 Welcome back, but the same we are resuming with the next panel. The focus, the topic in focus for this panel discussion is the importance of diversity and inclusivity in PR and communication. And ladies and gentlemen, followed by your round of applause, I would like to invite our panelists for this discussion. Please welcome Shivani Gupta, Managing Partner, S.P.A.G, Finn Partner, Harjeet Singh, founder Gutenberg. I must ask everyone to kindly offer their loudest applause as we welcome our panelists. Please welcome Nikhil Dey, Executive Director at Factors PR, Ashwini Singla, Founding, Managing Partner, Astram, Nanditha Lakshman, Founder and Chairperson, The Practice. Welcome panelists, kindly be seated. Thank you very much. And with the same, let's please welcome the moderator for this session, Jagruti Motwani, CEO and co-founder, Cha Chee. Hi everyone. It's my pleasure to have you all here for this panel, which covers a very important topic in today's times, that's diversity and inclusivity. You have been introduced to all these team panelists here. While we begin on the subject, we are all aware that PR is seen as a women's domain. And I'm happy that on the panel today, there are more male speakers than female. So maybe let's begin with that. I would like to ask each of you maybe starting with Ashwin here. What does diversity and inclusion mean to you? And if there is anything further on the subject that you would like to share. Interesting. Thank you so much. Look, coming from a land in India where diversity is a natural part of our culture and character, I think the rainbow reflection of our nation in the workforce is what diversity includes and inclusion means to me. But more importantly, I think it's not about the collection, but creating the opportunities for that diversity to flower and reflect in the demographics and the psychographics of our workforce. Let me give you an example. You made a very interesting point talking about the fact that we are now three people on the panel who are sent to be males. And it started with the fact that you are a women-dominated workforce. Let's break it down. Public relations by its nature, three out of every four professionals, is a female. But why is it that it does not reflect in the leadership of the public relations industry both in the consulting side? Exactly. And that's really interesting. So where does the fallout happen? Where does it sort of go out? And I asked this question at the Eco Summit where we were in Dubai recently. And I asked a lot of our colleagues, young colleagues, female colleagues, industry professionals. And the single most important answer they gave us is that they drop out of the workforce because as they get married and they have other priorities or they're difficult, they're not able to come back because they have children. So there are two sort of turning points in their life, marriage or they have a kid. To my mind, the opportunity that we need to provide is to enable that transition to happen so smoothly that we don't have that drop off point. So therefore, to me, inclusion and diversity is not about the culture, character, but creating opportunities for people to be able to live their lives and also be able to participate productively, at least at a gender level in that way. And then you can sort of take it into different forms. I'm very proud to say that at this point of time, three out of four board members of Astrum are my female colleagues. We've had three motherhoods, four weddings in the family, and none of my people have dropped out simply because we were able to create that balance for them. Right, this is interesting. I move on to Nandita and Nandita would like to know from you, what do you think about diversity and inclusivity and anything that you have felt biases in your profession and today into these times, how are you enabling a more diverse environment for your workforce? So for me, diversity, as Ashmi said, we've grown up in a very diverse nation and diverse culture. So for me, basically, diversity is really a way of life. Inclusion is really a philosophy. And I differentiate between the two. They're very different. I think I would like to take this whole aspect beyond just male and female, because there's just so many aspects to diversity. And we have, from the very beginning, had a very, very diverse workforce, in that sense, gender, ethnicity, language. In fact, off late, we've been even telling our people, asking our people, how many languages do they speak? Because now the work that you do is multilingual. So it's very important for us to even appreciate and understand different languages and the nuances of so many aspects. I want to take it a step further and say that it's just not to talk about our industry, but we represent so many clients who also require to go beyond diversity and inclusion just being an HR tick box. And therefore, how are we creating campaigns for our clients, keeping all of this in mind? So there's a huge responsibility. And finally, Jagratthi, with GWPR, we ran a kind of a survey to find out, how many women spokespeople do we actually see in newspapers, in the media? And it's abysmally low. Most of the people, even in the banking and finance world, where there's so many leaders sitting in the leadership positions. But when you look at the space, the real estate that the media takes up, it's mostly male. So I think we just need to really expand that philosophy. And of course, there's a lot, like I said, if diversity and inclusion are all a way of life and philosophy, you don't have to do things. To make it embedded in the organization. And I can talk about that later. Correct, this is interesting. Now I move to Nikhil. Nikhil at factors just completed 25 years of existence. I'm sure you have seen a lot of trends emerge and alter, evolve, change. How do you ensure that in an organization that is more than two decades into existence, how do you ensure that you're able to implement the new ways of working, including diversity, accepting individuals from all races, genders? Thank you. I'll start with a line I read somewhere about what is diversity and how is it different from inclusion that stayed with me says diversity is being invited to the party and inclusion is being asked to dance. So it's one thing to bring someone in, but then you can leave them hanging there and still make them feel excluded. And coming to where the rubber meets the road from this nice little analogy. If you look at the digitization of our business, so I think we are trying to attract more and more digitally savvy, digitally inclined people. And we're having to go far and wide outside the talent pool that's existing. And therefore what I sense is there are about 200 people in our firm who are quote unquote in the digital team. And the reality of this struck me when we were sitting to decide who sits where. We just moved into a new office. Today's are sort of inaugural and stuff like that. And when we were thinking about it, I remember, Ashwini, we had attended the editors of the World Conference a while ago. And there was a story that the editor of Al Jazeera told, which was about how they were trying to integrate digital people into their force. And they had about four digital people then who were sitting in one corner till the uplink went down and those people, where's my digital team? I need them and they were called in. And then they made those people sit in the center of the newsroom. And that was the story that he was telling about the structure of an organization is so crucial to diversity and inclusion. So part of it is structural, right? So you need to make structural changes. So in the new office, I've insisted that we have digital team members on each floor intertwined. So that's one part of diversity. And I'm just using this because it's a very real situation. But the question you asked me is that what are we doing at Adfactors to try and bring some of this alive? I would say we've created a millennial board which has 16 members. So trying to give young ageism is also part of diversity and inclusion. So the younger people, younger voices should have a say. And these 16 members come from North, South, East, West, all the languages that they talked about. We've looked at sexual orientation. We've looked at gender. We've looked at religion. We've tried to factor in as many things as we could to give them, at least structurally, a voice. And now we have to nurture that. That's one of the initiatives that I think we're doing to bring about some kind of diversity and inclusion in the workplace. This is interesting. Thank you. I move to Shivani now. Shivani, what challenges do you feel an organization faces while implementing DNI in its true sense? Of course, working with people who are gender neutral, working with people who probably have a different ethnicity than the majority of people in the organization. Now it's a new culture shift we are talking about. We are talking about calling them they, them instead of he, she. So talking about these small changes to maybe bigger changes in the culture, what has your experience been? Thank you. So I think overall, like you said, cultural shift and adaptability and culture and things that evolve in, and especially I think from the past couple of years when we talk about millennials, Gen Z and how the thinking process and the lounge we were just discussing about exactly the same thing, how people think about and behave in a particular set of environment. So yes, I think it is very important for the leaders to kind of adapt to the newer generation thinking, adapt to the new ways of working in lifestyle, how they would want to work with in terms of the thinking process, whether the skill sets they come with. It's no longer the same that we, if we have a media relation person and he is just stuck up on just doing the media bit of it. I think it is important for us to understand even within the organization if the person's skill set is beyond what he has been hired for. So I'm taking it beyond the diversity and the point beyond that. So it's for the leaders to adapt and understand how the culture shift has been there. You know, when people are wanting to learn, people are wanting to change their skill set, people are wanting to evolve with the times and people are wanting to adapt to newer environment and skills. So the challenge definitely what I feel the biggest challenge is when you are two different, three multi-generational, you know, workforce is working in the same environment. And if somebody is not ready to adapt to that. So yes, organizations and everybody has to work towards it, which is probably like right from, you know, hiring processes, right from working on the, you know, the DNI committees that we have working on, you know, the training programs and the robust training programs that we talk about. So it is not just for the, you know, the newbies in the system, but it is for the leaders as well. So I think there are it's a very thought through process and thought through work in terms of how much what kind of training program would go for different set of generations and different set of people. So I think it's a continued and evolving employee manuals that you need to work on. There is no one set rule that you can stick to and you can work with that. So yeah, definitely, I think it's an evolving thing. Thank you, Shivani. I move to Harjeet now. Harjeet, we have spoken about what it means, what DNI means, what it takes to implement it in an organization, the challenges and other things in your career. How have you seen clients, you know, evolve and also your employees? I'm sure like all of us here work with people across generations. We work with Gen Zs. We work with millennials. We work with baby boomers also now and each set response to DNI in a different way. So what has your experience been there? Sure, I think what I wanted to sort of maybe put up there for everybody to also think about, we talk about DNI and particularly in the communications marketing space. We oftentimes see it a lot from our clients when we're doing releases and announcements about how they are sort of adhering to the sustainable development goals by the UN. All of this conversation started about a little over a decade ago when the UN sort of, you know, chartered the UN women to come about frame the SDGs for 2030 and sort of expanded how we needed to sort of as a world focus on that. The one data point, which is very particular to India, which is important. I think especially a lot of the younger team members here who are here. In the last decade, we have seen the workforce participation of women in India go from 26 percent down to 19 percent. And I would imagine if you looked at that data today post pandemic, it would have gone down further. And while all of the conversations and the messaging that we do as an industry is very good at that level, I think it's very important to realize that outside of the communications marketing space, the participation of women in the workforce is rather low. Is there something we can do to change that? Of course, you know, when I look at our own data, we work across four countries, we have 22 languages. We speak across all of our offices and, you know, we have a variety of cultures that participate. So we get a sort of unique view on this outside of India as well. But I think when I just look at the data from a global perspective, we still have a lot of work to do as a country, but also bringing more women into the workforce. And I was looking at some economic data comparing India and China. Women in China contribute 40 percent of GDP in India. It's only 17 percent because of that low participation rate. So India can be a richer country if you can have more women participate in the economy as well. And there's a lot of work to do for us. Absolutely, a lot to go. While we talk about it in PR also, I've seen because of the male and the female ratio, there are men also who face discrimination sometimes not at the level where probably you all are. But when they're starting their career, they may be put in an all women team and they may have reservations in taking orders from a female boss. I have also worked with people who are gender neutral. And sometimes it's challenging for them to adapt to the culture because there are very few people in the organization they can resonate with. What challenges, Ashwini, do you feel have emerged in your organization? If any, you know, my view now, Astrum's my third life was set up clear, made a successful genesis. Of course, became the gold standard in public relations. And then now Astrum, one thing that I consistently maintained over the last 25 years in the career is that you remove the world discrimination of any kind in selection and promotion of your talent. At the end of the day, what matters is talent. It doesn't matter the orientation, the religious orientation, the sexual orientation, the gender orientation. When you can remove that lens from your organization and embedded as a part of your culture at the leadership level, then you will automatically do the right things. Now, whether you want to set the examples to sensitization, training to do all of them so that people who are not comfortable in that environment become comfortable, that's all part of the course. But first and foremost is does your character in the organization reflect zero discrimination of any kind? And if you refuse to tolerate that, then automatically it will come. For example, first and foremost, does leadership necessarily need to reflect in age and experience or it needs to reflect in expertise? Question, ageism, as Nikhil mentioned, is an important aspect. You can take away that lens and it doesn't matter the best talent gets promoted. It doesn't matter how old or young or whether female male or whatever orientation that may be. My you would say, hey, somebody who's working with documents cannot be visually impaired or cannot be differently able My general counsel in Genesis for five years was somebody who was differently able, was visually challenged. Fantastic lawyer. Today, he's one of the most successful lawyers in a in a leading law firm, right? So it doesn't really matter. In my view, I remember somebody, a young guy, we used to go for this annual on offsite. And that I will remember that every Easter we would toodle off to Rishikesh. One young guy sent us an email said, hey, this lent. It's a it's a it's a it's a day when we feel right. And that day we said, stop. This is Easter weekend is not going to be the one that we are going to go toodling off and doing our annual offsite because obviously we are insensitive to somebody else's religious belief. So the question is if you remove that discrimination of any kind in your organization, then automatically all of this will sort out over a period of time. I can just add to that, Jagruti. I think, you know, as a when I founded the firm, my the first few hires were all, you know, female even and across the twenty two years that we've been in existence, you've kind of seen it's cute towards women, right? So and now with male colleagues who've gone through the you know, the whole, you know, the lifespan of getting married and having kids. And one of the things I always say is that, you know, you have to be an equal partner at home. So you need to go out for your PTAs, you know, parent teacher meetings, you have to attend everything. And, you know, I've seen the struggles of my male colleagues as fathers and trying to be equal parents at home. And I think one of the most important things is as we're trying to create this environment in the office, I think reinforcing the message that diversity and inclusion will just be catch phrases. If we are not talking beyond and don't take this conversation to society and and that, you know, we need to bring that in the societal conversation into the workforce and also take what we're talking about in the workforce back to society. So it's a huge amount of struggle for male colleagues who are going up the ladder, taking on new responsibilities, both in life and at home. So it's real, actually. Right, Nandita, I agree with you here. Now a question for the audience. How many of you by the show of hands, you can tell me how many of you have faced any kind of discrimination at your workplace, be it because you're a woman or be it because you're a man who's supposed to show up and, you know, be available all the time or a woman who is probably denied a period leave in her organization. Yo. So just three, four, five, six. No, you have to change. Yes, please. Why you are saying that discrimination is only at the workplace. Discrimination, I think, starts from home. I agree. We are discriminated from at our homes only that we are somehow not permitted or we have, we have something within. But due to, as everybody said, that due to some responsibilities, due to some work at home, due to taking care of our elders, we are being compressed and we are not we are not able to come out and show our capabilities to the world. So I think the question is where ever we are being discriminated, whether it's home or whether it's workplace. I think there must be many females. You're right. And I think many aren't showing their hands, but all of them, if they reflect on their lives, they would have felt discrimination at some point or another. Shivani, do you have any instances where you felt discrimination being a woman in the boardroom? See, fortunately, it's not been like that. And when I started my career, it's, you know, it has been predominantly a men driven PR industry that time. And of course, when I moved to the corporate ladder, I was with one of the corporates where it was the whole floor was just full of men and it was more like, you know, the business people. And I was the only Popcom person there. So and to my surprise, everybody was like, you know, very contributing and very supportive of in terms of, you know, OK, a woman is there and in terms of a Popcom, you know, section is there. So I think people are receptive about it. But to answer her question, yes, you are right in terms of, you know, how the conditioning of women is done right from, you know, like the beginning, the societal changes. And over here, we are not just talking about, you know, the Me Too thing or Black Lives Matter. We are talking much beyond that. We are talking about, you know, how the conditioning can change, how the skills offer people, you know, how diverse skillset we can bring on board in terms of within the organization and how adaptive people can be. And if we are talking about bringing different skillset and again, the conditioning starts from homes. Conditioning starts from the society. So I think when you're talking about challenges, definitely whether it's, you know, men or women, I'm sure a lot of people face different kind of challenges. And maybe, you know, I just went to see this movie, Dr. G, the other day and I saw how he was bullied by women. So it's not about that. I think it's about how whatever environment or situation we are in, it's how strongly we and how positive we are to deal with that. So this is how we need to condition ourselves. We need to condition our people around us, whether it's your people at home, whether it's your team members and how the whole work starts from you. That's the whole work starts from us to build that environment. So that's what. Right. Now, I'll take this question to the male members on the panel. If you have felt the discrimination and if you can share any examples, I definitely have. And in this industry, as we started saying, it is one of the few places where I think there are many more women who are naturally attracted towards the industry. And I can tell you, I can't tell you which companies, but I can tell you that have been companies where I have applied for a corporate communications role at a senior level. So it's not only at a junior level and I've been told quote unquote unofficially that the PR role is a diversity role. So you don't stand a chance. Don't even bother to apply. OK, so that's real. And one has to accept it, right, because this is one of the few places where I feel a male member is discriminated against, but there are many, many more women are. But I just want to make one point outside, because if you see, there are two panels today, one was on gender and this is on diversity. And I know that the man movement thing gets a lot of airtime here. But a very, very important part I feel of diversity and inclusion in our current post, I won't even say post, but pandemic environment is around neurodiversity and mental health because there's there's a lot of pain and problem hidden under smart outfits and a smile. We've gone through a grueling few years and it's showing up now in the workplace. And I feel we are ill equipped to deal with it. So when there is a problem to do with, I don't know, let's say a sexual harassment case, there's a posh committee, there's a set of prescribed rules, you know what you need to do as an organization. When I have a team member who is going through a really tough mental situation, right, could be depressed, could be harming themselves. There could be so many situations that emerge in the workplace. I am genuinely struggling to figure out what can I do to as an organization be most supportive and inclusive and accommodating of them. And I know there are answers out there, but I think it doesn't get enough attention. It's that thing that we say, OK, we'll deal with it quietly. So I do think neurodiversity and mental health is a big part of diversity and inclusion. Agree there. Thank you. I was very fortunate that I experienced discrimination as a student and not as a professional. And interestingly, I was supposed to be chosen as the best student in my college, but I instant got the most dedicated student award because the best student award had to be given to another student who hadn't got it. So to that extent, I felt cheated that. Therefore, in my mind, I go back to to the same point that I made it a purpose of my life to ensure that the only thing that matters in life is merit. We need to be creating an environment of equal opportunity without any lenses, mental, age, gender, otherwise. That's I think number one, which is the more important part that you should. If you if you create an opportunity, if you create opportunities for people to succeed, then the best people will succeed. And and you don't have to do anything special. What you really need to look for is to create a culture of support for anybody who may struggle with those issues and be able to guide them, support them and not judge them. Look, it can be. I'm, you know, you know, gender diverse environment and I feel that I'm not able to cope with it. Will I reject that person to say, hey, you can't respect women or you can't work in a women dominated environment. Therefore, get out. My job is to support vice versa or otherwise. So I think the two aspects that I would like to say in the end is one, be an equal opportunity environment in respect to where you come from and create support mechanisms as maybe because in this business, we're in the knowledge business. The only thing that matters is our people. Like you said, if people are in good shape, they perform well. They have a good environment. They are in good mental health. They are happy coming to work. Everything is OK. So my focus as a as an entrepreneur has always been my people first. No matter what, I will do what we need to make sure that they are in a good shape. Great. This is this is really good to hear. So personally, the the only discrimination I faced I've spent most of the last 30 years in the US was racism. And this was at an immigration going into New York. And the guy who stopped me had a Polish last name. He was American, but clearly his ancestors came from Poland into the US. And I he's like this is right after 9 11. So everybody was very sort of up in arms about any foreigner coming into the country. And I said, you know, your last name seems to be not from this land. And that's pretty much true of most Americans today outside of the Native Americans who actually come from there. And he just shut up, just stamp my thing and let me go. And I think we have to stand up and fight back to your point. I think the earlier data point I gave if the women's workforce participation is 17 percent, we have to first acknowledge that there is a key issue that we all need to work together to kind of push back. And I think this industry is probably the best boys because there are more women in the industry. One of my favorite quotes is from a German playwright, a guy called Bertolt Precht. And he said about art. He said art is not a mirror to be held up to reality, but it's a hammer by which to shape it by. And I think this industry has the ability to hammer diversity and inclusion in the minds of not just our clients, customers, but in general about how we can change cultural attitudes and bring people into a more diverse environment and workforce. To me, that's very important. Thank you, Harjeet. It's almost time to wrap the panel and I'll ask you all one last question. That is, you know, mental health as a subject, but did not get an opportunity to discuss it in this panel. So, you know, if there is one advice for you that you can give to people building businesses right now, people like myself, we started Chaachi about four years back and all our great veterans. I've seen growing up. So any advice for organization that are nimble and just beginning their lifetime? What do you think they should do to ensure that they have a healthy culture and a healthy environment for their people? It's simple as long as you have a culture of acceptance. I'm a parent. I was a professional. My wife was a professional. We had a single child. We all struggle and we struggle with different roles. Sisters, brothers, as long and again, diversity as I said, right? It doesn't really matter as long as you build a culture of acceptance and you create a support mechanism for anybody to first say it's OK for me to ask for help. The biggest issue with mental health that I see is our inability to accept the fact that I have a problem and I need help. Now, we have, for example, we have a we have a psychologist and psychiatrist available on retainer for our anonymously for our people to consult. We don't ask questions. We don't ask who we have no details in session, but we make sure that somebody is available in a safe environment, in a secure environment to be able to have a conversation and seek help and guidance. So therefore, again, accept and and make the investments needed to provide that environment for people to say it's OK. I can take help and there's no issues. On that point, creating the infrastructure to support is the first step, but it's it's it's not enough because I'll give you an example of the first things I did when I joined a year and a half ago is in my first month, I picked up the phone and I dialed our EAP employee assistance program number to fix a appointment with a therapist for myself. I had gone through a tough time. I felt I needed help. More importantly, I wanted to test and let my team know that it was working and it was OK. And I found out some really interesting things. The first time I used the line, it took me about a day because I was a new employee. My number was not registered. So the limited point I make is as a leader, if you have set up these systems for your people, test them yourselves, use them yourself. And then when a team members in a difficult spot, you can tell them with full confidence, use this. I've used it. It works. And that legitimizes it. That gives them the license to say, OK, if he's open enough about it, maybe just maybe I can do it too. Thank you, Nikhil. And there's a lot. It's not just about performance and non-performance anymore. There's a lot that goes on in between. And as leaders, setting up businesses. We need to observe and listen a lot to know what's going on because it's not as crystal clear as it used to be in the past. I have to agree with Nikhil. I think the most important thing is, as leaders, we have to create an environment where it is absolutely OK to ask. And we have to actually, if we need help, we have to ask and make that environment so easy that anybody feels comfortable to do that. It's not easy when you get larger and larger. It becomes harder because people work in different geographies. And I think one of the things that's accelerated this issue is this work from home hybrid model, which to me, the flip side is a phenomenal opportunity for diversity and inclusion. Because if I'm a newly sort of married person and I have issues of kind of going out of home to work and I'm in a tier two, tier three town in this country, now today they can get jobs. It's important, right? Or if you are a single mother and you need help, there are opportunities to build on some of these networks that are out there. But the question is to ask and create a culture where it's absolutely fine to ask any question. Sure. Thanks, Harjeet. Closing remarks from you. So yeah, I think I'll get a shot. I think it shouldn't be, for an organization, shouldn't be just a buzzword. There has to be an intent behind it. And you need to keep working towards that intent is what I would just say. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, everyone, for attending the panel and listening to us. You guys have been wonderful. Thank you, panel.