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D&I Spy: Inclusion, uncovered podcast

Transcript:

Helen: This week I'm delighted to welcome not one but two brilliant guests to the show, both experts in the field of diversity and inclusion.

Dr. Julie Humphreys is Group Head of Diversity and Inclusion at the media group Reach plc, the UK's largest commercial and regional publishers who reach over 47 million people each month via their 9 national and 70 regional brands.

Julie has over 20 years' experience in HR specializing in diversity and inclusion and talent management. For her doctorate she researched the effect of children on women's careers in the UK financial services sector and she's a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. Outside of work, Julie has four children and two cocker spaniels and like many opted for a big life shift during the pandemic by moving away from London to the wilds of Norfolk.

And Natasha Whitehurst is Global Inclusion Lead at Rolls-Royce, the industrial engineering and technology firm that develops complex power and propulsion solutions for safety, critical air, sea, and land applications. Natasha has extensive HR experience within multiple industries, more recently specializing in diversity, inclusion and belonging. And at Rolls-Royce, she helps business leaders develop their own inclusive behaviours, establish more inclusive recruitment practices, and attract diverse talent.

Natasha was featured on the Global Diversity List in 2020 in recognition of her work. She's a proud Northerner living in London, a keen runner and reader, and she loves learning, often traveling to feed her curiosity. And together Natasha and Julie are the co-founders and co-hosts of 'D&I Spy: Inclusion uncovered', the weekly podcast that brings diversity to life, but more on that in a little bit!

Welcome to The Business of Being Brilliant both of you!

Julie: Thank you. Thank you. It's great to be here.

Natasha: Really, really good to be here. Although Dr. Julie was shirking a little bit at hearing the name Doctor again, so we'll just say it again, just so that she feels really comfortable.

Julie: Thank you!

Helen: I was going to check that with you actually. Do you prefer to be addressed as Dr. Julie throughout or just Julie?

Julie: Just Julie is absolutely fine thank you very much!

Helen: Great. Well, a easy first question I'm going to ask you both since we are recording this on a Monday, is: tell me about a favourite thing you did over the weekend? Julie, do you want to go first? Yeah.

Julie: So as you said in your intro to me I moved out to Norfolk during lockdown, and one of the reasons was to just get some head space and just to try and chill when I can. And so at the weekend on Saturday, we went to Sandringham and walked through the forests with the dogs. And then on Sunday we went to Brancaster Beach and it was glorious weather, so we just had a nice chill, ready for the week.

Helen: Oh, that sounds wonderful. Woods and the seaside, what a lovely combination. And do you spot any royalty while you're out on your patrols?

Julie: No, we never do. We try and avoid it because there's so many, there's loads of police going and, and everything. So we're just like .... When we know they're there, we don't go!

Helen: Okay. Fair enough. Lovely, thank you. And Natasha, how about you?

Natasha: So similar vein; as you mentioned in my intro, I was actually up in Manchester over the weekend. It was my sister's birthday so I spent time with her and my niece and ate plenty of food and cake. And then Sunday out walking me and my other half, back to London like a bit similar to Dr. Julie, just relaxing for the week ahead.

Helen: That sounds great. Yeah, it's mid-February, we're still gritting our teeth slightly getting through winter and needing to really recharge a bit and, and get ready for the next week of winter, I know. Well, what you said Natasha chimed with me; actually, I celebrated a birthday on Saturday, so my weekend was quite full of cake as well!

Julie: Ah, amazing.

Natasha: Happy birthday!

Helen: Thank you very much. And moving on to talk about what you do Monday to Friday, I guess, not so much at the weekends, can you tell me both how you got into your current leadership roles in Diversity and Inclusion?  Maybe just a quick summary of what led you into the leadership tier in Diversity & Inclusion - and lovely to be joined by the doggy on the podcast too. Natasha, do you want to go first?

Natasha: Yeah, of course. So for me I never had that burning desire of what I really wanted to do coming out of school.

 I was the first in my family to go to uni, really influenced by my grandparents who played the key role in bringing me up. And so yeah, I went to uni, came out of uni and thought, what do I want to do? And actually, through my operational experience, found out that actually people were my passion.

So I went into the HR field and decided that'd be my focus. I spent a couple of years as a Head of HR within corporate hospitality and decided actually my specialist or my favourite piece of that work was diversity and inclusion and I did a lot of work around that.

So then a role became available in Reach and so I joined Dr Julie as Diversity & Inclusion Manager. I guess from that point julie was an awesome sponsor and really helped mentor me and, and get me ready. And that's when a role came available in my current organization at Rolls-Royce.

And I thought actually go and practice what she's taught me at a global level. So yeah, that's a very whistle stop tour into, into me, I suppose, on my career journey.

Helen: Yeah. That's really good to hear. And lovely that you've had that shared time working together in the past and learning from each other no doubt. And it sounds like you've been pretty good Natasha at figuring out what is it that I'm enjoying about the work I'm doing, on a regular basis and then following that thread of interest and enjoyment.

Natasha: Yeah. And I think I didn't necessarily have, from an external perspective, those people to help influence or direct my thought. And so actually I've been surrounded by people in my working life who've helped bring that out of me. So that coupled with just curiosity and going, oh, I really like that bit there, how do I make that my day job? So finding the bit that I really love and then following it and finding out along the way that actually I really like certain things that before I'd never really explored.

Helen: Yeah. Sounds like keeping a really open mind as to what might interest you and what might prove stimulating work as opposed to having a really predefined idea up front it's going to look like this and be a role shaped like that, but yeah, lovely, thank you. And how about you Julie?

Julie: So I guess when I look back, I've always had a thread of equality or equity through everything that I've done without really realizing it.

So I left school with virtually no qualifications, which is why I get so flustered when, whenever Natasha says, oh, Dr. Julie because obviously now education is very important to me. At whatever stage of a life somebody is, that curiosity and that continuing to learning or someone continue to learn is really important.

So I left school, went to work in an insurance company and realized that everybody who, who was just coming in just had degrees and was just getting brilliant jobs in the company. And so I've always been a bit of an argumentative person. So I went straight to Personnel at that point and said, 'Why? What do they have that I don't?' And the answer was just a tick box. It was literally, they have a degree and it didn't matter what their skills were or anything, it was just they had that tick. So I couldn't fight at that point, so I had to just go and get the tick as well. So I resigned, went to university, put myself through university again, same as Natasha, first one in the family was ever been to university.

And then just fell into HR. So it was a sandwich year, I needed to get a a year placement; totally was very cheeky in getting my placement. It wasn't a proper job. I just wheedled my way to get a 12 month placement with a, with an NHS trust in HR. And then everything I seemed to do seemed as I went through a talent career, a recruitment career, and a generalist HR career, it just kept coming back to equality.

So I was very much involved in the first transition an employer that I was with had done; I was involved in the first sexual harassment, uh, a really intense look at all our policies and procedures around sexual harassment. But I didn't really realize that was what I was doing, this was just the next exciting project to do.

Until around maybe 10 years ago D&I became a profession and it was the right time, right place that my job then became an Inclusion specific role. And since then, I haven't looked back. It's, it's, it's just so fulfilling just to be around such awesome people creating change all the time and looking at what they're doing to try and adapt and try.... it's just a brilliant place to be at the moment.

Helen: Thank you for sharing that journey to your current role and I'm struck how both of you talk about, quite passionately, about, having a strong sense of curiosity and a desire to keep learning and, and it also sounds as though as you've been following those interests and exploring possibilities, actually the field of Diversity & Inclusion has emerged around you and solidified and become much more professional and recognized and established, and that's led to the creation of roles that actually are exactly about what you both really enjoy doing. Is that, is that fair to say?

Julie: I think you're absolutely right. The exciting thing is we're seeing they're taking on a new form, whereas they were very much in their infancy in the first few years and, and the US were very much ahead of the game. The UK were trailing them, and then George Floyd was murdered and suddenly, organizations were saying look inwardly and didn't know how to react if they didn't have a, a function.

 So we saw a lot of organizations create functions and now we're two and a half years on, they're now re-looking at those functions and seeing whether they're fit for purpose.

Natasha: I think, I think D&I teams are now not just seen as a 'nice to have', they're a business necessity. And I think for CEOs and their exec teams to go "I need a really strong team of professionals, experts, to be able to help advise" that shift in what, two and a bit years now is huge.

Julie: Yeah, we used to look at ... sorry we are taking over your podcast, sorry!

Helen: No feel free!

Natasha: But if you start us off we won't stop, sorry!

Helen: I'm loving it.

Julie: We used to see people say, "I'm passionate, so I'm going to be like, leading the D&I function" and that just doesn't cut it anymore. If you are acting at that senior level, the senior people are looking to you for guidance, for that expert opinion, and to be their trusted advisor. And being passionate on its own just doesn't cut it.

Helen: Yeah, because what I'm hearing a lot is that there's a very strong commercial incentive now that's becoming very clear, so that business leaders are seeing clients and suppliers say 'show us what you are doing becausewe are factoring that into our decisions'. And the same goes for investments and things like that. So it's much more rooted to the commerciality of doing business these days, isn't it? And So I think much more on business leaders' genuine agenda.

Julie: Well, it is absolutely but we're still being tasked with ' show me the color of the money of D&I'.

Natasha: Yeah.

Julie: They're still saying " show me the proof that D&I works" and other than a few academic articles or a few McKinsey reports that are, are showing general movements, there isn't anything specific that we can point to as D&I professional to say to our execs "if you do X, Y will happen".

Natasha: Yeah

Julie: We don't have that. And that's one of the reasons why we are, at Reach, we've partnered with HR Data Hub for 2023 on a two year project to try and link diversity and business performance.

Helen: That's really interesting to hear. Do you hear the same questions Natasha? .

Natasha: Yeah, without a doubt. And one of the pieces of work I've been doing over the last two weeks has been just that. So what impact is inclusion going to have on business performance and pull together relevant data. And actually there hasn't really been, so if anyone is listening, there hasn't really been anything very relevant or up to date.

We saw a lot of, like Julie said, work from McKinsey and Deloitte probably around 2018, 2019. We're maybe starting to get some insights now, but it's interesting that exec teams want this from the D&I teams but you wouldn't necessarily do the same thing around HR. So whilst D&I would sit in some businesses within the HR function, some like Julie sits outside, it's interesting to see that actually the pressure and also the demand to justify and show real return.

Helen: Yeah, I've heard that from other D&I leaders I've spoken to on a one-to-one basis as well, that they're saying - and theirs may have been the first full-time role that the company appointed certainly within the last three to five years - and they're feeling a lot of support from the exec team, but they're also hearing that challenge, which is "show me the reward we are getting or the return on the investment in your role and your team's roles on the business", and they're really keen to see that link.

So are you both saying that actually, the cross industry broader research is the stuff that we've heard about for a few years now and hasn't recently been updated, and as a result, actually within companies, you are having to find ways to draw that link yourselves, perhaps with or without support? That sounds like what you're doing with the project you are leading, Julie?

Julie: Yes, certainly. So we have KPIs at exec level around D&I absolutely. But they are very focused around the HR function and the workforce whereas I sit outside - or the function sits outside - of HR where I am at the moment, which is Reach and we don't really assess the performance of the D&I metrics outside of the workforce at the moment.

Helen: Okay. Yeah, that makes sense.

Julie: There's things like content, commercial, advertising, our supply chain, our audience, ... So we're absolutely doing work in all of those areas, but they're not KPI'd and I just think it's, it's because we're in its infancy, you know because we are quite far ahead across the media landscape in what we are doing? But even we can't have this proof of concept yet.

Natasha: Mm-hmm.

Helen: Yes. So it's still an emerging field, so to speak, really, is how to really robustly draw those links.

And we're still fairly early into 2023; if we were chatting in December, and you've had a terrific year, what big thing or, or small thing maybe would you like to say you've achieved this year? What's a priority or two for you? Natasha, can you go first?

Natasha: Yeah, sure. So I guess the underpinning thing, and I'm, I'm hoping that Julie will nod along with this one ... She says, cos I'm hoping I know her fairly well!... data, data continues to be a huge part of any inclusion team and certainly for us we're, we're focusing on expanding the data that we have and, and really looking at that. But I think the big thing for me that we have refreshed our inclusion strategy and really looking at that with an intersectional approach and lens.

So having that commitment to inclusion and being included really driving a sense of belonging across the organization. So belonging really being very key to us over 2023 and for us to get the strategy really embedded across all levels of the organization. So we have over 45,000 people to engage with, so making sure that each one of those people knows what we're trying to do. And talking of research, so whilst I was looking, I was reading the other day a new piece from Deloitte, and that was talking about Gen Z and millennials, saying that actually one of the key ways that we'll be able to retain them is through that D&I strategy and at a time where talent is moving very quickly it's really key to us retaining those great people and and really setting us up with that diverse workforce. So that embedding of the strategy. And then I guess the last one is, Certainly for us, and I'm sure Julie, I keep speaking for you, but leaders and their behaviours are crucial to the success of any inclusion strategy because ultimately, they're the ones that should be driving it.

And it isn't a team of two that can really just go, oh yeah, well we do inclusion here, tick. It's about it living and breathing to really create that sense of belonging. And I heard something at the TLC Lions 'Being Human' Awards last week, week before, and they were referring to 'human inclusive leaders.

And I'd really like to get to a point where That's what we're seeing, feeling in Rolls-Royce; that approach from our leaders as well, that they're really great storytellers and that our leaders are really sponsoring diverse talent. So yeah, they're my top three things really.

Helen: Thank you for sharing that and I'm struck by particularly your last point about focusing on leaders and their inclusive behaviours, how that relates back to the previous point we were discussing about proving the link or ' show us you're making impact in Diversity & Inclusion' when actually The question underlying is that who owns that? And it's not just you and your teams actually , it's all the leadership team and they play a huge role as well. Yeah. Great, thank you.

How about you, Julie? What would a great 2023 look like?

Julie: So, very, very similar themes around that. Inclusive behaviours for leaders and, and data really, so a couple of years ago we had no strategy really at Reach. So we went out and spoke to 1200 of our workforce over four weeks, we held listening groups and just asked them what Diversity & Inclusion meant to them and what they wanted to see from their strategy. And what that meant was we were able to have a really people-centric strategy which meant something to people.

 So we totally redefined what Diversity & Inclusion is to them. So we said diversity is who we are and inclusion is what we do. And it was that simple. So we didn't complicate things with intersectionality, equity versus equality. It was very simple: diversity is your experience and inclusion is your behaviour. So that's what we've been building on for the last couple of years.

Now for 2023, we're really going to focus on that behaviour piece. And we, we don't want inclusion to be seen as an additional responsibility, it's something extra we have to do on our to-do list, we'll be inclusive today. We don't want that. We want it to be seen as something that is just intrinsic to how we behave normally. So absolutely part of our work for 2023 is to support our managers to create those inclusive teams by utilizing their own inclusive behaviours.

And of course, data. We can't do anything without data. We can't measure - going back to our measurement conversation - we can't measure it without data. So we implemented a huge data capture campaign called 'Be Counted' two years ago. So we were at 87% participation rate which is really high. But that's just a headline. When we looked at it within the, the 87% of data capture, we had quite a high percentage of 'prefer not to say' for, for various demographics that we were asking.

So for 2023 we are going to do a huge campaign and we're going to go back into that data and try and explain to people what we're doing with it, why we're doing it, why they can trust us with their data, and hopefully see that 'prefer not to say' percentage reduce.

Helen: Yeah, that sounds fantastic and I love the way you framed your D&I in such everyday language, 'who we are and what we do' and I think it really does get across the point that this is actually about the work we do every day. It's not about a separate programme or initiative that's running alongside our day jobs, it's actually about every work interaction we have, every conversation or every conversation we don't have.

Julie: Yeah.

Helen: It's wonderful to hear about those things. And I imagine that this year is also keeping you busy on the podcasting front, becauseas I mentioned in the introduction, you've co-founded and co-host D&I Spy about Diversity & Inclusion and your tagline is 'having candid conversations on uncomfortable topics with business leaders, entertainers, and sports people'. And it, it's a fantastic podcast.

Can you tell listeners a little bit about why you launched it and how you decided what to focus it on?. Because I know there's a busy podcast market out there and still growing so it can take a bit of thinking to find your angle and decide how you're going to take it forward. How did it come about?

Natasha: So we, we originally had an internal podcast that Julie and I started and I think we both fell in love with the idea that actually what a great way to just engage people around the topic of, of D&I and take it back to basics. And we were talking to our producer, so producer Dan, and he was like, 'are you sure you want to do this? It's a huge commitment'. And we thought, well, I was very encouraging of it and said, yes, we, we absolutely do need to do this and very easily,

Julie: that's 'cos you're young!

Natasha: ...very easily. Thanks, I'll take that. It's the nicest she's ever been to me. And I just, I just encouraged Dr. Julie to think about it. And quite quickly we realized that there was really a market to touch on one topic of Diversity & Inclusion at a time with a really specialist guest or member of a community. And the, the audience was quite varied for us. We tried to make it really narrow and and niche, but then we realized that there's two angles to it. So our D&I spies or our audience are either D&I people, so people working in the industry, or people with an interest.

And we say all the time on the podcast, inclusion is an action. So actually people actively listening to what we're talking about is a way to be an inclusion ally. yeah, very quickly decided that's what we were going to do and, and I think it just evolved from there.

And topics have been very relevant, very topical, what's in the news? We've talked about parents, parents in prison, and children being left behind. We've talked about the menopause. We've talked about domestic abuse in the black community. We've talked about LGBT parenting. I think our favourite episode - I'm looking at Dr Julie for the wink here - it's probably around labels and labelling. We've really had some really interesting, and I have no better word than beautiful conversations with people where we've just really unpicked things and that's then led on to other things. I don't know Julie if you wanted to add anything to that?

Julie: Yeah, I think there's a few things. Rarely do you have the time to go into a, a specific topic. Or you don't know where to go because, if you just Google something, you get like 500 things back. And I think this allows either D&I professionals or anyone really, if they want to understand more about a specific topic; we say they're uncomfortable conversations and that's one of the things that we try to do is to broach topics that people find uncomfortable so they can hear us talk about them. So they don't have to have the conversation themselves until they're comfortable. But we try and hopefully ease them into a conversation.

And I think it works because, I often joke about Natasha being young; we come from different generations, we've got very different viewpoints, we've very different backgrounds so often there are disagreements between us, but that's because everyone's unique. That's the whole beauty of inclusion is that everyone's different. So it's lovely to be able to have conversations that maybe aren't all just happy clappy and that we're all not going in the same area. That actually I've got different worries to Natasha and then those are different worries to the guest's maybe.

So I think it's been really wonderful and definitely around that labelling , that episode with Paul Russell, that sparked a number of comments and actually someone contacted us and asked if they could do a, a separate episode themselves. They're an expert in D&I, and they really saw a comparison with the word queer to the N word. And so, so we said, yeah, sure, if you want to come on and talk about it, this is not something we have lived experience of but please do come on and talk about it. So, I think it's allowing people a voice that maybe they weren't able to have.

Natasha: The only thing I'd probably echo onto that is that I think often people see D&I professionals, leaders, whatever word we want to use as like 'the PC brigade' or like 'shh! The D&I team are here'. Yeah. And hopefully it's opening up a window into a world to see the work that we do and the people that sits behind? That we are not PC and I've heard it referred to as like 'the woke brigade'? That's not, that's not what we are doing. We are here as advisors, we do all the research, we do the reading and yeah, it's about a lens as opposed to policing.

Helen: Yes. That makes sense and I can understand how, as you talked about unpicking these different topics and the fact that you welcome and express different points of view in your podcasting conversations, you're not all trying to reach agreement. That's such an important part of creating an inclusive culture, is to allow time for different voices, acknowledge different experience and, and opinions and points of view. So it sounds like you are role modelling that in the way you have your conversations on the podcast.

And I, I was thinking, listening to you describe your podcast there, that I imagine it helps people who are listening to get a sense or a handle on how they might engage in a potentially uncomfortable conversation because, in all honesty, the easiest thing is to not engage, isn't it?

But sometimes it does require courage to step into something that we haven't got lived experience of or feels quite unfamiliar to us, and we're all generally quite terrified about saying the wrong thing or causing offence or just not knowing what the right question to ask is. So I imagine people listening can, can get a feel because they, they're hearing you do that live and to your point, I think you made Julie, if you're not that familiar with Diversity & Inclusion, actually one thing you can do at, to be a good ally is to get informed by listening to podcasts like this. So it's opening your awareness, but also hopefully building your confidence to have some conversations as well.

And what reactions do you hear from some of your listeners to some of the more uncomfortable conversations you've held?

Julie: We've had some really great reactions actually. One person said that it took them two hours to listen to one of our 30 minute episodes because they kept stopping it and talking. They were driving somewhere and they just kept stopping and, and having a conversation with their wife about that point, and then pressing play again and then stopping it again and having another conversation. So that was really lovely.

And we've had other ones with Franstine Jones talking to us about domestic violence and how it affects black women in particular, and somebody texted me saying that they just made them just cry for the whole episode and just, they'd never thought about it in that way before with that lens of ethnicity.

So we've had some fabulous feedback.  One of the pieces of feedback that we had at the very start, we went out and did a poll and said, what would you like us to cover? And language was a resounding question. Please do something about language and that's why you'll see a lot of our episodes just unpicking certain bits of language because it changes all the time. It's really ever-evolving and, from what we can say today, might cause offence next week and so we have to just make sure that we're on top of it all the time.

Helen: Yeah, that makes sense and it's something that can be quite hard to keep up and to know what the right terminology is. So I will pop a link obviously to your podcast in the show notes so other listeners can enjoy your conversations and, and get familiar with the different guests you've had on.

And just before we close, looking back on your own careers and the things I guess that have helped you progress or brought you joy as you've worked in your different roles, is there a particular reflection or piece of advice or a resource that has helped you that you would share for the benefit of our listeners?

Julie: For me personally, it's people. Take time to really understand who your supporters are and make the most of them, because that's really helped me in my past where I've been at different crossroads and I've leant into some of the advice that people have been offering and it's been career- changing for me.

Helen: That's wonderful thank you. Natasha?

Natasha: Quite similar. I think for me if we go back to talking about the thread that's gone throughout a career, I think for me there's two things. There's kindness and, and relationships. I think, take the time to foster those relationships.

You don't have to have an official mentor to be mentored and it's by creating and cultivating great relationships with people and stepping out of your box and being a bit uncomfortable, reaching out to people and saying 'can we just have a coffee chat?' And learning a bit more about people's roles and experiences, because that's when I've had those 'aha' moments or I've gone, oh, actually, I'm really interested in that bit about what you do. And it's a bit similar to Julie; those people have stayed with me throughout my career and I now count lots of them as people that are my friends and I actually can ring them at any point and say, I'm working on this, what are your thoughts? Or, I need some thoughts on this. And it's now become a two-way thing? So I think they're probably the, the biggest things and what we've said all the way through is around that curiosity. I have never, ever taken no as an answer and never accepted that I can't do something else.

So actually, like people always said to me in the beginning, you can't get into HR because I didn't have the background to do HR. And I said, well, if I've got the skills and I've got the behaviour, why not? Why can I not do that? And actually it did happen for me. So yeah, I think there's those, those things really for me.

Helen: Wonderful. Thank you both for sharing such great advice, and I think that's a, a great question for listeners perhaps try out this week if it's not one they use regularly, which is 'why not?' said in a really constructive collaborative tone and see what you get back!

But thank you both so much for coming on the show and talking with me and sharing all your expertise around the field of Diversity & Inclusion and what's happening. You're both at the forefront of this work so it's really fantastic to hear how you are leading this agenda in your organizations and it's been great fun chatting with you both. Thanks so much.

Julie: Thank you Helen.

Natasha: Thank you for having us.