Why the workplace needs diversity and inclusion

Do Better Welcome to Do Better Podcast, a digital content hub from Asaday, built for minds interested in doing better. Knowledge ideas, perspectives and research insights on topics that matter. Business advice for better decisions in growth, latest on the world of innovation and ideas. A look inside a global world beyond borders and an open view on social challenges. You can leave your comments and suggestions on dobetter.assaday.edu. Hello and welcome. My name is David Rivera. I am the manager of EWORF's, the venture creation program that we run for the Asaday Interpretation Institute and also an Interpretation Lecturer. I'm here today with Sophie Van Gogh, an entrepreneur and alumna of the Fultam MBA class of 2019. Hi, Sophie and thanks for being with us. Hello, David. Thanks for the invite. So today we're going to talk about diversity and inclusion in the workplace. And I will say let's start straight from there. So what's the name of your company and what does it do? Yes, so the name of my company is moonshot, moonshot diversity and inclusion. And we do analytics, strategy and training to help companies become more diverse and abusive. Fantastic. Maybe before getting into how the companies actually work and what do you do? Maybe let's take one step back and see how did you got the idea and how was the company and the project developed? Yeah, so before I joined the Isada, I was working in management consulting in Amsterdam, where I'm from. I was working with the Boston Consulting Group. And there in my office, there were 25 partners and it was only one woman. And I was a little bit confused about that. Like the Netherlands is quite an equal country and back in school and university. I always saw like a lot of talented women. I think we're like the ones with the highest grades and the loudest voice and the class and everything. So I was a little bit puzzled when I started working and I saw this and I started asking a lot of questions about it. I asked like my managers and I fear like why don't you have more women and leadership and I was like, yeah, yeah, it's very complicated. Yeah, yeah, we want to change it. I was like, well, let's do something. So I started to research a lot about this topic and I did an internal project about it before my MBA. And then when I did the MBA, I was like, wow, I really want to change this like the more I started to learn about it, the more frustrated I got and the more I wanted to do something. And then I did this entrepreneurship class with you and young another professor. And young was like, yeah, just start a company. Don't worry about the business plan. You should just go and start and try to sell something. And I was like, okay, I like a challenge. So I decided to do it. And during the MBA, I already focused a lot on this topic. So I was a president of the Women in Business Club. And then I just used the context to network a lot. And before I knew it, we had like sold the project to folks wagon. And then I was like, oh, my God, this is getting real. We should do something like and then actually I kind of accidentally founded the company during the MBA. And since then that's two years ago. So since then, of course, we come much more professional and grown a lot and acquired new clients. But that's how my fascination for the topic started. Fantastic. No, so you got the original idea even before the MBA that was something that you experienced on your own and then during the MBA you got entrepreneurship classes that probably pushed you a bit towards building your own business. Was there any additional support that you got maybe from us other during the time that helped you shape the idea a bit more. Yeah, first there was my career advisor, Francesca in the first week of the MBA, I think she said, like, yeah, I used this time really to to explore it. And I was like, because it wasn't my idea to start a company because I was sponsored for my MBA. So I was supposed to go back to my old job. So I was like, okay, an MBA is nice. It's going to be like kind of a very big vacation where I study a little bit. And then I got to see that like, yeah, use this time, take every opportunity. And I really took that advice to heart. So I did the women business club and then I did the accelerator program. Them with you and me under the summer. And it was really good because I know was like some external pushes of saying, like, okay, what did you achieve? And then I got clients that you get and also talking to other entrepreneurs and classmates that helped a lot as well. So then I also for me was good because the MBA became like a kind of a. Also the deadline of the MBA, right. Okay, by the end either I have this company at a works and I can do it or it doesn't. And I go back to my old job, which I didn't want to. So was some good pressure. And I think that that line helps really pushing forward and the result. Yes, then I will say, I think what's interesting here is to explain a bit more. So maybe first of all, about the issue itself. No, so the diversity and inclusion is not only about the number of women in the workplace, right. So can you elaborate a bit more on that. Yeah, that's true. And in general, diversity. So my company started a lot with gender, but now more and more diversity and also talking a lot about race, ethnicity, but also there's, for example, age disability, which are important aspects. So a lot of companies, as you say, they focus on this, getting a percentage of women, getting a percentage of people were of color into the company. But then they forget about the inclusion part and then what usually happens is after one or two years, these people who are like different from the majority, they don't feel at home. And they leave again and everyone is like, oh, you see, yeah, it's really difficult and like that's only confirmed and nothing changes. And some companies are trying to hit a quota basically, so they say, okay, somehow somebody puts a quota and they try to hit that quota, but then there is not, if understand correctly, there's not, let's say a proactive effort for inclusions, once people are hired in the company. And that's also a difficult part because on the other hand, there are some companies now, we just focus on inclusion and diversity will follow, but it's a little bit hard to focus on inclusion when everyone is the same, like usually everyone will feel included. You need to do both at the same time, so you need to get people are different into the company and then at the same time work on the culture, and you can only work on changing the culture, I think, if you get more different people inside. And then there's a challenge that usually when they hire new people, like for example, company with only man, they want to hire more women, they get to me, but only at the lowest level. And they are different, like they are the only women and they are the least experienced and the youngest, so it's very difficult for them to change the culture. So yeah, there's some challenges that I'm working with every day. Right, and then I think, no, let's maybe then jump to what is your solution, so what does moonshot diversity and inclusion actually do to help tackle these issues? Yes, it's a good question because the solution is still something, well, I'm working on every day, but there are some different aspects. So the first is really analytics, because I noticed that a lot of people, but basically everyone has an opinion about this topic, but no one really understands it and measures it. So you mean inside the company right here, right? Okay, everybody has a different opinion, but then data is not measured really well. Exactly. So everyone like the CEO said, yeah, we want women, but they always, we hired them, but they always leave at a certain age when they want to have children. And other people say like, oh, no, it's not even possible to get women because they don't study this topic that we hire, they don't go to the university that we hire people from. Everyone has a lot of hypothesis and assumptions. So in the first phase, what I do is really gathering those insights and also gathering insights on the company culture, so interviewing people surveys and then comparing the hypothesis of people to actually their data, their own data. Some people are surprised because they are like, yeah, but it's the internal company data they should know right right. But most companies even become, they don't measure this kind of thing. So they don't look at gender balance or ethnicity in the numbers of people they hire people they fire, they promote. And for example, measuring the pay gap, it's something a lot of companies don't do. So this is what we offer to really give the insight. And then usually the insight is that there are some a lot of inequality and the companies want to change them, but we make it like more specific and really show them these are the issues you need to work on. Then the next step is we help them build solutions or strategies to attack this. So it could be like, okay, you don't get any diversity into your recruiting pipeline. So you need to diversify your. Your pipeline, your tenant pipeline. So for example, it could be get to other networks, but also change the text of your of your job ads. It could be something in the recruiting process that you have some hidden. biases that makes it only select the same kind of people, even though you think you're very objective. And then the last part we do is training and that's also for example, an unconscious bias, really explained to people like, okay, even though you think you might be super objective and open mind that everyone has these biases inside that make us sometimes tend to go to people that are more like us, be a little bit more favorable to them. And even though we think we have all these objective processes and checks and balances, there are always other things that come into place. So we explain this, but also during this training we explain like issues of racism and sexism and then we discuss with people. People share their own stories and try to get the topic in the agenda of corporates and environments. Right, because I mean there are two different layers. Now to this one is overall the internal let's say processes and biases and structure and that's in a way reactive. So you can see okay, looking to the company, you validate their policies with data, which is also a real good application of the entrepreneurial mindset, which we're happy about. And then I know you say okay, this is data we can demonstrate that what you think maybe it's right, maybe it's wrong, but then really have tangible way to demonstrate what the situation is. And then maybe analyze not the funnel and so on, but then there is also the let's say proactive part, now which there is a lot of debate about. So typical let's say comment that you hear from many companies is like oh, but we don't have any diverse people applying to the job position. So what can we do? We can only select from what we have, right? And that's also more proactive. So do you also see companies really needing or asking for support into proactively diversifying the pool of applicants? Yes, definitely. Yeah, I saw an article once that was like, exactly touch upon this point and they said something like okay, if you are a fish or man and you don't get any fish to bite, like do you complain that the fish are not good or are you going to change like your strategy? Or like yes, that's what a lot of companies need because they're always complaining about the applicants and I'm like okay, maybe you can do something because if you go to the universities at least in the Netherlands, it's a super diverse especially in the big cities with people from all kinds of nationalities, race, ethnicity, backgrounds, gender, etc. But you don't see them in a big company usually. So that's what I tell them like you need to get to a wider audience, you need to promote yourself and also turn the application process. We know that there are a lot of hidden biases, like there's a lot of research that shows that someone with an foreign sounding name, even with the same resume has a lot lower probability of getting invited for a job interview that's someone with a touch name. I don't know if it's the same in Spain but I'm afraid it is. So there are things you can do here, you can make it anonymous, you can do use like tools or technology to have people pass the first round of the job interview. So these are things where you recommend and we help companies with. Right, so you help them and I mean not your company is relatively young but can you maybe share a bit about the results of these practices of this support that you provide to companies? Yes, but I think the first result is really getting this topic on the agenda of management boards which are usually like 50-year-old white man that suddenly starts to speak very long about sexism and racism and these kind of issues. I think that's one result. The other is like some things are a little bit hard to quantify and I'm still looking for that so I cannot say like, okay, this company increased the number of women by a lot of percentage points but yeah, so we worked with big companies like DSM, Coca-Cola, Google, DeepMind, some big law firms in the Netherlands and Volkswagen and maybe sorry one question about that noise. So those companies are a large organization. So yeah, who do you talk to actually? Is it HR? Is it the board of director? Who is the right person to talk to and who does initiate the dialogue? Is it? Yeah, there's kind of two questions. So do you approach companies today approach you and then inside a company who's the right stakeholder? Yeah, in the beginning was usually me approaching companies telling them I think they need to do something about this. Now more and more they are approaching me because they know that I'm working on it and that they have an issue and also I think more and more this becomes like a regular topic. A few years ago when I approached this in BZG they were like, oh well yeah, it's interesting maybe we should do something and I'll use that more and more it's on the news and more and more companies are becoming aware of it. And to your second question who is dealing with this, usually it's a combination of HR and like a senior leadership. So and I think it's very important that the CEO or someone very senior is involved and is committed to this because in the end that's the most important driver for change. So usually is the person like sponsoring the project and then someone from HR is more executing it or yeah. Okay, okay, no, so it's a bit of a mix but then you need the commitment let's say from the top management and then you need also the HR let's say support to implement it. Yeah, the question needs a lot sorry. No, go ahead sorry. No, a lot in the end like of changing job application processes or promotion cycles is like in their day to day business so they really need to be involved. Right and then so to me the other question now is a little bit looking at the current situation no, so we have crisis coming in overall economic slowdown at the very least. Yeah, how do you feel or do you know from your contact from your operation is this impacting the situation? Because oftentimes whenever a situation like this happens, well the first thing that companies do is that they pull away budgets from from HR and for these sort of initiatives. So do you are you seeing this and how do you foresee the future in the next couple of years? Yes, yeah, I'm a little bit pessimistic to be honest. Well, there are two sides. In general, I'm an optimistic person and I see that some companies, despite the crisis happening, they're still asking for projects, trainings and focusing on it so that's a positive thing and also now with all the Black Lives Matter protests that the topic is really on the agenda and also that there's some kind of momentum of like okay are we going to go back to normal or should everything change after Corona crisis and also things like working from home and more flexibility they might have a very positive impact on inclusion and women and caretakers. On the other hand, as you say like during a crisis budgets are under pressure and it was an article a few months ago already like why this crisis is a disaster for feminism so you see that some inequality is only getting larger during a crisis because usually the people in these more flexible jobs and with less security they are women, people of color minorities, they are like the the most vulnerable in the labor market and that they will be hit as it's hardest. So I'm a little bit pessimistic about that. So it's not a happy answer but it's a bit of both. So in a way somehow the two let's say most trending in a way topics that we are seeing at least in the Western world so to say I really related on one side on an economic crisis coming in but then on the other side of actually facing the diversity issue so that places you in a very unique position probably in which to kind of trying to ride the wave in between somehow. Yeah, no that's true and also I mean there's a lot of attention for the topic I feel also showing that this country is with female leaders are better dealing with a Corona crisis. I mean no one is really sure what's causing a fact but there is attention for the topic and people are pushing it and the protests are good. So now I hope that companies will listen to this and also when they need to reorganize or restructure or change positions that they will take this dimension into account into account and it could be a good way like I mean it's pretty sad that a lot of them have like stopped hiring but I think we also discussed this before that it could be an opportunity for them to kind of clean up the employee base and make place for new talent and thereby diversify. Right no so in a way if managed correctly which is a big if but then all crisis could be an opportunity for for for people and for companies to reinvent themselves right so if manage well and with the right support which hopefully you can provide with your company then this could be a way for many companies, many organizations in general to reinvent themselves. Yeah I agree and for some cases you already see it like that's working from home something we all had to do in the last few months some companies are saying like okay we can keep on doing it forever or we will do it two or three times a week so I think that are some positive aspects of the crisis but yeah we have to see later on also with budget cuts and when the real economic crisis will hit I think in a few months how it will go right no so again I will say let's hope that not only for you and for your project of course but overall not for for society at large that budget will not be cut on these projects and so there will be a way to you know keep reinventing and keep going for a better future I will say this was super interesting maybe one last question which is bit of a double question though and that's the following so what would you recommend to a recent graduate regardless of you know the gender identification in the status but if somebody's with a recent graduate from university or graduate school they go and look for a new job is there any early signs that they need to look at in terms of discriminatory policies or attitudes before accepting an offer or even after what should they look for yeah so you mean if they are looking for an inclusive company what's right yeah exactly I think it's best to really look at how you experience the job interviews and even ask questions there because I think from the outside most companies especially big companies they look very good because they always put very nice pictures on the website they have to talk about diversity but it's only if you go in you can really see what happens so then you can ask them like what's what does your leadership look like globally and locally how diverse is your leadership team so asking for real data in terms of real data what would you do when you when you when you with your company go and go consulting project no so really saying not opinions but data exactly ask for data and also ask for specific data so a lot of companies are good as to we have a 50% women but then if you ask more it turns out all of them are in HR or finance and still there are a lot of departments without any women so be specific and ask like be critical ask some questions and it could also be on like salary data tell them like hey are you committed to equal pay and also during the negotiations you can bring up this topic and say that you find it really important to be compensated the treated equally yeah so I would look for data and I really ask people who work there and different people also because different people have completely different experiences as he if they are committed to this topic and not only talking about it but really walking the talk right and then I would say the other side of the no of the coin if you want so what about employers let's not probably our our listeners are more employers than when people looking for a job so the question is no what should somebody do even if probably they think they have no problem maybe there still is something so so what would you recommend to employers if want to have a critical look at the wrong company yeah what's also say like really ask their employees and listen to them because what they usually see is that management has like a completely different perception completely different life than their own employees and usually when I talk to the employees they're really shocked by the things they hear that happen there so recently I was working with a country director of a company in the Netherlands and he said he had worked there for 20 years was a man and he said like okay recently I started talking to the women in my company and I'm sure that about half of them have experienced some kind of harassment or like negative situations and we can say it happens in other countries or it only happens in the US but it happens like here in the Netherlands in this building so I think the only way that leaders can find out about this and really know if they are doing well is talking to the employees listening and really being open and being vulnerable because a lot of leaders are like no it doesn't happen here or oh I talk to someone from my team and they said it's fine no really be open and listen also to other voices that maybe you don't like so much what they will tell you right so and really do something like I see so many leaders they are like yeah it's really important and then they go back and they are from both people they point people and again they choose like then white man and everyone else is like hello you know we are still here so if you want to change it like really do something like show don't tell I would say right so first step is really kind of don't be blind you know trying to to yes outside one's own blindness and really try to look for issues and ask and listen to the to the answers no maybe anonymously depending on the company employees may not be willing not to share and then second step is really just not let the data sit in but really take action take action exactly and don't be I see a lot of people are like oh but it's so difficult it's complicated we don't know how okay like for a moment there's fine to do but then you have asked to your employees maybe you've read some things and like it's not so difficult like every time you make a decision to hire someone to fire someone to promote someone it's an opportunity to to act and to show your commitment and maybe it's a little bit more difficult yeah then doing it the way you were doing before maybe you have to look a little bit longer to to fill a job for example but it's possible like there's enough talent and you just need to do it right and if not there's there are experts like you that can support in the process of course yes happy to help fantastic so thank you Sophie for your insight for sharing your story with us I will say all the best for keep your company growing and for helping contribute into the future thank you very much and thanks everybody for listening and I'm looking forward to sharing more insights very soon bye bye thank you bye bye if you still want to learn more remember you can register on our platform do better dot assade.edu that was all for today until next time thank you