We conducted a Q&A interview with Martin Kirke, Coach, Non-Exec Director, Consultant on HR, D&I and Change, around leaders, and how they can create a culture of inclusion.
From your experience, what are the attributes required from our leaders to gain their commitment to engaging our community and driving forward the diversity agenda?
Recently, I had the pleasure of delivering a workshop for the ICSA conference in London.
As the premier conference event for company secretaries, board and governance professionals it was an opportunity to explore how inclusion and diversity in corporate governance, in all its guises, is being addressed. It was encouraging to realise that the issue of inclusion was not a discrete topic of discussion but one that permeated many of the issues under scrutiny.
I remember last year my CEO asked me to find out how many working mothers we had in our employment (total pop m+f c 90k). Although the data is not stored in that fashion making a few assumptions I sat down with him and had a conversation about the answer, but more importantly that I was worried that this might not be the right question.
When in October 2017 the #MeToo movement grabbed all major headlines, many wondered if 2018 was going to be the ‘Year of the Woman’. We heard this term repeatedly over the course of the year, especially in regards to the American elections. With 2018 now closed and behind us, it is finally time to answer the question. Was 2018 really the year of the woman? Will 2019 be a rollover from the last? Will for the first time ever, we have two consecutive ‘Year of the Woman’?
Innovative and, some would say, radical organisation design methods like Holacracy have sought to get rid of traditional management structures with the aim of introducing more agility, more creativity and more autonomy.
In part 6 of this exclusive series, Nadia Nagamootoo discusses her top tips for helping reduce the expected 217 years for global gender parity. Nadia highlights the importance of obtaining buy-in from leaders at board level, by ensuring they have the knowledge required to push this cultural change.
Bio
In part 3 of this exclusive series, Nadia Nagamootoo discusses how organisations can create a more equal playing field for men and women alike within the organisation. She looks at the importance of culture in creating gender parity for men.
Every alternate article on the World Wide Web makes a reference to unconscious bias and discrimination in one form or another. Look hard enough and you’ll find it. There are, of course, some forms of discrimination that are referred to about more often than others are. Take for example, diversity. The words that probably come to mind when you hear ‘diversity’ are – gender, race and religion; and of the three, we all know which catches the largest focus. However, there is one other form of diversity that is fast dwindling in the workplace and yet is hardly talked about.
It scares me sometimes when I think about the big decisions I’ve made on gut feel and will probably continue to make relying on my instincts.
How many research papers do we need to read or edicts from top class CEOs before we get the message that in every organisation, it all comes down to the people?