Episode 9
People Podcast - Diversity and Inclusion
In the ninth episode of Atlas Copco’s People Podcast, Cecilia Sandberg, SVP Chief Human Resources Officer and guest Louisa Woods, D&I Manager at Atlas Copco, dive into the diversity and inclusion concept. Louisa shares her experiences and knowledge on why it is important to view D&I initiatives as an ongoing cultural change project. Questions like ‘why is diversity & inclusion so important for us to become a long-term sustainable company?’ are raised among other things. Tune in and learn more!
Transcript
At Atlas Copco, we strive to be the most attractive industrial company in our segments and target markets.
Speaker:Our strong culture of innovation is a result of having great people on board, committed and encouraged to grow, grow and reach their full potential with the belief that passionate people make the difference.
Speaker:The People Podcast is one channel where we get to explore and deep dive into topics within people and culture.
Speaker:For those of you who have listened to our previous episodes, welcome back.
Speaker:We release new episodes on a quarterly basis and the program today is our 9th release.
Speaker:I'm Cecilia Sandberg, head of HR for the Atlas Copco Group
Speaker:And today, I have the privilege to have Louisa Woods joining me from the UK.
Speaker:Louisa is our Diversity and Inclusion Manager for Vacuum Technique Business area and parttime diversity and Inclusion Manager for the Atlas Copco Group, and a solid leader within the field of diversity and inclusion.
Speaker:So Louisa will share her knowledge and expertise, and our topic will be the necessity of diversity and inclusion.
Speaker:Why is it so important for us in our ambition to be a long term sustainable company? And how do we make it happen and how do we take it forward? Please join us.
Speaker:Hi, Louisa, welcome.
Speaker:Thank you so much, Cecilia.
Speaker:I'm so excited to have you with us today.
Speaker:We will talk about the why and the what in relation to diversity and inclusion, but more important, our focus going forward and how this will make us even stronger for the future, as in an organization, right? Yeah.
Speaker:I'm looking forward to a conversation, so let's start by looking into research.
Speaker:Could you give us a high level overview why we should focus on diversity and inclusion? Sure.
Speaker:Well, there's no vast selection of research out there about the benefits of diversity and inclusion, and most of them summarize the benefits.
Speaker:There's quite a bit, a wide variety of them.
Speaker:So let me give you some of those.
Speaker:First of all, there's the improved ability to attract routine and develop diverse talent, better decision making, more imaginative problemsolving, enhanced creativity and innovation, increased engagement, and also, but most importantly, customer excellence and retention.
Speaker:Different benefits drive the focus for different businesses.
Speaker:But the one that I'm currently hearing most frequently just now is the ability to attract and retain talent, because being recognized as an organization that focuses on having an inclusive culture is really key to attracting new talent.
Speaker:I think that's super interesting.
Speaker:Louisa, could you elaborate a bit more around that? Sure.
Speaker:Well, over the past five years or so, there's been a major shift in the expectations, particularly from early career talent and what they're looking for from their employers.
Speaker:So they want work life balance, they want to be given interesting work.
Speaker:And we really want to see commitment to sustainability and diversity and inclusion.
Speaker:So we need to focus on this as part of our attraction and our culture.
Speaker:There's also been a major shift in the past two years that's been evident for most of us.
Speaker:It's around work life balance and that ability to work flexibly where possible.
Speaker:I read that recently and it said that 60% of women will not consider a role that doesn't offer some form of flexibility and that's a lot of potential talent.
Speaker:We might miss out on both men and women if we don't provide an inclusive approach to how and where we work.
Speaker:Thanks for sharing.
Speaker:Louisa, I believe your comments around talent, attraction and development is very relevant, ensuring that we invite all voices to the table.
Speaker:Another activity that we spend a lot of focus and efforts around is recruiting.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So what does that mean? Well, what it means is it's susceptible to bias and unconscious bias.
Speaker:So I would recommend the best place to start with recruitment, whether you're a hiring manager or an HR colleague, is to ask yourself these two questions.
Speaker:First of all, how can I make the process and candidate experience more inclusive? And then the second one is, how can I minimize bias and prevent its negative impact on my decision making? A good starting point to answer these questions is to educate ourselves on the impact of unconscious bias, and then we focus on our job advert.
Speaker:That's really important.
Speaker:How is the job advert written? Who sees it? And often, more importantly, who doesn't see a job advert? I would like to build on that one.
Speaker:We are passionate, I think, about recruiting from the full talent pool.
Speaker:And you mentioned adverse for attracting key talent.
Speaker:Why is this so important? Well, first of all, I think when did you last update your job advert or even have other people review it? When I talk to hiring managers, most of them see that they haven't looked or reviewed their job adverts for some time.
Speaker:Therefore, if it has been some time, I really strongly suggest that you ask different colleagues to review it and to give you feedback.
Speaker:I think it's important to try and include women or early careers colleagues because they will look for different things.
Speaker:Then think about where you advertise your roles, who gets to see your job admir, and as I said a moment ago, who doesn't see your job ad there? Try some new channels to attract different types of candidates.
Speaker:The biggest obstacle we face is having the time to do this and also the technical nature of some of our jobs can make the talent pool for some roles quite narrow.
Speaker:So I would encourage you all to review your job adverts and get others to look at them too.
Speaker:Ask what appeals to them and what turns them off.
Speaker:That's really, really important.
Speaker:No, I think it's great that you mentioned this because we spent quite some work on our new employee value proposition and we recently piloted a brand new program on strategic and inclusive recruitment and now we will expand it and roll it out beyond the pilot group.
Speaker:Now, if we continue looking into the implementation of diversity inclusion initiatives, where do you see organizations maybe taking the wrong path? Yeah, I get asked this quite often.
Speaker:I would say from my experience, the most common mistake companies can make is viewing diversity and inclusion as individual separate activities that are the responsibility of a minority.
Speaker:D&I is actually a culture change project and it's something that we all need to be accountable for and it should be planned like a culture change project because if we look at diversity and inclusion as individual initiatives, then it's easy for it to be a recruitment activity, something that HR does.
Speaker:And this is probably the most common mistake that companies make, particularly at the early stages.
Speaker:And if you don't move on from that quickly enough, it can become more challenging to change mindsets and then progress can be slower.
Speaker:So I would suggest, as I said, we need to view diversity, inclusion.
Speaker:It's a culture change project and it requires everybody's involvement and it really, really needs strong leadership and accountability.
Speaker:And this is the difficult part is to get everyone on board.
Speaker:There's a really common change model out there which I think works really well when you think about diversity and inclusion.
Speaker:And some of our listeners may have heard of it, it's called the ADKAR model.
Speaker:So what does ADKAR stand for? First of all, awareness.
Speaker:And people need to know about the awareness, they need to know why we need to change.
Speaker:D is for desire and we need to get their desire to be involved and also to support the change.
Speaker:K is for knowledge, people need to know what and how to change.
Speaker:The A is for ability and that's the ability to implement the behaviors and actions.
Speaker:And then finally R is for reinforce and that's really important.
Speaker:It's about making that change sustainable.
Speaker:So when considering our local diversity and closure plans and activity, I think it's important that we consider it from all of these angles and remember leadership, learning, communication and accountability.
Speaker:Thank you for sharing that, Louisa, and well said.
Speaker:I think we're all responsible to create that culture with an inclusive environment and where everyone feels that they belong.
Speaker:Right? So maybe to look back, to aim forward, where would you say that we are in our diversity and inclusion journey? Many large corporations and organizations really kind of compare themselves with this and I suggest don't do that, just think about very much around where you're starting from and where you want to get to.
Speaker:So we're still pretty early on in our journey and there's a lot of focus just now on implementation and education, which we've just mentioned this is really common, though, in our sector, and it's definitely not something to be dissolutioned by.
Speaker:It's also key to remember that with D&I change, there are things that we're in control of and there are things that we're not as much as in control of.
Speaker:So things like the cultural and societal norms in different countries, they play a huge part in how we approach things, and we've got to make sure that we respect and adapt to these differences.
Speaker:And as we're such a global organization, this is a major consideration for us now.
Speaker:I fully agree with you, and maybe we should share a bit of the milestones that we have achieved so far.
Speaker:What do you say, Louisa? Sure.
Speaker:Well, our first milestone was around setting our gender target and our gender KPI, and I think we've embraced that fully, and it was communicating really well.
Speaker:And as a result, we've obviously got ongoing progress moving in the right direction with our group gender KPI.
Speaker:So that's a great start then, if we look at the infrastructure of diversity and inclusion.
Speaker:All of our business areas now have a deny governance framework in place, and we've got diversity and Inclusion ambassadors and champions all over the world.
Speaker:However, we're now taking a step forward, and we've started to hire diversity and inclusion specialists in the group because we appreciate that this isn't easy and it needs focus and experience to guide us in the right direction.
Speaker:As I've also mentioned, learning is a key part, and we've really done a lot of work on improving our diversity and inclusion learning, either as standalone topics itself or making sure that we incorporate it as part of our leadership programs.
Speaker:So we've got quite a lot of new e-learning around unconscious bias.
Speaker:We've got a full module on leading inclusive teams as part of our leadership program, and we've also been doing a lot of work recently on unbiased and strategic recruitment, so bringing diversity inclusion into a recruitment process.
Speaker:And then recently, at the start of this year, we did a big survey with our women leaders across the group.
Speaker:So we've now got actual data from our colleagues rather than having assumptions or external views around what women want and what women need from their organization.
Speaker:Listen to you, Louisa.
Speaker:Just my reflection is that, wow, it's amazing what we have achieved so far.
Speaker:I think everyone in the Group deserves a pat on the back for that work.
Speaker:However, I think we're super excited to move this forward.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So what are our next steps? Sure.
Speaker:Well, as I said before, your different countries are in different stages.
Speaker:But if I look holistically across the Group, we recently launched our brand new group, diversity and Inclusion Statement and Policy, and then we've updated our talent framework, which is our competency framework, and we've ensured that diversity and inclusion behaviors are part of that and that they're really clear.
Speaker:And then as we're moving forward, we're going to be spending a lot more time in the same awareness and education on what inclusion is and what inclusion looks like.
Speaker:So mid term, our focus will be to embed the new things that we've introduced because it's important that you don't just keep rolling out more and more things.
Speaker:We need to use communication to ensure that what we've introduced is understood and then really importantly, it's being used.
Speaker:So the embedding piece is critical.
Speaker:And as I said, this happens at different times and different places across different countries, cultures and teams.
Speaker:So you always have to remember this is a marathon and it's not a sprint.
Speaker:So education and awareness of other types of diversity will be a focus as we move forward.
Speaker:But also, let's not try and do too much too soon and think back to that add car change model is good advice.
Speaker:I fully agree with you, Louisa.
Speaker:I think the engagement in the organization to move our efforts around diversity and inclusion forward is absolutely fantastic.
Speaker:And I think this signals to me the very strong culture of Atlas Copco when we set our focus to it and we create a plan, including activities, and then we follow up on progress towards our targets, then something happens and we start to move things forward.
Speaker:And maybe to elaborate a bit more than around the target setting, as we all know, we have set a group target to reach 30% women by 2030.
Speaker:Why is it so important to have a set target, do you think? Well, absolutely.
Speaker:Targets are really important because we all know what gets measured gets done.
Speaker:And I see our gender target of 30% at the start.
Speaker:It's a clear KPI that we need to focus on and that we can track, and therefore we can see how quickly we put our energies and our time on improving that target.
Speaker:We also have our engagement survey or Insight survey and this is also another good measure and our inclusion scores are good and these are part of the group's KPIs, which we also track.
Speaker:The difficulty, though, with diversity and inclusion is that there are also many qualitative measures as well as the quantitative measures.
Speaker:And we know they are more difficult to track and to compare, but they can and they should definitely be done.
Speaker:So we can do things like run surveys and focus groups locally to deeper dive into areas of D&I and get real feedback and experiences from our colleagues.
Speaker:These can be hugely revealing and they will also help to make sure that local diversity and inclusion plans and goals are focused.
Speaker:Great input there.
Speaker:Louisa, you mentioned earlier the importance of having everyone committed and part of the change journey.
Speaker:And I think a very important target group to make things happen is of course our leaders.
Speaker:And could you describe from your perspective what does inclusive leadership looks like and what behavior should I demonstrate as a leader? Inclusive leadership is a huge topic now on its own.
Speaker:And if you actually research it, there's tons of research about it.
Speaker:But I would suggest, and I would recommend that you look at Deloitte's work on inclusive leadership, and they have a concept in a model called the six C's of Inclusive leadership.
Speaker:So let me tell you a bit about what the six C's are because I think they perfectly illustrate what leaders and managers should be doing to be fully and truly inclusive.
Speaker:So the first thing is for cognizance, and this is all about being aware of bias, both in yourself and in others.
Speaker:Then we have curiosity.
Speaker:One of my favorite words when it comes to diversity and inclusion, be curious about others ideas and experiences.
Speaker:Courage is about being brief to say that you don't have all the answers, and also being briefed to say that you don't understand.
Speaker:Diversity and inclusion are two simple words, but it's really quite a complex topic to get our heads around and know what to do next.
Speaker:C is for cultural intelligence, and this is about being aware that not everyone sees the world through your lens or the same cultural frame.
Speaker:Then we've got commitment.
Speaker:Remember, this takes time.
Speaker:It's changing, it takes time.
Speaker:You've got to stay the course, and it's hard, but it needs to be done.
Speaker:And then the final one is collaboration.
Speaker:To remember a diverse thinking team is greater than the sum of its parts.
Speaker:So think about the six traits, and I think I would ask all leaders and managers to be honest with yourself and think about which ones that you are good at and other ones you maybe could do a little bit of work on.
Speaker:And if you're really courageous, I think ask your colleagues and your team members for feedback.
Speaker:So true.
Speaker:I'm so pleased that we're moving on our commitment and offer training around unconscious bias for everyone.
Speaker:I also really appreciate your reflection around curiosity.
Speaker:I think curiosity sends the signal, being interested to learn.
Speaker:Ask a question and you most probably will learn something new.
Speaker:Let's continue talking about the broader perspective of inclusion.
Speaker:Louisa, going forward, we really want to take a broader perspective of diversity and ensure inclusion reflecting our society at large, such as LGBT plus disability, ethnicity.
Speaker:Where do we start, actually? Yeah, great.
Speaker:What people find quite unusual sometimes is you don't necessarily all have to start in the same place.
Speaker:So different teams, different regions will have different starting points.
Speaker:So when you start locally and you think about diversity in your local society, and how does the diversity in your local society reflect your team? If it doesn't, I would say think of the reasons why that might be the case.
Speaker:Some of it can be societal reasons, but the other reason is often due to bias and stereotypes and therefore have a think about what biases are in play and what might be causing those.
Speaker:So I would be asking these questions as a really important place to start, and then you can move on to what you can do as an individual and what we can do as a team or a department to improve it.
Speaker:But remember, you can't do everything by yourself.
Speaker:So look for opportunities, such as engaged employees who want to get involved, and there's loads of those.
Speaker:I've got people contacting me every day wanting to get involved.
Speaker:But also, don't forget the local external organizations.
Speaker:They're also a great support as well.
Speaker:And a great example we've got of employees really wanting to get involved is in the UK and Ireland, where we set up a couple of years ago an LGBT Plus network called Fusion.
Speaker:And this was initiated by local Vacuum technique colleagues who were passionate about inclusion for the LGBT Plus community.
Speaker:Together, we've done some really great work on educating colleagues on the day to day challenges that our LGBT Plus colleagues face.
Speaker:And it was from working with Fusion that we hosted transgender awareness training.
Speaker:We've created a trans-inclusion guide.
Speaker:So having groups of employees supporting our D&I work is critical.
Speaker:The other thing which is really helpful to start the conversation and the learning are global awareness days.
Speaker:There's global diversity and inclusion awareness days.
Speaker:While they're really helpful around education, just be mindful that you don't do them just for the sake of it, or it's a token event and you can get a full list of those global awareness days on the United Nations website.
Speaker:I think you really share some great advice.
Speaker:Louisa believe it or not, we're getting closer to the end, and we have been talking about the necessity of diversity and inclusion.
Speaker:Why is it so important for us to make us an even stronger company going forward? And how do we make it all happen? So should we try to summarize and leave our listeners with some key takeaways? Louisa sure.
Speaker:And I would say I've got four key takeaways, and they're really quite simple, but they do reflect what we've covered so far.
Speaker:So, first of all, if you think diversity and inclusion is about recruiting more women, then be curious and explore the topic more.
Speaker:Remember, it's our responsibility to educate ourselves.
Speaker:And nowadays, there are so many resources on the topic available to educate us.
Speaker:So be curious and go and find out more.
Speaker:The other one as well.
Speaker:This is still a link to curiosity.
Speaker:Think about all the people that you don't know, so make time to get to know people you don't know and learn a little bit more about their background, their culture, and their experiences.
Speaker:Learn about bias and really work on minimizing it.
Speaker:And I would suggest and recommend that we start by doing the groups elearning that I mentioned earlier.
Speaker:And then finally, in order for change to happen, you've got to have a plan and you've got to have goals and you've got to hold people accountable for that.
Speaker:So make sure you've got a plan in place and that it includes but it's not exclusive to gender activity.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:And always remember, what gets measured gets done.
Speaker:What a great ending.
Speaker:Louisa, thank you so much for joining me today.
Speaker:It's been a true pleasure to have you with us and sharing your expertise and knowledge around diversity and inclusion.
Speaker:Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker:Cecilia, it's been a pleasure.
Speaker:And to our listeners, thanks for joining us.
