Promoting inclusive leadership to achieve DE&I goals

The process for building the DE&I roadmap consisted of three key stages:

• Stage 1: Review and benchmarking of existing policies and processes: This was a top-level review of key policy areas covering talent acquisition, talent development, performance management and work-life integration.
• Stage 2: Engagement with key business stakeholders: Conducting interviews with key business stakeholders at the company, including regional HR colleagues and business leaders from across key regional locations – Europe, North America, South Latin America and Asia.
• Stage 3: Building the DE&I roadmap: Following the key stakeholder interviews, we identified inclusive talent and inclusive culture as key themes to underpin the roadmap. We planned our roadmap delivery over a course of four years.

As part of gaining buy-in from senior business stakeholders, we devised and facilitated a series of inclusive leadership workshops. Delivered in key global hubs, including London, Geneva, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, and Newark (USA) the objectives of these sessions were to:

• Create a sense of urgency on the importance of DE&I as a strategic enabler amongst the company’s leadership population
• Educate the company’s leadership population on the principles of inclusive leadership and the role of leaders as role models in creating an inclusive environment
• To create awareness on current behaviours and their impact on organisational health, together with building knowledge of the advantages of leveraging diversity from a business and commercial standpoint
• To socialise the actions as outlined in the global DE&I roadmap and to gain buy-in for local implementation.

This process consisted of two key areas of work:

• Policies and guiding principles: Following the inclusive leadership workshops, we have developed a set of guiding principles that balance global consistency with local flexibility. These principles included:
  • Recruitment
  • Performance management
  • On-boarding
  • Work-life integration and flexible working
• Data mapping‍: We developed data mapping and data drill-down exercises to:
  • Establish a diversity baseline, covering business priority areas of gender, age and nationality/ethnicity. The data mapping covers key areas of talent acquisition, retention, performance management, pay & reward and training & development.
  • Measure perceptions on unconscious bias and inclusion at work, across our client’s global and regional locations.