Aberdeen D&I Collaboration Session, Feb 2019
AXIS Network in collaboration with Wood
AXIS hosted a collaboration session for D&I champions from across the sector, in order to share best practice and create a support network. We have captured below key themes from the session, which we hope will offer quick wins in terms of improving D&I culture for our member organisations.
Policies
1. Engage with staff during creation of policies to ensure buy-in and ownership.
2. Ensure policies are fully inclusive, eg parental policy addresses birth partners and adoptive parents.
3. Lead the change on gender-based policies, e.g. improving second parent leave.
Targets & objectives
1. Do set targets – they show you are serious about change!
2. Back up targets with efforts to effect cultural change (consider the parallels with our industry’s step change in safety).
3. Share and be transparent on targets, reasoning, and progress.
D&I related training
1. Use inclusion moments to start conversations.
2. Make Unconscious Bias training (and refreshes) compulsory.
3. Where women-specific development programmes are employed, combine these with mentoring/coaching.
Men as allies
1. Challenge senior leaders to set meaningful personal commitments, and to cascade this challenge down.
2. Mentor a woman (1) – and seek a reverse mentor.
3. Walk-the-walk – Speak about your own experiences of taking parental leave and create an environment where men can feel comfortable taking leave. Call out unacceptable stereotypes. Sponsor a woman (as well as a man). (2)
Culture
1. Use your communication channels to profile non-stereotypical role models.
2. Be open on D&I initiatives – it’s not a “management” issue.
3. Share (and celebrate!) success stories – change can be incremental.
Attraction & recruitment
1. Start early to impact the available talent pool – show that our industry is attractive and inclusive.
2. Challenge how and where you are seeking candidates, and the language used in job adverts. (3)
3. Build diverse candidate slates, and diverse interview panels. (4)
Resources
1. HBR, Men Who Mentor Women https://hbr.org/2016/12/the-men-who-mentor-women
2. Catalyst, Actions Men Can Take… https://www.catalyst.org/research/actions-men-can-take-to-create-an-inclusive-workplace/
3. Forbes, How to Take Gender Bias…https://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2016/12/14/how-to-take-gender-bias-out-of-your-job-ads/#2acad56f1024
4. HBR, If There’s Only One Woman… https://hbr.org/2016/04/if-theres-only-one-woman-in-your-candidate-pool-theres-statistically-no-chance-shell-be-hired
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