Exclusive Sustainability Video: The Diversity Forum
Organisations are as diverse as their leaders make them. The real emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) isn’t just a way of ticking boxes and letting partners, shareholders and investors know that the company adheres to human principles. DE&I provides an opportunity for companies to tap into new talent, ideas, and perspectives of variable staff.
Every year we learn more and more about this from executives themselves and, thanks to the panel at Sustainability LIVE London, The Diversity Forum became much more this year as the audience packed into the stage.
Ranging from professional services to education, DE&I must be a key factor in development from the early years to leadership. Not only is diversity and inclusion a necessary component of business these days, but it also creates strategic benefits.
“Organisations will be looking at it from an internal and also an external strategy, and how the approach will be for an internal strategy will mean looking at the employment lifecycle,” says Dolapo Adeboye, Audit Manager for Technology & Integrated Audits at Mastercard. “So right from a strategy, how do they have a resource pool or an employment base that caters to DE&I and that will be having the policies to say this is the target, this is what we are looking to achieve.”
Why should leaders care about DE&I?
A critical question posed by Head of Multimedia at BizClik Neil Perry as he addresses the overarching importance of DE&I in the workplace.
Ash Mukherjee, Solution Partner at Forrester, responds: “The reason for that is in much of the discussions [yesterday and today]—there was a lot of talk about AI and technology being a double-edged sword. Now for diversity, what I've come across is a particular thing which I think can be a double-edged superpower; that can work both for organisations and their leaders as well as the people of a diverse background.
“That superpower is cultural intelligence. Cultural intelligence is basically our ability to recognise that there are many ways of doing things.”
Adding to this, Anne Huang, Head of Sustainability & Community Affairs at Dun & Bradstreet, says: “I've never worked an in-house diversity role, but I've always worked in third-party sustainability assessment roles. We look at different companies, look at how they measure diversity in my experience a little bit wider in the full ESG or sustainability aspect. But when we're trying to look at a company, we try to go with that 360 approach that you mentioned.
“We want to look at their policies and then if there are quantitative targets that would be much better.”
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Other magazines that may be of interest - EV Magazine | Energy Digital
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Net Zero LIVE will be hosted live from the QEII Centre, London on the 6th and 7th of March, and streamed globally via our virtual event platform Brella. Net Zero LIVE London will feature four LIVE themes, incorporating Sustainability LIVE, EV LIVE, Scope 3 LIVE, and Energy LIVE to deliver a holistic conference and exhibition experience with opportunities to connect with like-minded peers and actively contribute to crafting a sustainable future. Following Net Zero LIVE, viewers can also sign up for Sustainability LIVE Dubai and Singapore.
Sign up to the The Global Sustainability & ESG Awards 2024, coming to London on the 11th September 2024.
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BizClik is a global provider of B2B digital media platforms that cover 'Executive Communities' for CEO's, CFO's, CMO's, Sustainability Leaders, Procurement & Supply Chain Leaders, Technology & AI Leaders, Cyber Leaders, FinTech & InsurTech Leaders as well as covering industries such as Manufacturing, Mining, Energy, EV, Construction, Healthcare + Food & Drink.
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