The Diversity & Inclusion Forum at Sustainability LIVE: D&I

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The Diversity & Inclusion Forum
At Sustainability Live: Diversity & Inclusion 2024, leaders from Accenture, Citi, SGS & BAT discussed all things diversity and inclusion

Sustainability LIVE: Diversity & Inclusion 2024 saw leaders from around the world gather together to discuss diversity, inclusion and equity in today’s corporate world. 

Companies from a wide range of industries — including Carlsberg, The Weetabix Food Company and Volvo Cars — stepped up to the virtual stage and explored everything from ESG in Entertainment to AI in D&I.

Featuring execs from Accenture, Citi, SGS and BAT, The Diversity & Inclusion Forum explores a range of D&I topics including the developing importance of D&I, supplier diversity and leadership priorities.

Peter Zerp, Supplier Inclusion & Diversity Client Program Lead at Accenture

Peter Zerp, Supplier Inclusion & Diversity Client Program Lead at Accenture

Peter has more than 10 years of experience in driving and building supplier inclusion and diversity for Accenture, where he has built an extensive network and expanded the programme into a range of companies. 

Peter is also involved with the European LGBT Chamber of Commerce, Out Britain and Supplier Diversity UK. He chairs the board of the European Supplier Diversity Program (ESDP).

Javette Hines, Director, SC Supplier Senior Group Manager and Global Head of Supply Chain Development, Inclusion and Sustainability at Citi

Javette Hines, Director, SC Supplier Senior Group Manager and Global Head of Supply Chain Development, Inclusion and Sustainability at Citi

In her role, Javette is at the forefront of Citi’s work to enhance the inclusion and consideration of diverse firms in the company’s sourcing practice.

Javette has more than 25 years of experience in supply chain management, operations, leadership, diversity and management.

Javette works across the organisation to ensure that their global strategy is aligned with their supplier selection. By doing this, she can continue to spend US$1bn with diverse suppliers across the world to enhance understanding of ESG matters and support supplier development and capacity.

Javier López Gómez, Global Head of Corporate Sustainability at SGS

Javier López Gómez, Global Head of Corporate Sustainability at SGS

With more than 15 years of international experience in sustainability and climate change fields, Javier leads corporate sustainability at the world’s leading certification, inspection and testing company, SGS. By managing the execution of SGS Group’s sustainability strategy, Javier aims to positively impact the organisation. 

Prior to this, Javier managed the ESG Consulting portfolio services at SGS Spain. 

Over the course of his career, Javier has acquired an abundance of leadership experience in directing cross-functional teams and multi-cultural projects.

Ainur Amanzholova, Head of Talent, Culture & Inclusion at BAT Kazakhstan

Ainur Amanzholova, Head of Talent, Culture & Inclusion at BAT Kazakhstan

Throughout her career, Ainur has gained expertise in change management, talent management and performance and development. She consistently applies her strong communication skills throughout her work to maintain her track record of leading diverse teams and enhancing organisational culture. Ainur has more than 19 years of experience in strategic management. 

How has the importance of diversity and inclusion changed for business?

Peter

My role is more around supplier diversity, helping engage more diverse suppliers into Accenture and our clients’ supply chains. Supplier diversity has brought more visibility for us to those innovative suppliers that otherwise we would not have seen.

It's really about building and creating access so that we get the right talent into our supply chain. We are a company of 780,000 people worldwide. So for us, attracting talent is super important and we are able to attract — and keep — diverse talent for our company.

Javier

I would say that the main thing that has evolved is the importance of D&I within ESG strategies.

In many companies we see more relevance in the regulation and this is what we've seen in the last year as well in our company.

Javette

I manage Citi's supply chain development and sustainability efforts, and that includes supplier diversity and supply chain sustainability. Like Peter, I'm very focused on business diversity as it relates to diversity, equity and inclusion, working in tandem with our workforce team to really understand what we are talking about with respect to the employees.

We are intentional about understanding who our suppliers are and ensuring that there's diversity consideration within our supply chain about whom we do business with across the globe.

Ainur

Our external environment is very volatile and diverse, which creates challenging diversity issues which can only be solved with diverse teams. It definitely helps to have D&I teams in place and KPIs to solve and be better equipped. That would be a 100% correlation to be up and fit with the challenges.

How do you find that unconscious bias can affect environmental and business decisions?

Javette

With respect to bias, it can make a difference in terms of how decisions are made. There can be considerations based on situations that impact one economically. It could be an underserved community versus a community that is, perhaps, well off. So if a decision is made to provide more focus on one versus the other, that certainly is an example where bias could come into play.

Peter

If I look at supplier diversity, there's definitely a bias around having a supplier diversity programme.

I'm in Amsterdam in Europe, so supplier diversity is not as mature yet as, for instance, in the US. People still have the misconception about hiring businesses because they're diverse. And of course, that's not the case — it's more about creating access and more of an equal playing field or equally level playing field so that companies that are otherwise not on our radar have an opportunity to bid for work.

At the end of the day, they still have to bid for the work — they still have to be the entrepreneur and bring the right solution. You constantly have to explain that there's also a bias around diverse suppliers themselves that are small and they're not ready to supply to our company.

That's where we, as leaders of supplier diversity programmes come into play, because we help them to be ready for that, making sure that they can really bring their innovative solutions to our supply chain and are ready to be a good, strong supplier to us. 

I had a conversation last time when I went to a diverse supplier and they said, when we come in to support our clients, they expect us to be all diverse. And I said the fact that I'm a diverse person in business doesn't mean that I only have people from my own community working for me.

I myself am an inclusive business as well. So there's a lot of those kinds of concessions that we have to demystify as well. 

How do you think that leaders can promote inclusivity in your teams?

Ainur

If we want to encourage inclusivity, we should start with ourselves.

Role modelling is the first step to ensure that people will follow us. Then the most important thing is to remember that it's not only behavioral change, it's a mindset change. It might take more than a year because usually business leaders are very fast. They want miracles to happen immediately, and when they don't see the results immediately they tend to give up with the pursuit of diversity. 

So first I would say start from yourself. Have the principles be a role model, show it and people definitely see it and they will follow. Have patience.

Javier

Lead by example is important to start with because the actions of the leader sets the tone for group behavior. Demonstrating a commitment to diversity and inclusion, showing interest in different perspectives and giving visibility to everyone's achievements — all these things together communicate to teams that diverse backgrounds and different points of view are not just not only accepted, but they are also valued.

Furthermore, I would say that another action that can be added to that is fostering the exchange — integrating perspectives from different contexts and backgrounds and reaching that decision making.

This is particularly valuable in the sustainability landscape where the environmental and social challenges require a creative approach. 

Having an active listening channel for people to give feedback and take action based on feedback — that's very important as well to me, as part of the inclusive leadership. 

When all these strategies are put into practice they help not just to build teams that reflect the values of equity and respect, but I think they also improve the ability of the project to generate a positive impact.

Javette

When you're talking about leadership, that also leads to the culture and the opportunity to listen and understand different perspectives. Internally, who are the decision makers, who are the stakeholders with whom you're going to engage?

Then externally, as Peter mentioned, we engage with suppliers to bring them up to speed to ensure that they understand our processes and what we're inviting them to participate in. Inclusivity, though, does really require a dialogue discussion and a willingness to listen and engage. I think some of that does have to come with education, training and awareness sessions, too. 

Peter

It's also important that we engage people and stakeholders into making policies and strategies. I come across a lot of organisations where they demonstrate their commitment online and say their CEO is committed to supplier diversity and they are having a spend target of so many percentages.

But then stakeholders say they weren’t part of that decision so have different insights and cannot make those commitments. If you make them part of it, make sure that they are part of the discussion and deliver input, then you have a very informed target that you're developing and you get people much more engaged. They are part of the solution and I think that's very important. 

You need to be very transparent about what you are trying to achieve, making sure that you communicate that it's part of your business and for your company strategy overall — but also you see ambitions.

You always want to make sure that you communicate very well that supplier diversity is part of ESG because it tackles the ethical social aspects. We really want to make sure that people understand that and they see that relationship, plus the relationship with the work that they do day-to-day, because then it becomes much more exciting for them to be participating.

To read the full story in the magazine, click HERE.


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