to really make our investments and be more strategic. And hey, you know, our executives are on board. So we're gonna make a lot of headway this year, which is really exciting. And next Kelly, is this what you're seeing too, like, how are you doing this at Fujitsu?

Unknown Speaker 7:41

Yeah, absolutely. And, Dan, thank you, first of all, for making the point that this is something that we've been focused on for for many years. So at Fujitsu, we're a Japanese organization, and we're incredibly purpose LED. So we're really clear about what our purpose is. And that is to make the world more sustainable by building trust in society through innovation. But we know that we can only do that when we bring together the diversity of thought, creativity, and different ideas that truly reflect society. So DNI is kind of at the core of our, our way of being, it's the promise that we make in terms of how we, how we work with our customers, and the environment that we create for our people. Turning to the focus for 2021, we've all experienced this pandemic in the past 12 months, and the shift to the way of working that has been accelerated over the past 12 months. In Fujitsu, we're calling our work life shift program. What we mean by our work life shift program is that we will see continued greater flexibility in both where and when we work beyond this pandemic. And that presents different opportunities and challenges for DNI. So, in terms of opportunities, first of all, the one that I am hugely excited by is the fact that we know from really great research data, that roles that offer the opportunity to work flexibly help to attract more diverse candidates. So number one, how we use the momentum through this work life shift, to attract even more diversity into projects. And then number two, what we've really all experienced is the same pandemic, but every single person has experienced it in a unique way, in a way that is personal, to their their own circumstances, and so on. That, for me takes us beyond diversity. It takes us beyond emphasizing the things that make us different beyond putting people into a box. And it's about recognizing each individual. And I call that in predictive being consciously inclusive. So that's our second priority for this year is to continue that focus on being consciously inclusive of each individual, how we exhibit inclusive behaviors at all levels of the organization and how we continue to operate with that mindset that we've seen, by force of circumstance through the pandemic, but how we continue to develop that as we come out of this pandemic.

Unknown Speaker 10:32

such an important point you just made, I agree with everything you said, especially this idea that by giving more flexibility, we're giving more access to opportunities. So I think that's really important. And that's from a global perspective, and you're a global company. So you see that firsthand. And I do like the idea of, hey, diversity is more than gender, it's more than ethnicity, it's much more broader. It could be you know, the nature of your work, could be your job role could be, you know, parents versus non parents. There's so many facets to this. And that is the thing I learned early on of the pandemic is, hey, everyone's in this has his unique set of circumstances. And we're all learning to relate and empathize with each other. And diversity is a huge part of that. So thank you so much for sharing. And Tracy, tell us a little bit about what you're prioritizing from a DNI perspective at Oracle.

Unknown Speaker 11:22

absolutely happy to share I and I'm proud to share, I could check one item off the list. Just in the month of January, we launched our executive Diversity Council, of which Safra Catz is the executive sponsor. So I'm pleased to say that that launched in January. It's an incredible part of how we think about diversity inclusion, because as you know, executive Diversity Council can really spearhead and embed DNI initiatives across the corporation. So that is one of our big areas of focus that we wanted to make happen so that we work on big initiatives that can really embed sustainable change, you know, diversity and inclusion. And as you know, I've heard both from Tina and Kelly, this work is really important and imperative. And one of the things that I talk about with an Oracle is that DNI is not just as it relates to my mighty Group of Seven people, my team, each and every employee has to think about how I have responsibility as a relates to diversity and inclusion. So we are continuing to cultivate a internal culture where everyone understands and awareness of their own responsibility, what does that look like? How can I make a greater impact? How can I reach out to my employees, my peers, rather to make them feel more part of the conversation, more included, more like they belong, and then the culture itself? So that's we're continuing with that effort. I think another one of our big efforts we just launched as well. We, you know, diverse includes about 12 years young, I like to say young for Oracle because we're continuing to evolve, right? But one of the areas that we wanted to dig deeper in is globalizing the conversation, diversity inclusion, because Dan, I heard you said diversity inclusion is more than our race or ethnicity, or gender. It is our socio economic background, where we went to school, how we grew up our religious beliefs, and value systems, we bring all those wonderful complexities into the workplace every day. And that's when diversity of thought gets to real innovation. That's what real value of diversity inclusion is. So we've rolled out global imperatives as it relates to diversity inclusion, and we're looking at data and taking an attentional gaze at focus on what data is within each area of business and understand where those opportunities are to increase representation that gets to the diversity of thought, you know, again, disabled veterans all being part of that we're also investing in the future. We have our Oracle Academy, where we are educating the educators on our products and solutions. So you can be the walk out of universities, colleges, community colleges with a certification. We also have our school on red, which at Redwood Shores I previous headquarters, where we are, again, educating future talent our employees are taking time to come in as instructors and professors in that school. And we're also making a large commitment to uncf where we're providing over 30 scholarships, internship programs, where we provide over 300,000 annually to impact blacks, Latin x, Native Americans, and certainly gender as a part of that right, where we're looking at increasing the investment community. We're also recruiting with intention, understanding where those opportunities are filled. And more diversity across all spectrums, LGBTQ blacks, Hispanic Latin accent that that's what you know, we current language disabled, as well as veteran community and certainly gender. So we're looking at that we're also focused on developing our talent, how can we feed back into that great talent we have here at Oracle. So they stay, they grow, they evolve into the culture, and then community, it is a really imperative that once you go through all those wonderful things, understanding where the gaps are recruiting for the talent building that future workforce and developing, we want to keep them. So you have to build programs and initiatives that help to build that sense of community. We're doing that with our employee resource groups of which we have seven different communities across Oracle. And then we also have our Oracle women's leadership all again, a full encompass program, from working with our executive leaders to build those initiatives, to certainly looking at how we can build that sense of community and globalizing the initiative across all of Oracle. So it's been some great work that we're super proud of it. And again, it continues to make us focus on those priorities for 2021.

Unknown Speaker 16:15

That's all great to hear. Tracy, you're definitely involved in so many different programs. And I love how you're looking at this more holistically, hey, this is about recruiting, retention, development, everything is connected here. And to be honest, I think, you know, it's really important that our education system reflects the diversity that we're looking for in our organizations, because everything is connected. And if we look outside of even those universities, we'll get even richer candidate base, because not everyone has a degree and we're shifting in that direction as well. And I also love this idea of the share rule like this is not just Tracy's responsibility, because she's the head of diversity inclusion at Oracle, everyone has a role to play, you know, it's a shared role and responsibility to make this work for Tracy and the company in the community as a whole. And I think that's a really, really important message, especially for 2021. We're all looking for a sense of belonging, and to be part of a community. And we're looking for our organizations to feel part of that role. Because we're spending a lot more of our time working we, you know, at workplace intelligence, we did a study with Oracle that you're probably familiar with, where that's where we found more people are, you know, aside from doing a commute, because we're not doing that as much, I mean, you're going like two feet from your bed to your home office, you're spending more time working. So the importance of having good relationships and feeling like you have a sense of belonging is that much greater. And with all these great opportunities, all these great programs that we're mentioning, there are amazing challenges to do anything major and to make a big shift like we're trying to make in the workplace globally, we're experiencing challenges. So I want to go back to Tina, what are some of the big diversity inclusion challenges that you're experiencing? At Schneider Electric?

Unknown Speaker 17:58

Oh, um, for us, there's always challenges, right? And I think we alluded to, in the first part, everything ranging from mindset and behaviors at the end of the day, are we acting differently, and shifting the needle in some ways? And we track that very carefully? To as I said earlier, are we achieving some of the outcomes we declare, I think one of the challenges, and it's partly an interesting piece in that part of our dei ambition at Schneider Electric is, of course to support the efforts within our workforce of 140,000, folks, but we're also trying to increasingly make a direct impact and connect with society at large, because as As mentioned earlier, it's a two way street, right? You can't work in a vacuum, just with your company. Trying to advance the AI is also about shifting some of the trends and some of the systemic institutionalized challenges we all face globally. So for us, one of the challenges has always been How do you bridge those two worlds? And how do you make sure the external stakeholders and and our internal leaders employees are on board, and I'll tee up a little bit of a mini solution that we're trying to work towards. So this year, we announced our Schneider sustainability impact measure, which includes a lot of di measures. And because of that, it ties us committed to not only the external commitments to stakeholders around Dei, but also we tie it to the bonus pay of our employees and leaders. So this is everything on contribution in terms of climate contribution to different types of diversity. And also, of course, how we contribute to issues around poverty etc, at large the community. So we are the first we just issued a bond related to that, because based on these sustainability and di measures, and we now anchor this into something that's a long term commitment, tied to financial results, which we hope will also catalyze some of the mindset shifts. So that's one example. I think the other thing for me is at the end of the day, how to make this very simple, and how to humanize it. So, with our leaders, especially, we have a campaign around every decision counts. So it's just reminding us and I just did this with my executive committee two weeks ago, the number of hires we made at the senior executive level in last year, we took a look at it. And we built a through a filter the names and said, Did we actually say what we're going to do? What was our say do ratio at the end of the day, and at Schneider, we're very clear, we hire for skills, values, diversity, and potential. And we don't check the box on all of them for every single hire, but we really try hard to meet as many of those metrics as possible. And it was a fascinating exercise, still a challenge where you start to see no, in some cases, we were we were really quite aligned. Some cases, we didn't make those kinds of decisions based on the criteria we set ahead. So that notion of really making sure every decision counts at the individual talent decision, is something we've been trying to really reinforce more and more, knowing that it's a huge challenge, but also reminding our leaders, they have a huge opportunity to change the game decision by decision.

Unknown Speaker 21:15

Yeah, Tina, I think this is all really important, because work and life are so blended, what happens in society affects your work life. And what happens at work affects society, in a sense, because everything is so blended now in our current state. And I think that it's so important, especially today to create the incentives to make the actions happen, that changed society, and you can start to do that with a company. I mean, you know, you're impacting so many workers, you know, and all these workers, if they feel like they belong, and they feel like they're part of this mission and have this purpose, that's going to help you from a corporate standpoint, and them from a personal standpoint, so it really creates this amazing Win Win, where companies can be part of the solution to support society in a bigger way, like you're talking about, and and Kelly, can you talk about a little bit, even from a global standpoint, how, what challenges are you having, because there are all sorts of like, we've been talking about complexities, you know, not just cross ethnicities and genders and, and in terms of, you know, your families and all these barriers that we have and complications, but from a global perspective, it adds a whole nother element to it.

Unknown Speaker 22:28

Yeah, for sure. And I think, I think the fact that we are a global organization presents the first challenge for me, which is that there is no one size fits all. Whilst globally, we have a set of commitments within the Fujitsu way, we have a set of promises around diversity and inclusion. And we want to create an environment where all employees can be completely themselves where we see equal career progression retention amongst diverse groups. But actually how we apply that needs to be different, according to regional variations around the world. So we're a similar size in terms of our workforce to Schneider Electric, we have 130,000 employees across around 100 countries. And actually how you talk about diversity and inclusion in all of those countries is quite different. There's a different set of societal norms, different cultural norms, in many cases, different legislative background as well. That means that what may be appropriate to frame a conversation around DNI in one country may be inappropriate in another. How do we get around that the way we do it is we have some really simple core promises around diversity and inclusion. But how we then apply and implement those is by regional focus. So we have regional DNI teams working integrated within the regional HR functions, to really put in place programs that are appropriate for their local context. And I also loved what Tracy said around your you're an army of seven, we you know, we're an army of a similar, a similar kind of size. And that's the other thing it's about how do we integrate DNI so it isn't the responsibility of the very small but perfectly formed DNI team over here. Actually, we build it into our leaders incentives, we build it into how we develop our managers, we build it into everything that we do. So it becomes intrinsic, it's not an add on that is just the responsibility of a core group of people. I think those would be my my two challenges.

Unknown Speaker 24:45

Clearly the three of us on the panel with you. We all have these similar challenges, right, really trying to drive something huge. In a very global diverse company with all small teams all acknowledged as well and the Schneider side. One thing that we use, and I And I'm sure, Fujitsu and Oracle's to do similar like when we rolled out a global family leave policy two years ago at Schneider. And it covers the span of parental leave and bereavement leave and care leave and whatnot. And it was amplified, actually last year during COVID, given some of the feedback on the ground, but simply put, we knew we couldn't develop a policy that satisfies all the needs of the market, the statutory requirements. So our philosophy, the working method, we basically said, Hey, guys, countries take this, we call it a global minimum standard, we explain the global strategic reason for doing it. And we said in 18 months, roll it out, meet that minimum standard, but we dare you, we encourage you to exceed that standard based on what you can do for your country. And I think that's that balance. We're all trying to struggle, you know, have that that global core, the red thread that tries the GI agenda, but to Kelly's point, really respecting and customizing to local country needs as well,

Unknown Speaker 26:00

yeah, we'll come up what Kelly said that really struck me as you basically as people who understand, you know, and can act regionally and understand those specific needs, but then also has this global strategy. So it's almost like the best of both worlds. And I mean, everything Tina said, with paid family leave, that is so important. Now, when we talk about diversity, one of the big other trends that's connected to it is over 2 million women have dropped out of the US workforce over the past year because of a lack of childcare, and a lack of paid family leave. So that mean that that providing that level of support, and those benefits has never been more important, you know, support women in the workplace. And go to you, Tracy, we're talking about challenges. And you know, with all of these incredible programs that you're doing at Oracle, clearly there has to be some challenges that are making it complicated, especially because like them, you probably don't have a pretty big team.

Unknown Speaker 26:54

Absolutely. So you know, to the point, I think that Kelly, you know, talk about it perfectly when you're thinking about this from a global perspective, what DNI means region, a region can be challenging in some ways, how do you roll out an initiative that is respectful to all countries and regions, and that has to always be top of mind, we always want our employees to be safe. And we always want to make sure that we're respectful to them. That's a really big challenge, how we think about wording this, and it's about respect and using and making sure that we're using proper words without trying to implement different policy changes or political changes in that particular country. So I think you definitely spoke at a very point on that. I think the biggest thing is I think about as well, globally, one of the biggest challenges to DNI just to all of our 140,000 employees is that people aren't just quite exhausted. And we're living in the midst of a pandemic. We've learned how to do business via zoom. And, you know, and in the midst of all that, then we had the social injustice rise, after the murder of George Floyd that really did expand globally, where there were so many people in different countries or regions that were really amplifying their voice around equity, and the fact that there was a social injustice. So I think that one of the biggest challenges that has come for DNI is that as we think about this as a global initiative, and where people are just completely zoom, exhausted, it can be really quite taxing sometimes for our employee communities to take on additional lift and shift in addition to their day job. And so we're trying to make sure, in addition to all the other things like you know, Kelly and Tina talk, we're trying to make sure that we're being good to our employees, that we're looking at being considerate of the work that they're doing that they're they're not over exhausting themselves. Because Dan, you're right. I mean, McKinsey study showed a study show that there were under rep you the women are leaving at a huge rate out of the marketplace, but then I can tell you, I had great hope I was on a call with one of our ebps and his team all svps join, and there was the father feeding his baby that was recently born during the call. And then that gave great hope because I said, if you have a male, Senior Vice President feeding his son during the meeting, we know that there is some evolution some equity that's really happening here. Because his wife had to take another call. So he jumped in and joined the call and took over responsibility. So yes, there's challenges there and they are absolutely real people are exhausted. Resume fatigue is a real reality. Women are leading the marketplace and and underrepresented minorities in the US. are being affected worse by all of the the everything that we have happening here in our society. But the rainbow of hope came but I saw the that leader on that call feeding is like I look at three months ago. And then and and it was perfect. It was a beautiful sight to me about the equity, of how things are evolving and gave me hope and courage for things to get a little lighter.

Unknown Speaker 30:24

And it goes Tracy, it goes back to where Kelly was saying about bringing your full self bring your full human work. Like right now this is inescapable, like you have a dog, if you have a kid, they're probably running in your room. This happens to in the late night shows this also happens in team meetings. You got you're seeing this everywhere. So what's really fascinating is, in a sense, being remote and using technology like zoom, it's humanized, everyone because work in life are blinded. But at the same time, our level of empathy is not increased as much because we're not walking around the streets and seeing people who, you know, might be homeless, or might look different than us where, you know, a lot of people are more inclined to, you know, just keep a pot of people who are like them. So there's a lot of different dynamics here that have caused all these complications, and, and in made things more complex. And so there's more pressure on all of you to do big things and to raise the bar for diversity inclusion in the workplace. I want to stay with you, Tracy, because you mentioned so many different programs. But do you mind just picking one of those programs? And tell me why it was it's been the most successful program that you've championed and some of the results that you've brought? You've received from it so far?

Unknown Speaker 31:35

Yeah, absolutely. So you know, we talk about unconscious bias a lot in the workplace. And listen, we all have biases, it's all about how we mitigate them. But one of the things we're really proud of is we rolled out a training session on micro inequities in the workplace. for Oracle 140,000 employees, it's really kind of tough to get everyone out of their business day, especially in our product dev organization get about their business day, three and a half hours for a live training. So it was a live training, three and a half hours of training. And it was on micro and equities. And those those those those small nuances of how we engage with our workplace, our teams that can make others feel devalued. So it was interesting, we had a lot of a lot of our leaders was it was it was focused on director and above. And a lot of the leaders was like, Oh, God, another training another, you know, DNI training. And what came from that was this real inclusive conversation? Because it wasn't, it wasn't like a definitive DNI training. It was threaded into providing leadership skills in this training, that it had a DNI thread throughout it. And that was really powerful, because the leaders walked away with Wow, gosh, I think I do that sometimes I introduce, introduce this person, their great big lead this project mazing job over here, and you know, all of our customers, you know, we get a rating of XYZ on this person. And this over here is john, John's really killing it too. So let's move on. So it just didn't give that same vibrato, even to this. And so this first john may feel less devalue than beggin over here, who really was was, was positioned as that rock star. And so we had leaders that walked out of that training. And they had so many aha moments. In fact, they stayed around longer for the external instructor that we had brought in is to provide there's training to have further dialogue. And this is probably one of our only trainings that we have received a 95% or better training, on, reviews on survey results on and people and they, again, threaded throughout. It's not the hard diversity is important. Here's why inclusion is important. Here's why he was really very nicely threaded within. But providing those leadership skills, we've moved it to a zoom format, we reduced the time because that was critical and zoom world and still a 95% or better survey result. And so what we know is that was critical, important to the business to have those leadership skills, those skills can help retain talent, talent, like their value, they're heard. They're part of the solution. And so I'm really proud of that, because I will tell you, when my team brought it to me, I was like three and a half hours out of Oracle business day. And they were like, no, come on. We could add here's why. And they brought the speaking at the instructor and I still was like, I don't know, I don't know, we had a we had a leader. We taught me approach one leader and they were like, yeah, you know what? We'll pilot it. Yeah, most important sponsor. And it's been phenomenal. It's been phenomenal. It's been I even I because I know our business. It's hard to get leaders out of it. I'm sure it's the same for you, Tina Kelly. To get someone out of business that long is a good analogy, right? So it was a great win I'm super proud of and the fractal survey results, people are lingering in the room afterwards to further understand when we were meeting in person when we are now you know, zoom format will or more briefer session, but it's one of my most things I'm most proud of, because it really did target that kind of director level and above. And what we know is a lot of work that we do in DNI, it really many times gets stuck at that middle manager level, that's where you see that frozen middle, it can be at that middle manager and bringing in those managers and directors into that conversation. To keep their skills up. They walked away with some diversity elements that they learned without ever being that hard knocking ahead, if you will about here's why DNI is important in all those different narratives that are pretty common that we talked about,

Unknown Speaker 35:53

you gave them something they can't Google, which is a conversation with people who are in a similar position to them, trying to figure out how to make the workplace more diverse and include everyone, not just a subset of the group, which is so valuable. And Kelly, what about you name, one of the diversity in programs, diversity inclusion programs that you've championed and how you measure the result of it?

Unknown Speaker 36:16

Yeah, for sure. May I just comment as well on on Tracy's example. Because I, it really brings to mind something that we talk about at Fujitsu when we talk about being inclusive by design. And what we mean by that is when we design training, when we design solutions, when we design technology that recognizes diverse groups, we actually come up with better solutions. And for me, that's a brilliant example of where you've designed with diversity in mind. But actually, it's it's developed great management practice beyond DNI. But, sorry, Dan, to come.

Unknown Speaker 36:55

I think it's great. Well, you're really a you have diversity in mind. And everything that you do, and that's part of why the program was successful is because it was built into it in the beginning. So I think that's a really important point.

Unknown Speaker 37:06

Yeah, embedding everything, it has to be embedded everything we do, or, or diversity closure included, becomes a standalone initiative, that does not evolve to change. And and and that's imperative, it has to be

Unknown Speaker 37:20

for sure.

Unknown Speaker 37:22

So So back to your question down about what has been the most effective program at Fujitsu. The one that we've seen make the greatest progress so far, and we are still on a long journey. And destination currently unknown, is I think they they globally coordinated approach that we've taken to improving gender diversity. So the tech sector continues to be a male dominated labor market vary slightly across different regions and within different countries. But the fact remains, it is a male dominated labor force. Whilst we have regional targets for gender balance, right across Fujitsu, we then apply local targets and local measures. And it's when we get into those measures that we can see the greatest progress in all all aspects of our diversity. So for example, when I will look at our our global delivery center in China, which is an applications development workforce, that is very traditionally kind of a male and male dominated workforce, what we've been able to do there is achieve almost a 5050 gender split against a backdrop of a market that doesn't really reflect that. And we've actually done that by turning what was potentially a limitation into an opportunity for us. So as a and this is where the local sensitivity really needs to come in. So as a Japanese organization operating in China, we don't attract graduates from tier one universities. Tier One, students tend to want to go and work for Chinese organizations. So we're targeting at tier two, tier three academic institutions, but actually, there's much greater gender diversity in those places. So by doing that, we've been able to get this really positive gender balance. And then what we can see in turn as a result of having that is that we have lower attrition. In that delivery center. The culture is evolving at a more rapid pace than it is in other areas of the business. And it's one of our highest performing GD C's so that's where the local measures become really significant. Another example but people will recognize from my accent I'm British and and work in the UK. So this one is very close to my my heart is in the UK, we we talk about our gender pay gap and we are up lied legally to publish the gap in average hourly rate of pay between men and women. That isn't a measure of equal pay. That's a measure of representation between men and women. Do we have balance in gender at all levels of the of the organization. And across the UK today, there's a 25% pay gap between men and women in the tech sector. At Fujitsu, we have a pay gap, our commitment is to eradicate it. And we've been able to get it down by six percentage points in the last four years, to a point where when we last published, we're at 11.6%. It's still an unacceptable gap. We don't want we don't want to be an organization that has any pay gap. But the fact that we're making really positive progress is evidence that all of the efforts that we're going to in recruiting more diverse talent, supporting the career progression of women, especially focusing on retention activities, really upping the ante on flexible working, all of that is translating to a reduction in the gap. So I think those two things would be that examples of why I'm most proud of gender diversity.

Unknown Speaker 41:18

Yeah, I'm really happy you brought up the UK because I study the UK a lot in terms of their labor practices, and the government has definitely had their hand in that in terms of, you know, enabling and creating the assent incentives and perimeters around gender and ethnic diversity in the workplace. Whereas now, I think that in the US, we're taking big strides. The most striking thing that I saw over the past few months is that the New York Stock Exchange is thinking about taking a company off the exchange if they don't have a racially and gender diverse board, which is Who would have ever thought that would happen if years ago. So there's definitely some headway that we're making as a society even at the highest ranks. And and to you, Tina, you've done so many, so much work in this area, as you said earlier, what is one program that you're most proud of? And how do you measure the results of it?

Unknown Speaker 42:10

I'm going to, and I love the examples that Tracy and Kelly give. So I'm going to try and keep one of the ones for Schneider Electric, I think that's quite important and differentiating for us is the effort, we took to hardwire the DI topic, especially around equity, right. And I spoke earlier about equity of opportunity with our business model. So in our ambition, we call ourselves the most local of global companies. And our global workforce is really distributed, right? So we bought a third, a third, a third in America, Asia and Europe, of our workforce and our leaders. So one of the things I do with my team, with each of our business entities is to really make sure we practice that. So we look at a sample of our top global 500 positions and say, in that spirit of being most local, close to customers being more agile, but also adding unique opportunities for equity and career opportunities for local regional talent, we really try to make sure that those global positions are occupied by folks who are diverse, especially from a local front, and also making sure that the location of these global positions are equally distributed around the world. 1015 years ago, most of the big jobs were in Paris, and you had to build a career by getting your passport stamped at some point going to Paris, in the last 10 years, we've really tried to democratize that opportunity. And then coupled with that I mentioned earlier is Bottoms up. In April, this past year, in the midst of the pandemic, we launched our open talent market. And I mentioned that earlier, it's an open platform to all our countries, which really is trying to bring more transparency. And we still have to work on that, to make sure that employees have access and empowerment to apply to jobs and projects and mentorships versus being tapped on the shoulder and saying, hey, Tina, you're ready for your next assignment. So beat between that top down global hub strategy that we have. And then the bottom up open talent market. We've seen some amazing results in terms of the shift in terms of diversity of positions and who's getting those positions. And hopefully over time, even more employee driven empowerment in making some of those decisions. So that's another highlight I'd like to share. Yeah, challenging, but super fun.

Unknown Speaker 44:38

That's a great highlight. And the it's part of this larger trend of opportunities coming to people instead of people coming to opportunities. And a lot of that has occurred over the past year of course because of remote work and you can apply to jobs wherever you are and now with your talent marketplace and various other companies are starting to head in this direction. They're giving All these great opportunities and mentorship in jobs and projects to people wherever they are, which does enable diversity inclusion in a way in, which was not probably thought of years ago. But I think that now is the time and especially with global companies, where can you get people scattered everywhere. And that means the opportunity, opportunities can be more scattered. And that can be a really good thing for getting a diverse workforce. And I think one of the interesting things that I've thought of over the years is, hey, we know that a more diverse workforce is healthier brings out creativity and innovation. So why are we still struggling with this? Right? It's this frustration of people who've been in the field for a long time, like, why have we made headway? And I think that what other executives such as yourselves and other companies in industries and geographies are looking for, they're looking for your advice. So I'd love to start with Tracy and just give one big piece of advice that you would offer your peers who are looking to develop diversity and inclusion programs for 2021. And you know, what, what can they do to enable DNI throughout their organization?

Unknown Speaker 46:09

So it's a it's a great question. One thing I would always say, this work of DNI. While it is great work, it can be mentally exhausting. I would say to the first thing I would say to employees is that be good to HR peers, be good to yourself, first of all, and understand that this work is not a sprint, it is a marathon, you have it takes time to really evolve initiatives that are critical, and important that moves the needle in the business, I recommend starting out with understanding what's important to your employees, we understand what's an external market, you know, they're very similar to just the word technical company. We know that there is also a pipeline issue as we think about more underrepresented minorities and gender diversity, encouraging that talent sooner and earlier. But internal to the workplace, you know, you have to understand what's important to our employees to to make sure that the programs initiatives that we put in place are aligning to what our employees want, is easy to do things to people, but it's better to do things with people, so that we're making informed decisions that help to move the needle, and may and then there is progress. So one, be good to yourself. Take moments of rest and recuperation, understand that the work takes time to evolve, and then really have an understanding ear to the ground of what's critical and important to your organization. So you're not spending a lot of time building your will and kind of a hamster on this on this will right and you're putting out programs and initiatives. And your survey still saying you know what, that's not what we want it, that's not moving the needle. So understand better, talk to your communities, engage with your employees, from all levels from the executives to individual contributors, understanding what's going to go important. And then work on strategies and solutions that address that. And that is how you can get to in my mind again, and I'd lovely word I'd like to say you're threading diversity inclusion throughout, and you're not working on these heavy push initiatives that that no one wanted to move the needle, because it wasn't actively in done in that inclusive model. Look, if there's a reason diversity and inclusion as a part of this conversation, right? diversity is, uh, you know, like I always say diversity is inviting someone to the party, but inclusion is asking that person you invited to actually dance. So again, do it with the understanding, do it with the engagement of everyone within the organization. And that's how you can get to real sustainable initiatives of diversity and inclusion.

Unknown Speaker 48:57

And that's definitely one of the big takeaways from this conversation. So I'm really happy brought it up, Tracy is make your employees part of the process, don't leave them out. Don't just create all these programs and say, you know, good luck, have fun in this training. So I think that is so valuable. And Kelly, your next what advice would you offer your peers?

Unknown Speaker 49:15

Yeah, for sure. I am. Very simply, I would say, the most powerful, powerful combination, in my view, to present a set of circumstances that influence your action planning are the combination of two things. So what does your data tell you? What does your people data tell you? And what stories are your employees giving you? And I've talked about this a lot. It's such a powerful jigsaw. That combined gives you such a compelling understanding as an organization of where you need to focus your efforts. So Tracy's articulated, listen to your people, they do things that you think are the right things to do, but hear the stories that they're telling you hear the insights. From your diversity and inclusion networks, as we call them, or your employee resource groups if you refer to them in that way, we get our leaders involved in reverse mentoring, and that gives them incredible insight to the lived experiences of people with diverse backgrounds to them. What are those stories telling you? What is your employee engagement survey telling you? What is it telling you in those countries where we actually ask diversity information, and we can understand how people's experience differs in different groups. And for many of our leaders, when we're setting the context for where we need to focus, all of that is enough. But then when we couple those stories with our people data, actually, what are our recruitment figures showing? What are our attraction figures showing? Why are we not attracting diverse candidates into certain vacancies or with we're attracting diverse candidates in but then we're losing them at a at a faster rate than the kind of main of the workforce white? Why is that? What is that telling us? Is there any difference in career progression between diverse groups, or that gives us such a powerful picture? And especially for those people who struggle to be convinced or need the more objective argument about why you should focus on DNI, I find that using the data in that way really gets them to, to kind of stand up and pay attention because you're not only resting then on expecting that they have the same values of you, or that they kind of just get this instinctively, you're showing objectively that people are having a different experience. And that and that can be really powerful.

Unknown Speaker 51:39

Why do you share that case? I would summarize that. So tip number two is collect people's data to inform your DNI programs and investments and division off Tina, what advice would you give your peers? Okay, ah,

Unknown Speaker 51:51

I love the comments already for my colleagues. So I would say Dan, for me also. And we all acknowledge it is a labor of love, right? So some days, it's like two steps forward and one step back. But I think we're just all super energized to fight the good fight every day. For me, it is about hardwiring policies, practices and habits, probably the least number that have the greatest impact. I'm a firm believer that sometimes that hard wiring creates a little bit of a nudge, a little force mechanism to then catapult into broader mindset and behavior change. And then if I'm allowed to dream big Dan, I also encourage the dei practitioners and allies to think beyond their company to society at large. When we tackle together systemic racism, institutionalized economic inequality, social issues, it lifts the whole tide right for all of us in terms of the broader ambition we all have for our companies as well. So that's my, my dream optimistic days, I also encourage us to also think big as well. I love it too, you know, we got to do we have to dream big, why not?

Unknown Speaker 53:01

Make it fun. That's the good one. When you when all the work that we were doing internal translates to, to those employees, external engages, and it community, so love it,

Unknown Speaker 53:12

oh, everything's connected. And so as a tip number three, from Tina is less is more so you can focus your energy, but always dream big, because, as we've said, you know, throughout this whole panel, it's gonna take a long time, it's a lot of effort, all the employees have to be on board. And we're all in this together, growing, you know, surviving COVID together, but we're also in pursuing DNI programs that make a big impact and can transform not just our companies, but society as a whole. So I think that's such an important mission. And thank all of you so much for being part of this panel today to talk about 2021 diversity initiatives, because this has never been more important. And it all starts with what we're doing in our companies and to inspire other people. Thank you. Thank you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai