From the bottom of our hearts here at Inclusionary Leadership Group, we wish you a prosperous new year!
Where To Engage Men In The Workplace Continues - Pt. 3 Of Problem, Opportunities And Solutions For Gender Equality In Corp. Culture
Before the holiday break we started sharing a series that includes Dale Thomas Vaughn, Co Founder of Inclusionary Leadership Group describing gender equality problems, opportunities, and solutions as related to corporate culture. In our last blog, he began a panel discussion entitled The Inclusion Roadmap: Where to Start Engaging Men in the Workplace. He welcomed Dr. Ronald Copeland from Kaiser Permanente, MD Senior Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer of National Diversity Inclusions, Strategy and Policy. This week continues with Lesley Slaton Brown from HP Inc., Chief Diversity Officer (see thumbnail picture on video to the right), Nadia Chargualaf, Telstra Vice President of Human Resources for U.S. Operations and Mike Dillon from PwC, Chief Diversity Officer as they share their experiences and work as allies in the inclusionary leadership movement. The series will then continue next week with the panel discussing the tools, tactics, and teams that are moving forward within their companies and what's working for them.
Lesley Slaton Brown:
So at HP we started, when we split in November of 2015 as one company, the Hewlett Packard Company, we split into two companies. And when we did that, we set off in one direction with Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and then in the other direction with HP Inc, which is the company that I now represent. We said we want to create the most diverse board of directors in the tech industry, and so we sought out to do that. We had to say a lot of ‘No’s’ before we got to the ‘Yes’s’ in order to develop that diverse board of directors. We now sit at ... we were at 42%, but Meg Wittman left, so now we're at 36% representation of women, and about 27% to 29% ethnic minorities.
IT STARTS AT THE TOP
Now, why is that important for inclusion? It's because as you said, it starts at the top. And then we looked at our next level of leadership, our L1 level, and it looked very, very male dominant in the people that are managing our business lines. So what we did is we devised a board buddy program that affords the board members to mentor our senior leaders, our business leaders, and then we reverse mentor up to the board of directors. It’s a little risky, because you don't want your board digging that deep into your business, but the benefit that we have is that our L1 leaders who are predominantly men are being mentored by a predominantly diverse group of people of women and ethnic minorities. So you get a really good dual mentorship going on there. I’ll talk more about the other pieces later.
Nadia Chargualaf:
So at a 30,000 feet view, I think you guys all echoed with the overall business strategy of your companies. Not only am I with Telstra, I'm not sure how many people know Telstra. Telstra is essentially an Australian based communications company and I work in their U.S. division.
BETTER TOGETHER IS ONE OF OUR FIVE VALUES
Our actual business purpose is to create a brilliantly connected future for everyone. That being said, it falls right in line with diversity. “Better Together” is one of our five values.
So when we're looking at it from a corporate perspective, we also are a tech business, so we fall in line with the tech statistics in terms of women in the workforce, which is a very low percentage, generally speaking overall. In the U.S. last year we started at 26% women and we were able to change that through various tools that we put in place, and we're now at 70-30, which we're very proud of. Having said that, from a strategic standpoint, its first understanding the business theme, it aligns with our overall strategy and putting in the tools in place to actually move the needle.
Mike Dillon:
So I'm at PwC and for those that don't know us, we're a large accounting and consulting firm and we now have over 50,000 people in the U.S. I came into this role last July first with our new CEO, Tim Ryan and I think when we talk about our strategy it really has to be part of our core principles, our core values, our beliefs every day. Tim started that with our new leadership team. It’s our most diverse senior leadership team of the firm. For example, our 3 line of service leaders are all men and women of color, we have 25% who were born outside the U.S., and it’s a real diverse group of opinion and thought. So, we're really starting at the top.
OUR STRATEGY IS TO RETAIN, DEVELOP, AND HELP GROW OUR MOST DIVERSE STAFF
Our strategy is to retain, develop, and help grow our most diverse staff. Because, as we talked earlier, from a business perspective, we know what the business case is but we have to be able to deliver to our clients and our client's diverse teams but also internally also for us to innovate, we know we need a very diverse staff.
So I think about it that way and I think about just core beliefs and accountability. I came out of the client service role that I was in for, god, almost 29 years, to take this on. I will be in a tour of duty for three or four years but we think it’s really important to have a Chief Diversity Officer that reports to the CEO every day. And then down to the market level where we have market diversity leaders that wake up everyday thinking about diversity.
Dale Thomas Vaughn:
Thank you. Let’s move from the strategy down into the tactics, to where the rubber beats the road. What are the tools, the tactics, the teams, the stuff that actually is moving forward for your company? Anything that you’ve seen specifically work for you, or anything that your certainly excited about putting into place in the future?
TO BE CONTINUED...
SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT FROM CO-FOUNDER OF GENDER LEADERSHIP GROUP
Gender Leadership Group is in the process of re-branding as Inclusionary Leadership Group. This change recognizes the increasingly intersectional nature of our work. Gender continues to provide access to the dynamics of inclusionary leadership and the factors that block it, and at the same time our work has grown to include all aspects of inclusion.
The Inclusionary Leadership Group looks forward to continuing our service as a part of the important inclusionary leadership movement.
- Ed Gurowitz, Co-Founder of Gender Leadership Group
Better Man Conference 2017 Recap Report
We are proud to share this recap report from the Better Man Conference 2017 as just last month, 200+ leaders and many great diverse speakers and panelists, both men and women came together to be a part of the movement to engage men as inclusionary leaders at the Better Man Conference 2017. This year we grew in both quantity and quality. That’s due to your involvement. We thank each and every attendee, speaker, sponsor, marketing partner, and supporter for being such an important part of the men's inclusionary leadership movement. See the recap report here.
THANK YOU to 2017 BETTER MAN CONFERENCE SPONSORS
THANK YOU to 2017 BETTER MAN CONFERENCE MARKETING PARTNERS
