He was joined by Laurinda Pang, president of international & global accounts management, Centurylink and recently appointed chair of the GLF; John Nolan, vice president of global connections & alliance management at AT&T; Melanie Halsey, executive vice president of HR at Colt Technology Services; Magda Yrizarry, senior vice president & chief diversity officer at Verizon; and Anne Morel, senior vice president of global carrier sales at Orange International Carriers.
According to key findings from the report, gender diversity and inclusion are still not equitable in the workplace, with the gap becoming more pronounced in senior levels of organisations. On a global scale only 55% of women are engaged in the labour market, despite this over 60% of surveyed have initiatives in place for one or more of gender diverse hiring, mentoring and return to work.
Speaking on her company’s work in the space, Colt’s Halsey shared, “over the last few years we’ve had a dedicated and pretty comprehensive strategy around inclusion and diversity. Gender balance is of course an important aspect of that, but it sits alongside a number of other aspects of diversity as well including whether that’s cultural awareness, pride matters, enablement etc.”
Some of this work includes the appointment of Louisa Gregory as Colt’s vice president of diversity. Additionally, the telco has established a D&I council chaired by CEO Keri Gilder, implemented gender balance targets with a remuneration committee that reviews overall representation as well as representation at senior levels.
Over at CenturyLink, Laurinda Pang says that the company takes a very broad view to the diversity, inclusion and belonging subject “with gender itself as just one aspect of it” she added that it more than just an HR issue but a “business agenda”.
Due to CenturyLink various acquisition, Pang says that the company has had businesses at varying places in their D&I journey or as Cevis put it “the crawl, the walk, the run”.
As such its really been the last three years that CenturyLink has seen a very concerted effort in this area, though most work has been done she says, “we’ve got a long way to go”.
Among its various programmes and initiatives aligning compensation and benefits to attract and retain a diverse workforce is among them as well as the culture piece which she says has been a “specific focus for us”.
Probably one of the best quotes of the session came from AT&T's Nolan who shared his interpretation of what diversity, inclusion and belonging actually mean.
“Inclusion is the act of including and fostering a sense of belonging. When people with power empower others to impact outcomes within an organisation. For inclusion to work an organisation must first be diverse.”
Expanding on his poignant quote for the audience, Nolan says that he’s “truly proud” of AT&T track record in this space given the company’s top ranking in a number of diversity rankings, including being named number one the DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity list. But he shared another noteworthy point: “what gets measured, gets done”.
“Wherever you’ve started in the journey, if you’re measuring your progress and setting goals for yourself, you’ll continue to move the ball forward,” he said.
Orange International Carrier’s Anne Morel said that the diversity piece is not new for the company and is something they’ve been actively working on since approximately 2005 and its value is material to the telco.
“At Orange, we truly believe that diversity at all levels of the company and across all types of activity is truly contributing to the company’s growth, performance and employee motivation,” she said.
Over at Verzion, Yrizarry showered praise on moderator Eric Cevis, for his passion in creating as diverse and inclusive workplace as possible as well as for his ally-ship in the senior ranks.
Sharing her own thoughts on how to address the challenges in D&I she said, “it’s a matter of justice” for marginalised groups and anything less is “unacceptable”.
Adding to this she says that it is “an enabler of business” and it allows people to be their authentic self, freeing themselves us to use that energy elsewhere.
“Anybody who has to spend a whole lot of energy covering parts of themselves, in order to fit in, is a lot of wasted energy,” she explained.
Rounding out the session Cevis said that the GLF has plans to further its work in diversity space sharing “the GLF have agreed to take on the topic of racism next, as part of our whitepaper evolution. We’re aiming to have something together between now and the next ITW conference” with more topics to follow that.
As for the recently completed gender report, he said, “we’re going to take on specific activities on gender imbalance, including socialising the report within our respective companies to create a dialogue around the topic.”
“We’re also looking to track the internal activities and measures those to see where we’re at in attracting, retaining and returning women to the workforce.”
