 This episode of the podcast is supported by Bentley Lewis, an award-winning executive search firm. Hey, folks, welcome to the podcast. We are proud to be official media partners of Dive-In Festival this year, which is really cool and we're doing a series of podcasts for the festival. And if you don't know, Dive-In Festival is a global movement in the insurance sector, which is supporting the development of inclusive workplace cultures. It's a really, really cool work. They're in about 33 countries now, so they do these really cool events, panel discussions all over the world, really helping to promote diversity and inclusion, which is very cool. I hope you enjoy it. Please subscribe in all the usual places and enjoy. Awesome. And we're live. Folks, thank you very much for tuning in. Today, it's a pleasure actually to be joined by Mark McKenna-Colls. He's a global diversity and inclusion manager at Lloyds of London, and he's leading on the Dive-In Fest, which we're going to hear all about, and we're doing a series of three podcasts for the event, which we did last year, which were awesome. I think this year it's all virtual, but again, we'll hear a bit about that for Mark. But Mark, welcome to the show. Thank you. It's lovely to be here. Pleasure. How have you found the last few months? It's been interesting. Working remotely has its challenges, but it also has its opportunities as well. I live in Brighton, so travelling in central London is always a task in itself. I'm not going to moan about Thameslink or Southern, but we all know what's happened in the past with them. But for me, it has meant that I am able to not having to travel so far, but it's also getting used to working remotely for such a long period of time. I was very blessed that in November last year, myself and my husband moved to a much bigger house, so it means that I do have an office, so I am quite blessed in that aspect. But I do know, through colleagues and friends and other people, that not everyone's so lucky and everyone has had to adapt in different ways. But for me, I think it is a matter of adaption. Had you worked from home before? Maybe once a week, if not. It's just quite new for you then still. All the locations I've ever lived in have never really been the most comfortable to work from home. I've always been lucky that we've moved to a place where I'm blessed to do that now. So I'm a massive advocate of working from home, but previously I personally just didn't always enjoy it. But also with the DNI role that I have, networking is very key, especially external networking. And but luckily this year, external networking is all done either virtually or hasn't happened. But I know through conversations I've had go forward, it will become a more blended approach, which means that my working from home ability will be more successful than it probably would have been in the past. Yeah, how have you found all the Zoom calls? I mean, I've found about you, but I've kind of got quite tiring a little bit. You know, like you feel, you feel drained afterwards? It's a weird one. How have you found that? Yeah, it's because the screen, it's working with screens. You can get the best screens in the world, but the burnout on your eyes is exhausting. You know, I think we were all getting used to Zoom or Teams or any other sort of facility towards the beginning. We're now, I mean, at Lloyd's, we are, we've invested a lot in Teams, actually, as one of the big areas. And actually we were always looking to do that. But during the last four months, their work on it has accelerated beyond their wildest dreams, which has been phenomenal. So we're all having fun by changing our backgrounds, which is what we would do either on Zoom. I haven't changed mine today. This is my genuine background, my genuine background behind me. So I'm not going to superimpose, or if I pick up a glass, it'll disappear. But yeah, no, I mean, I think, I think, yeah, it does cause that slight sort of burnout. So one of the good things we've done at our organization, and actually I'm a massive advocate of, is taking maybe an hour or so in the day where you walk away from the screen. That's not just a lunch break. That is maybe go and do some work in a slightly different way. And it means that you're not constantly having to just be staring at a screen all the time, which can cause, you know, major burnout. Yeah, definitely. I've loved the telephone call. You know, almost I find the telephone call a little bit more intimate. Because it's like you're in, you know, they're in your ear. You kind of maybe are more used to the pattern. Because, you know, sometimes on the Zoom, like the internet's slightly off and you're like interrupting each other and you can't quite get the feel. So I'm trying to mix it up. And that's why I love walking around when I talk. And when I'm on the video, I've like, I've got to sit here. And I'm like getting fidgety and it's gone on for an hour. And I'm like, really, I really want to. So I've been trying to mix up that way. And my other super cool thing is I love, I love standing desks because my back hurts when I sit. I'm very proud. I have one in my house. So I have a thing on my desk that allows me to lift it up, which has been. I mean, this was given to me by work because I had one of my in my office at the office, I think have an office, but, you know, I was in the open plan and I and they said that if anyone had that and they require it because obviously after lunch during the day, it's nice to have stand up. So, yeah. Yeah. Well, if you don't, if you're not lucky enough to have one, my my number one trick is the ironing board. Yeah, it is the best standing desk ever because you can like sit and you can move it up and you can stand and it's a great height. So, yeah, I'd recommend. And you can multitask so you can do a show as well as a zoom call. Absolutely. It's amazing. Yeah, absolutely. I absolutely love it. Do you think do you think now that you're going to work more from home or have you learned that actually for yourself, you know, you prefer, you know, going into an office environment? So for me, it's it's so we we bought in at Lloyd's. So this we bought in Lloyd's just over a year ago. This work for your diary. So this was, you know, you make the decision on how you want to work based on your diary and your commitments. So for me, I think I'm going to utilise that a lot more. So it might mean that some weeks I travel in maybe twice a week into London in the future, other weeks I might going three times a week, but it will depend on that. But I think this is now emphasised policies like that in organisations to say, yeah, you were saying work for your diary, but do you know what the, you know, people were saying, oh, you need to be in, you need to be in. Now we've all experienced this remote working. Those sort of policies can be enacted far greater. And I think people will embrace them a lot more. Yeah. And you don't think they'll be it will be frowned upon where if someone wants to work four days from home or three days, you think is it going to be is everyone really accepting now that everyone has a choice? I think people need to review their job and understand actually is, you know, and other circumstances. So it might be there might be and I think people are becoming more switched on by personal circumstances because everyone's had to deal with certain personal circumstances in the last four months. So whereby people were nervous to talk about child responsibilities in the past, I think we're less nervous to talk about that. So I think, you know, if you've got some of those justifications, if you've got that reality and I think, you know, when we're having meetings now, we've all been forced into having meetings online. You know, we've all had to do it because we've all in the same situation. When we start doing a more blended approach, we need to start recognising that that when you set a meeting up, you need to recognise that that meeting needs to be booked for a meeting room and also online. You've got to do both. Yes, I could never do one because one person, it may just be one person, might be working in a different location from your meeting room on that particular day. Definitely. I think we also have to be mindful of a lot of a lot of people I speak to are quite nervous that, you know, what happens if I'm working from home four or five days a week? My colleague works next to my boss in the office five days a week and a promotion opportunity comes up, you know, and it's interesting because we're all we're human, we're all biased. And, you know, if you're the manager and you really, really like this person next to you, but the person who works from home is much better and produces better quality work. There really needs to be some some thought around, you know, really well thought out appraisal process and say forth to some interesting topics to think about in this. Yeah, and I think it's that that homes in on that inclusive leadership. If we've got leaders, managers, et cetera, people that line manage are more inclusive in their approach, in their mindset. I think a lot of that thought will be very historic and we will now move on to that. You know what, when we're recognising people based on what they're producing, what other qualities they have, rather than, oh, well, they're always in the office. We're always having a chimp wag or we're down at the land in Leidenhall market, having a good old chat. You know what, let's let's move past that. Let's, you know, we need to move on. And I think it will come with time. I think this has been the the the the charge forward to help with that. But I think there will be it will take probably a few more years before we're in a really good way of working to that extreme. But time time will tell. And I think we won't go backwards. We will go forwards. Yes, no, definitely. This was this was coming anyway, right? It was interesting. I was doing I was doing talks on work from home and flexible working and all of that stuff. And I just feel like if the pandemic had happened, all of this stuff we're talking about is probably 10 or 20 years in the future. Yeah. And this is just really given a good shot in the arm. And suddenly dreadful or created something a momentum of positivity. Yeah, yeah. And so I think it's great. I'm super excited for what's to come. But, you know, I think there are still, you know, some interesting things and challenges to work through. And from Frank is also from an inclusion perspective. What have you found that's really challenging during this period? I think I think it is sometimes the connectivity. But then I think on the other side of it, I've learnt more about some of my work colleagues than I would ever done because you're invited into their home. Yes. Yeah. So I think, you know, there are always challenges when it comes to that sort of ad hoc contact that you might want, some of the conversations. But I also think that there's actually been a larger movement on certain topics around inclusion that have really sort of been heightened during this. So, for example, well-being, mental health, you know, mental health. You know, when we talk about that, some people get, you know, really excited because it's something they're passionate about. And others get really nervous, you know, oh, I don't want to talk about mental health. Oh, no, no, no, I don't have issues. Okay. Do you know what? Every person in this world, irrespective of who they are, including Trump, has mental health issues. Okay. Be it the fact that you might get stressed every so often. And actually, that is a symbol or a signal of mental health issues. It doesn't mean that you are constantly having mental health issues, but you will have some form of mental health issue. And I think all of these sort of things and the conversations that we ran a series of events during Mental Health Awareness Week. And all of it was virtual. We even ran COVID session, not COVID, COVID, well, no, yoga. Oh, sorry. My Siri just went off. I don't know why I mentioned, Siri went off. That was a bit surreal. No, we did yoga sessions and we had nearly 300 people from across the market over those sessions turn up for yoga. And you think, you know, and there was a mix of genders on there, you know, you know, no one really could see each other. It was very sort of, but it meant that people wanted to embrace that. Yes. And these are people that just probably would never have done something like that in the past. Yeah, because we're human and we want human contact. And as much as it's nice to work from home and stuff, I think people need a blend and that needs to be appreciated. The other thing I've really had to learn is that everyone's gone through a different experience. You know, as you mentioned, everyone has different mental health needs and issues and stuff. And I think it's just appreciating that, you know, someone might be living on their own, you know, in a small apartment somewhere and just, you know, they really need to get out and see people and others, you know, two kids, my scenario, my wife has been working in intensive care. My kids have been at school. Like it's just, you know, everyone's different. And I've really had to just appreciate that. And I found it quite challenging as well, you know, leading a team, you're doing the Zoom calls. Some people have their cameras on. Some people don't want to have their cameras on. Some people, they put a smile on when they come for the, you know, the daily call and just trying to find out how people are feeling and giving them the chance to say, like, hey, actually, I don't feel like coming on the call today, or I need a bit of help or just give me some time. That's been a real learning experience for me. Yeah. And I'm blessed that I have my husband. He does work. So when he comes home, obviously I see him and stuff. He did make a joke this morning because he said, oh, you know, when you think about going back to the office in the future, he said, you know, you do realise the majority of contact that you physically had in this house has been with the two dogs because they sit in the office with me. And I said, my worry is I'll go back into the office and I'll start offering treats out to my colleagues because that's basically what I do here. So I need to get into the mindset that I shouldn't do that with humans. I should be offering out dog biscuits, but you never know. You never know. I'll take a cookie or something. I mean, that's fine. Yeah, there we go. Has your as your approach to DNA changed then during the pandemic? Yeah, I think you will. It has the way we we we present it has had to change. And I think that's been a real positive uplift. I think we've had to really think about the very sort of different nuances to that. I mean, we always have a plan at the beginning of the year, you know, and a lot of those plans have been thrown out the window. But, you know, if I say in the last four months, you know, well-being and mental health has been a big thing. Also, in in the last month and a half, I'd say, you know, the conversation around race and ethnicity has really heightened. It's been something that's been on my radar and on my work pattern. You know, I've been doing work on it, but we've had to sort of accelerate elements of what we're trying to do. And I think that's positive as well. You know, the, you know, positive that we are moving the momentum forward on that and and there is more to come in that aspect. And for me, that's been a matter because we've had to accelerate. There's things that I'm not completely. And I always have to hold my hands up. A DNI manager doesn't know everything. We don't know everything about, you know, everything. So we have to educate ourselves constantly on a daily basis. So for me, I've had to sit here and educate myself around some of the elements of race and racial inequality and things like that. You know, and and and realize where I should be continuously standing up, but where I need to move that momentum forward even further as well. So I think, yeah, there's been certain aspects that have changed and really accelerated as well. Yeah. What's an interesting one is onboarding. You know, we've we've had a lot of people start new jobs virtually. They've never met anyone. You know, what's the culture like? How do you even get across what your coach is like when someone's only seen someone on video or maybe five people as part of an interview process? You know, I think I think that's very into like making people feel included virtually is it's tough, you know, I think people. It is tough. It is tough. But I think it's how teams treat each other. So I know the team that I mean other teams with across Lloyds. We do maybe two or three check-ins a week. Some short, some larger check-ins on a Friday. Specifically, we have this what we call high five, where we all get together. It's after five o'clock, obviously. We always may we may not always, but we may have a drink with us because it is after five o'clock. It means that we have this sort of half an hour or so of socialising, having that sort of wind down, don't talk about work, just talk about other things, what you're doing at the weekend. So I think there is these elements of connection. And I know many other teams in the Lloyds Corporation are doing exactly the same and many teams across the Lloyds market are also doing that as well. Yeah, that's true. I mean, there's obviously the quizzes, the virtual drinks. So there's a lot of things companies are doing. What we haven't heard a huge amount is what can you do is what can you do to make your colleagues feel included? You know, like everyone attends these things organised by the companies. But is there anything like a colleague can do if you know one of your team are feeling a little bit down or. Is there anything that you're seeing that's been caused? Yeah, so it is a matter of just, you know, you might identify post, you know, during a meeting that someone's not as bright or whatever. Or you haven't heard from them for a couple of days. And it is, you know, don't be shy to reach out to them. Yes, they might be under pressure. Yes, but, you know, the likelihood is and I don't think I would see anyone that would decline this. The likelihood is they'll want to talk to you. Yeah, they're just they're probably either too nervous to reach out themselves or they don't know who to reach out to. But for someone to reach out to them is much more powerful. So I think, you know, for anyone out there, if you see people struggling, if you feel there's something not quite there, it might just be saying very, very minor. I had a colleague who it was saying very minor and I and no one really picked up on it. I reached out to her and asked the question and actually found out it was something much larger than that. And you always find out things that you might not do. You know, not everyone is always forthcoming. There's always, you know, we're British, so we always put up this wall. Or we don't talk about that. But you know what, I think think that that wall is starting to break down quite a lot now. And I think this this whole experience of of pandemic and other things has started to break down. People are also becoming more vocal in many different ways. So I think when it comes to their own health, they're starting to become more forthcoming as well. Definitely. No, I think everyone's everyone's opening up a lot. During this pandemic, people are talking about their feelings more. Even guys are talking about their feelings more. I know crazy talking about our feelings. You know, like I speak to a friend and he's I'm like, how are you doing, mate? Usually it's like, yeah, cool you. And now it's like, well, actually, or, you know, I've gone through this. And it's really nice. Everyone's everyone's sharing. Interestingly, today, Boris has just announced the comments that his obesity campaign or something like that, which is quite interesting. Not sure he's quite hit it on the mark yet. But again, we're talking. We're talking about mental health a lot, which is great. And I really think one thing to come out of this, we need to be talking about physical health as well. Absolutely. It's both linked and as big links to your immune system and things like that. So yeah. And but essentially in the workplace, you know, you it's not really being OK to go up to someone and say, hey, you know, have you thought about becoming more physically healthy? You know, mental health? Yes. You know, how are you feeling and stuff? So I think I think over the next kind of year, that would be a really interesting one. Yeah. And I agree. I think I think what what what this has led to. I mean, for me personally, I it doesn't look like I've been doing this ever since lockdown, four days a week. I go out for a run in the morning and I do four miles. Nice. So basically, I run from my house all the way down to the seafront across to home back again, and it's around four miles. I it doesn't look like that, but I've done that. But, you know, I have done that. It does make me feel better before for the start of the day. I get home, you know, what I'm actually doing is roughly getting up, maybe slightly later than normal. But around the normal time, I would get up if I was going into London. So actually, my day is similar during the week. But what I've been able to do is now go out for this run. And and I think, you know, things like that will continue. So I think challenging people in the future might be, oh, I understood that you used to go out running. How's the running still going? Yeah, because actually, that's another way of saying, you know, what you probably wouldn't have said before, but actually it's going to become more acceptable. Yes, definitely. I've gone I've gone like four or five days a week with my exercise. I do I do CrossFit, which is an American CrossFit thing. And my CrossFit gym went online. So it did zoom classes. So me and my wife were able to do them together because we've got two kids, one of us goes, then the other one looks like a kid. So we just turned on the zoom, the gym kindly lent us some equipment. And and we just I'm feeling like super fit right now. Plus plus like healthy eating. Like we were making we've been making really good quality food. Yeah, fruit, vegetables, fish, meat, stuff like that. Like we've gone because, you know, like in the city, when you're coming in, it's just everyone's got a birthday. Everyone brings in some cakes. You know, you go for a lunch. It's it's quite a drags for a takeaway set, you know, families and stuff. Yeah. Well, you have a client lunch and it's like quite heavy. Depending on which company you work for, you might have a glass of wine or beer. Yeah, yeah, that's gone down a lot now. So, yeah, I'm feeling more healthy. And I just hope another thing that comes out of this is people thinking more about their own physical health because it helps you fight off these these diseases and stuff. You know, really important. Yeah, tell me a bit about diving. So you're you're leading the the festival now. Yeah, so so previously, Pauline Miller, who's my boss, actually, this has been something that she's worked on and kind of led on since 2015. And and at the end of the end of last year's dive in, Pauline sort of said to me, look, you've you've already been in situ. So I've been with Lloyd's will be two years in about a week's time, actually. So this was kind of my third dive in with Lloyd's. And she sort of said, look, this is your opportunity to now sort of take that forward, not expecting that COVID-19 was going to be rolling in there as a bit of a curveball, but it's a learning experience. So yeah, so myself and I have a colleague who also works for Lloyd, Julia, so and she works as part of our events team within Lloyd. So we as one of our objectives, so not our whole job. One of our objectives for this year was to to sort of see through the Diving Festival. Now Lloyd's it's not a Lloyd's run as such event. It is run by a number of organisations, volunteers. We've got thousands of volunteers globally that are putting this together. But our role is to sort of oversee and coordinate that and make sure. And we've got 17 great global festival partners this year. We've also got a huge amount of media partners being yourselves, one of them as well, which is, you know, we're so thankful for that as well. So, yeah, it's been but the additional challenge this year was we knew probably earlier or early on this year, you know, after the lockdown started here in the UK and other locations that we weren't going to be able to deliver the festival, even in September, face to face. So we made the decision that we were going to take it fully virtual. So we've had we are we are continuously working. We have some platforms that we are going to be using to deliver those. We have, well, we we originally thought we would have around 1990 plus events. We have over over 100 events being run globally. We think now we're going to be we were in 32 countries last year. We think it's either 36 or 37 this year. So even Covid-19 has not stopped the growth of dive in. You've been pushing it forward. Wow. And we are pushing it forward. It also means being online. We have a wider, bigger audience in the UK. The average audience size is around 600 per event, you know, and in other locations, that's going to be a similar number as well. However, saying that we're delivering it totally virtually. We have got one or two locations that have asked whether they can do a blended approach, so they want to do their event face to face, but also stream it as well. And so Hong Kong and Shanghai are actually the two locations that are looking at doing a the physical element as well. But other than that, every other location is delivering their events virtually. OK. And is it is it is it still all ticketed and limited number of? How's it? So people can go online. People go online to to dive in festival.com. They'll be able to register for for the events. They'll get their confirmation through already in the UK only, because I've just been looking at UK numbers today. 50 percent of the sea are the sea allocation for diving in the UK has already gone and we only open the festival what midday yesterday. So in other words, but the beauty of this year is if you are in the UK and you decide you are going to have a peruse and see what's going on in the US, you have to fly to the US this year. You can just, you know, sign up for a US event as long as you're awake or you are able to attend that particular time. You have the ability to join a US event. You have the ability to join an event in Australia. You have an ability to, you know, join events all around the globe as well. So rather than just be stuck in your own location, you have the ability to a much wider spectrum of conversation. Can you only watch them live or will there be some? Can you? So some will be recorded and made available on the diving website. So we do have. So on diving website at the moment, we have some videos of some events from previous years. We will be putting more events on. We'll be recording more events this year and those will be made available. Not every event can be. This is due to some of the speakers and stuff like that. That's just, you know, different situations, but we'll try and put as many of those events on the diving website in the coming months post the festival. Perfect. And what are the main themes this year? Well, what isn't a theme, really, I think is kind of there. So there is a lot of conversation about what are organisations doing during and post COVID? I think, you know, why shouldn't that be a topic of conversation? So mental health comes out into that, you know, is DNI still at the top of the agenda when it comes to organisations? So that that's kind of that area. Then we've got things such as obviously well being a mental health, which I've already explained, the things such as racial equality, ethnicity, all around that, educating more people around, you know, some of the things that have been raised in recent months. You know, we know Black Lives Matter is not a new thing. You know, the hashtag Black Lives Matter has been around for a number of years. The campaign has been around for a number of years. Racism has been around for centuries. And actually, we need to now be more educated irrespective of your own ethnicity. We all need to be educated on all of that elements as well. I mean, perfect example. GMB this morning was did a section because today be Friday the 31st of July. And I know this will be shown at Lake State. But today, Manchester and other locations up north are being locked down due to, you know, heightened risk to covid. That has had a knock on effect to Eid and people and families celebrating Eid because they would normally come together. So they they they did an explanation on GMB this morning saying that, you know, how would people feel if this was Christmas and this situation happened to people Christmas? You know, people would feel upset that they couldn't go and see their family. This is the same situation. Well, they tweeted about that today, which I think was great. But the racism in the comments underneath that tweet horrendous. I've even called it out. I've even commented on the tweet and said the racism in this post is diabolical. It's ridiculous. And this is people's lack of education, lack of understanding, lack of awareness and and and people like myself, I don't speak on behalf of people from other ethnic minorities or other ethnic groups. But I speak beside, you know, I stand up when I see that racial inequality. It's the same as the work that I do in the trans space. I do I I'm a very massive advocate for trans and on binary. The whole move forward there. I don't speak on behalf of those people. I speak with the trans community. And that's because I've educated myself to do that. And that's the same as what needs to happen when it comes to racial. And that's exactly what we're trying to address during the diving festival as well. In amongst other topics such as gender, there's topics around sexual orientation, there is topics on gender identity and even just around how leadership and others can be more inclusive in their approaches when they're doing their work as well. Definitely. It's twenty twenty. I can't believe racism and anti-semitism with Wiley, certainly with Wiley's tweets last week, it still it still exists. It's crazy, you know, and I think it's so important that we continue the conversation, continue the dialogue, you know, keep pointing this out because until until it stops, we just need to keep talking about it. And I need to and we're doing an event on white privilege. And we've called it out in the title, white privilege. And I'm not ashamed to I'm not ashamed to talk about white privilege. I know as a white man, I have those privileges. I know that as a gay man, I can have some of those privileges taken away because I am a gay man, but I can disguise that. I can disguise that element of myself where I need to. I hate doing it. I don't like doing it. I very rarely do it. But I have the ability to to continue having that privilege. People from ethnic minorities cannot disguise that. And I think what we need to do as people with certain privileges or privileges that we have, we need to be fighting for and speaking up. And that is exactly what these events dive in. Other events that are taking place will hopefully waken in people's minds as we go forward. No, definitely. We need to keep the momentum up and not let it slip because the Black Lives Matter movement started that it seemed to be a real, you know, the real conversation. And we don't want to let that start to fall away. You know, it needs to be talked about and things need to happen at all levels of the organization as well. So it sounds like you guys are doing some great stuff. I'm super looking forward to it. How can so what can you just let everyone know where the what the website address is and how they can find out? Yeah, so it's diveinsfestival.com. OK, perfect. And we'll put that in the show notes as well. Yeah, please do. I will do and really look forward to meeting you face to face in. Yeah, absolutely. Once all this is over and really good luck for the diving festival. And thank you so much for joining. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it.