 Welcome to JSA TV and JSA podcast, the newsroom for telecom and data center professionals. I'm Jean-Marc Lim and joining me today from London is Luisa Gregory, Vice President of Culture, Change and Diversity at Coal Technology Services. Luisa, welcome to JSA, how are you doing? How's the last 18 months treated you? Oh, well, first of all, thank you for inviting me to be part of this and great today, although it is a bit of a gray day here in London, but yeah, the last 18 months have been as challenging for me as they have been for everybody, but looking forward to restrictions really easing up. Yeah, and I guess the weather in London, I mean, what's a day in London without a bit of a gray sky? True. But look, let's jump right in. In terms of diversity and inclusion, how would you define diversity in the corporate world today? And what would you say are the main challenges that still affect our industry? Yeah, so two questions really in that. And I think for us at Colt, we think about diversity as not just diversity of types of people, which obviously it is, but what we're really aiming to achieve by bringing in diverse talent, including more women, more people from different ethnic backgrounds or even people who have both visible and invisible disabilities, LGBTQ plus. But it's really about bringing in that diversity of thought and innovation and creativity to the organization. And there's lots of research and studies that show that if you are an homogenous team, then you won't be as productive, you won't be as innovative. And at Colt, we've definitely seen some of that or a global organization. We operate across 23 different countries and we definitely get the benefit of diversity of thought based on just that. So if we can increase it even more, then that's really only a good thing for our organization. But I think in terms of the challenges, it's still a business imperative. And I think more and more organizations, particularly in our sector, are starting to recognize that. But there's still a long way, excuse me, a long way to go. So we know from a study done by entity data in just February of this year that women make up an average of 35% of the workforce of the five leading telco companies in the UK. So it's still a reasonably low percentage given that women make up at least 50% of the normal population. We also know, and this is one of the things that we've talked about quite a lot at Colt is that because of the age of our sector and we've tended to have people who come in and join this exciting new startup sector called telecommunications. And they've stuck with it, but they're now reaching retirement age. So we have a bit of a retirement cliff approaching as well. So the challenge is really to bring in that young diverse talent. They want that social mobility. They want to see organizations that are focused on changing the world, that are focused on winning together and doing things a different way or a better way. And so we just need to be more diverse in order to attract that new talent. Yeah, get the millennials and then the generation Z through the door, which value different things that the older generations did before. I mean, I really liked the thought around diversity of thinking and bringing different aspects to detail. Because I guess over the years, at least in my six years as a journalist when we started talking about diversity was very much about we need more women. No one really talked about the other verticals of diversity. I don't know if we can call them verticals, but I hope that's not. We call them pillars, so. The pillars, yes. The different pillars of diversity. So I think that's a very good point. And do you think the market is still kind of held back a little bit by the thinking that diversity, it's pretty much exclusively about bringing more women into the telecom space rather than this wider pool of talent that we have across a wider pillar spectrum. Yeah, well, certainly not for cult. I mean, we call them pillars, you know, the same thing. And I think what I'm seeing is the more and more the industry bodies that support this sector. So groups like the global, groups like the Global Leaders Forum as part of capacity and groups like the TM Forum, they are, they have been focused on bringing more women in because it's an easy place to start. It's a, you know, it's often a binary decision. You're male or you're female. It's more of an obvious distinction. But more and more, particularly in those sort of industry groups where they bring the sector together, there are a lot more conversations around neurodiversity, around race, around how we bring more people from ethnic, minorities in, and, you know, clearly the whole murder of George Floyd last year changed the conversation landscape when it comes to conversations around race. I know the GLF is just about to release their, annual report on the status of diversity, inclusion and belonging and will include race for the first time this year. So I think the industry is changing and it is recognised that we need to be more inclusive around diversity types than just women. But these things obviously don't change overnight either. No, it takes time, generational. But actually, I mean, you've already, you've said it takes time. You've mentioned George Floyd. My next question was really around how has the last 18 months changed the conversation around inclusivity and diversity in this sector? Because I mean, of course, we had George Floyd's last summer, which was sad, but he triggered hopefully some good change on the back of it. We have, I mean, we're still dealing with COVID, can't get away from it. There's been some reports where they do say that COVID kind of takes away some of the opportunities for the minorities and even women and everything. And then in the UK, we've dealt with Brexit, which also impacted Europe. I mean, the world has been turned upside down over the last 18 months for the good and the bad. But how has it kind of affected the topic that we're discussing today? Well, I think it's increased the engagement on the topic. And the way that I like to think about the last 18 months is we started with this health crisis where people were losing loved ones and family and friends. And it was very much a health crisis that led to an economic crisis where people were losing jobs or they're going on furlough, having to live on reduced income or there was the threat of unemployment looming in the future. Overlaid with, as we've already said, the murder of George Floyd, which precipitated this social crisis that many people experienced, particularly our black colleagues and people of color. And all of that's led to this whole well-being crisis where there's been a lot more focus on mental health and how do people cope with things like, even the word lockdown, we use words like that, which is previously we would only have ever heard it for somebody who was physically in jail. They go into lockdown. We don't use those as part of our common vocabulary. So all of these things have really forced us to think differently about how we bring people to the table and how we include more people. And yes, sadly, there are some implications. We know that women are more affected by job loss through COVID. So those companies that have had to downscale, statistically, they've let go of more women than they have men. We know that there are some people with certain disabilities who've been more affected by not being in the workplace because the tools and the equipment and the accommodations that they need can't be easily supported in a home environment. There are others who have thrived. There are others who, without that commute, the world of work is more accessible to them as well. So there are pros and cons. And I think we just need to be really thoughtful about how we continue to think about those different diverse groups and make sure that there are no real losers. We personally haven't seen a lot as a result of Brexit. I don't think Brexit has really played into our thinking because we were always a global organization anyway. But certainly the other things, COVID, working from home, all of those things have had an impact that we've had to consider. We'll be interested once COVID is over as well to maybe see a study, a market study where we can see who was let go or what kind of position they were also in because a lot of it might actually be down to, to our old conversation around generational opportunities where women might not be in positions of power at the moment and then people at the lower end will probably get the job faster than people at the top. So maybe in the next pandemic, a hundred years time down the line hopefully, we'll kind of see this a bit more balanced in terms of who's let go. But I mean, you've already mentioned a little bit of cold as well. And I wanted to learn more what kind of initiatives do you have in place within the company itself to embrace diversity and inclusivity more. I see a lot of things on LinkedIn sometimes popping out popping here and there. So talk us through what you do, including with children as well because I think that's quite interesting. Yeah. And for Colt, this whole journey into inclusion and diversity for us wasn't as a result of, I mean, I know it's become very talked about in sort of the last 18 months. But we were on that train before that. So some of our programs are really embedded, but we do know we've also got a long way to go. So if we sort of start at the top, we've got a 50-50 gender split at our executive leadership level. And inclusion and diversity as we call it makes up one of our strategic priorities at that executive leadership and board level. So all of the sort of foundations for our brand, for our strategy, for all of that sort of one of those pillars is being more inclusive and diverse. But in the last year, we've done things like join the valuable 500, which is a commitment to supporting people with disability, both visible and invisible. We've enabled an accessibility tool on all of our websites and public spaces called Recite Me, which enables people to change the colour. It can even speak to you. You can translate it into other languages, all sorts of tools there. We have, sorry, four employee networks to support our employees with more resources around that, including one for disability awareness network. We host lots of events. We've made lots of policy improvements. So just in the last year, we've launched policies around domestic abuse support, transitioning at work, mental health support and a couple of others in there as well. Because what we believe is that having those support policies in place is really the foundation for having more conversations around these things, but also signposting to people what help is available. And we've got more coming where, actually, I think this week, we just launched our menopause at work or menopause support resource toolkit as well, because again, it's something that impacts a large percentage of the population. So we need to make sure that we're resourced appropriately for that as well. So lots and lots of things. We've trained our managers on inspiring inclusion. We held a diversity day last year. But I think that at Colt, we're really, really fortunate that we've got a CEO that believes absolutely passionately in this topic and talks very publicly about the need for it as well. So, yeah, lots of things. I mean, like as what you've done there, you kind of expanded the word inclusivity to much more. Because I guess out there, there's still a lot of companies that think inclusivity is about just employing one or two women here and then another person from a different background. So for them, it's very much a tick box exercise. While you guys are actually doing things differently and you are educating the other parts of the business as well about the minorities' issues and the problems that other people face so they can actually work together as members of staff. And I love the idea of translating within the company's platform. I never thought of that. Never thought of that. But it's one of those simple things that actually makes it all much more inclusive. Because if I speak to you in a different language and you don't understand what I'm saying, then we're both not being inclusive because we don't understand what we're saying. So actually offering that to the employees, I think that's really good. But now talking about you, because you haven't been the vice president for culture change. Sorry, I got that wrong, did I? Culture change and diversity for too long. I think it's been six, eight months. What have you learned since you took to the role? So I guess just to clarify that formally, but I've been working for Colton this space for I guess a little while. We've just kind of formalized it since January. But I think we've learned lots of things and this is a space where you never stopped learning in my opinion. So one of the big things that we kind of already knew, but I think that we've definitely highlighted is there really is no silver bullet for being more inclusive and more diverse. And the other thing I think is that it's really, really important to have strategic ambition or intent behind those plans in order to gain business buying because otherwise it just becomes another HR initiative or another pet project of the CEO. And that's when you end up with those tick box exercises that you talked about before. But if you've got some real strategic intent behind it and you can demonstrate the business benefits of being more inclusive and diverse, then you're more likely to get the right people within the organization behind it. So the other thing that we've learned is that you have to get the foundations right. I talked before about policies and support structures. And to be honest, that's not my favorite thing to do. I'm not a policy writer. It's not my favorite thing to sit there and write policies to support the organization. I'm much more excited about programs and building capability. But it's really important to have those policies in place first because without them, you just won't create that environment for people to feel like they can be themselves and really thrive in the organization. It sets the foundations and for some people, if not all, it really, they need to see those things done as well to kind of see they are taking these serious. So I think that's important. And Louisa, if people want to learn more about cold culture and the activities you're doing and the initiatives you've got in place and what's coming next as well, where could people go to find out more? You can go to a few places. We have a lot of information on our website. So Colt.net is the place to go. We have a whole section on inclusion and diversity. And maybe if I can just clarify, I know the common term is DNI or DEI. We purposely start with inclusion because we believe that building an inclusive environment leads to greater diversity. So if you go to Colt.net, you can find a whole page. We've got some great things on there. We talk about our policies. We talk about our networks. We talk about there's some blogs on there. I'm really proud of the fact that we've got our own podcast called The Full Picture, where we give our people a platform and a voice to speak about their own personal stories when it comes to diversity. We've got a Humans of Colt series, again, giving them a platform to talk about that as well. But there's loads of resources on our website. And LinkedIn, as you mentioned earlier, we do quite a lot of resource on there as well. Okay, well, I'm looking forward to see where you guys come up next. And I really like the idea of the translation within the company's platforms. I know it's something so simple and you've said so many great things, but that's the one that really stands for me. Yeah, and it's all, it's fully automated. You just, you literally, and it's on colt.net, so you can go on to colt.net and it's called Recite Me, up the top, or excessive, no, sorry, it's not called Recite Me. It's called Accessibility. You just click on that because you're all the options about what you can do. You can change the background color. Some people can't do white screens. You can change it to dark. You can change the font color. Yeah, there's hundreds of languages on there as well. So yeah, I'm sure a lot of corporations will have to copy that because it's one of those you really have to. Well, Recite Me is the tool. We didn't build it. We bought it, so. I know, but they'll have to copy this. A little prize for Recite Me then. Okay, Louisa, well, thank you so much for talking to us and sharing the experiences at colt. And thank you, our viewers as well, for tuning into JSA TV and JSA Podcast. And don't forget to check our social media channels for more content. Until next time, happy networking.