 Greetings everyone. My name is Rakhi Mandhania and I work as a project manager at Colab Cooperative and I'm also the Deputy Lead of Diversity and Inclusion that's an organizational area at Colab and I lead that organizational area. Now the topic that I have chosen for today is designing your workplace using diversity and inclusion and working on air all the time. I guess the the working on air all the time part is something that you'll probably be able to relate to by the end of this topic end of the session but let's talk about diversity and inclusion today. I wanted to be slightly more interactive so I might be asking a few questions and anything that comes to mind please feel free to share. A little bit of context of how I got involved into diversity. So being a part of Colab I get to work with team members located in four different continents on a daily basis. So I work with people from from different places different geographic locations every day. Most of the employees work remotely although there's an office in New York I think but almost everyone works remotely and that's why I get to work with a lot of people from different backgrounds different experiences different different cultural beliefs all kinds of diversity that we can expect to have. And it's been an amazing journey I've been at this journey for about a year and a half and I think you just there's some things that you just always remember for example whenever you start something new whenever you let's say you join a new firm or you start something new of your own. So when you're part of a new firm there's usually an onboarding process you know and no matter how good how cool how fun filled the onboarding process is there are always some unwritten rules and some unsaid expectations that nobody tells you about. Nobody gives you a user manual of the do's and the don'ts and and the house right. So likewise with this session as well I'm hoping there will be some takeaways from this session but it wouldn't unfortunately wouldn't be a user manual that tells you exactly what to do if you want to have a diverse and inclusive workforce. But before I even begin to talk about diversity I actually wanted to share something interesting that happened with me on the way to Drupal con. So I'm from India and I was at the New Delhi Airport leaving for Amsterdam. So when you're at the airport there's this there's this counter that you to cross where an immigration officer sits and asks you why you're leaving the country. So the same thing happened with me in New Delhi I was I was at that counter and the immigration officer looked at me and asked me a question what is the purpose of your visit. A very normal question for an immigration officer to ask so totally fine and I said I am going there for a conference. I want to be at a conference in Amsterdam and the immigration officer looked at me he looked at my passport and then he said Rajasthan that's the name of the state from where I got my passport issue. So he said Rajasthan and then he smiled and then he looked at me again and then passed a comment in Hindi which was and that loosely translates to women are progressing and then I came came to Amsterdam so there was an immigration officer here as well and just before me there was another speaker of Drupal con who I knew I'm not divergent to any details of the person but the person was asked the same question by the immigration officer what is the purpose of your visit and the person replied I'm here for a conference and the person was cleared to go. Next was my turn so I went to the counter and I was asked the same question again the very normal question for an immigration officer to ask what is the purpose of your visit and I said I'm here for a conference he looked at me and then he said so what are you doing at the conference and I said I'm going to be presenting I am a speaker at this conference he looked at me again he paused for a second then he said may I see your invitation letter and I showed him my invitation letter and then I was cleared to go. Now the first immigration officer made it a point to comment that women from a certain state in India are progressing and the second immigration officer for him it was not very easy to believe that I was or I could be a speaker maybe it was the way I spoke maybe it was it was something I said something the way I was dressed I don't know but it doesn't matter what I'm trying to say here is each one of us everyone in this room and everywhere anywhere like people around us they all have their unconscious biases that's how everyone is brought brought up no matter how culturally sensitive you think you are but there are always some unconscious biases that we all have within ourselves and it is that unconscious bias that you need to get away with that you need to keep aside if you want to have a diverse and inclusive workforce that's like the biggest challenge that we need to have and it needs to be practiced it needs to be it needs to be cultivated as a habit of keeping aside those unconscious biases and then looking at the people we are working with sorry so I'm sorry just okay so this was a quote said by I think the CEO of ENY I heard it on some session some talk that I was listening to where we say that the only way to be our best is to include our best and that means looking at the whole world and not just pieces of it so I know it's very easy sometimes to put together a homogeneous group of people because you know we all get the same kind of jokes we all have a same cultural frame of reference and when we do it's just easier to work that way so I have I mean I cannot stress enough on the fact that diversity and inclusion as a practice is hard it requires intentional effort it requires deliberate work and it's going to be very difficult in the beginning if we are afraid of change if we are afraid of being pushed because diversity inherently pushes us to become better and to become best right and I think a lot of let's just say that it takes deliberate work and a lot of companies often have diversity task forces who are entrusted with this responsibility of ensuring there's enough diversity and people feel included but not everyone has a central definition of diversity so if I have to ask you what is your understanding of diversity just share anything that comes to mind anything that you understand by diversity what does it mean to you it's just a question for anyone who wants to okay okay okay any other definition different ideologies different ideologies okay that's a good one yes the same different beliefs difference the way you look talk I mean diversity could be anything in my opinion I mean diverse if I'm around text tags but yeah contextualizing it with this I think it's more around the people with different culture different ideologies okay so I think there is no single definition of diversity that I can give to anyone or anyone can give to me because what I understand from diversity in my certain set of circumstances could be very different from what you understand from diversity given your circumstances but what is important is that every workplace every organization needs to have a central definition of diversity and he needs to be shared it's a it's mildly problematic if we talk about diversity as a very generic term because if we talk about it as a very generic term then different people import different values from it and when different people import different values from it nobody's working in the same direction or nobody has the same set of goals to accomplish so that's why it's important that we define diversity and as we define diversity we see the challenges that come with it it's obviously challenging it obviously requires hard work but we're able to see the challenges and despite those challenges when I when I think why diversity is important or I have to give my personal opinion of why it's important then I would say you get rid of your blind spots by having a diverse and inclusive workforce so for example if you work with a certain set of people who can all think exactly as you who can exactly as you who can give solutions the way you would think in that case you will all be blind to what they don't know so it's by having diversity you get rid of those blind spots because with diversity you have room for all kinds of ideas and inspirations and experiences so your your way of thinking opens up as you have a more diverse workforce and you become more sensitive so being sensitive towards other welcoming everyone else and the real competence comes out in play when you are in a more diverse work setup that I don't think there's enough needed or I need to present any numbers in order to establish the importance of diversity because I think every firm deep down realizes the significance of it the problem that every firm struggles with including mine is the conversion of that intention to action and not knowing the real steps or what actually we need to do if you want to enforce diversity or if you want to have diversity as a practice and we want to make people people feel included so we often define diversity but we don't think about inclusion this is one question that I wanted to ask every one of you and I kind of know the answer but I want to make sure that we all agree on this so how many of you in this room have ever felt excluded from something anything anything in any life experience if you've ever felt excluded once in your life please raise your hand okay and the second question is even more important so let's all be honest to ourselves but how many of you have been responsible intentionally or unintentionally to make someone else feel excluded okay great so if answer to any one of these questions was yes on your part I think there is a need for diversity inclusion because you know what it feels to have felt excluded and you know that you unconsciously by chance somehow made someone else feel excluded so there's a need to practice inclusion there's a need for diversity and inclusion here and if you have to focus on the actions or if we have to focus with the we have to bridge the gap between between the intention that we had by identifying the need of it to actually going ahead and implementing diversity practices there's a certain set of things that we can all do which are very basic which are very common to everyone but we probably fail to define these so I want to focus on the house as well and when I want to focus on the house the first thing that I would say something that I've already covered is sharing a common definition of diversity and inclusion and sharing it with everyone not just with a certain working group not just with the diversity task force who's entrusted with that responsibility of ensuring diversity but sharing it with the entire firm everyone in the company should be well aware of your definition of diversity and when you share that definition we also need to remember that invitation does not mean inclusion I can invite in an entire firm to a meeting which would probably guarantee diversity because people from from the entire firm from all over the places are going to be there in that meeting but that invitation is not guaranteeing inclusion in any way because if only a certain set of people talk or present their viewpoints then the diverse group that I invited kind of never got to participate or even if they wanted to they had some reservations and I as a facilitator did not do a good enough job to make them feel included so invitation probably guarantees diversity but not inclusion so access is not inclusion you have to actually make an effort it's a culture thing it's more of an impact diversity is a numbers game and companies can mandate diversity but inclusion is more about an impact a cultural change that needs to be practiced every day having a task force is very important you can hire a lead to run your diversity and inclusion or gary but it's even better if you have a panel if you have a group of people and if those group of people could all be motivated enough to to to establish and to make ambitious goals around diversity then it's even better because having real my matrix to identify your organizational needs is very important again the percentages and the numbers are going to vary from companies to company but assessing where you are creating the necessary charts to understand where your diversity stands and making some ambitious goals for the next year or for the year after that or short-term goals quarterly goals half-yearly goals but making some goals and identifying how to achieve those goals is very important so having because we have some real problems if we don't have a diverse enough workforce we need to have some real numbers and more importantly real consequences if the salespeople from your company do not perform well what do we do we give them some ultimately we ask them to perform better we we discuss with them but we make sure that the sales targets are still met right and what if they're not met you probably fire them or I don't know what you do but there are real consequences if the targets are not met the business hinders so diversity is not just a social initiative that we've taken up it's a real problem and it needs to have real numbers and real consequences associated with it at the same time diversity also means accountability so the biggest incentive is having a job and the biggest disincentive is probably losing a job so ensuring accountability is very very important in this case and lastly making inclusion very inclusive so for example I heard someone say yesterday that there's a women in Drupal there's a women in Drupal segment happening and but oh I'm not gonna go I'm not a woman so I wouldn't be going so inclusion has to be inclusive if I do an initiative for a minority group but I do not share it with the rest of the majority or I do not somehow give away the message that I need to make sure that the majority groups walk with me for the minority initiatives till then it wouldn't become a successful event so inclusion has to be inclusive of all the majority groups because they are the ones who are supposed to make everyone else feel included it's never a one-man job it's a culture thing as again so you know as you implement these practices as you go on to setting up a diverse inclusive workforce you realize that you become a leader and the real job of the leader is not to not to be in charge but to but to be responsible for the people who are in charge so you get to work with a certain set of people and they do all the work with for you as you become leaders but your job is to take care of them not take care of the your customers or your products but to actually take care of the people who are in charge and I think in conclusion I would just say that as a business we have a lot of power to dismantle some of the biggest world problems so we spend one-third of our lives at work and just imagine the practice to make everyone else feel included if we do that as a habit at work we'll probably end up doing the same thing outside work and we'll probably end up giving the same message to everyone who's not our colleague but our friends and others and the world in itself will become a better place so imagine a world where people of all colors and races and experiences and backgrounds come together to work every day bring their own authentic self to work without any reservations because what they bring to the table is different and that difference is recognized and respected so that will be the ideal world that we would want to have and that can only be achieved if we have diversity and inclusion at our workforce so with this I think I'd like to conclude and please feel free to take this survey for the session and there's contributions opportunities tomorrow so I hope you all get to participate thank you