Cultural Change: Power of Employee Resource Groups
Authenticity, Community and Gender Equality
This is an excerpt of the panel I participated in UKSG, during March 17th, made live here on April 12th with wonderful co-panellists from Wiley & Taylor and Francis (you will have to sign up with a gmail to watch the video, it will take 2 second and you won’t be disappointed!) Following up from an article co-authored on the Scholarly Kitchen here
If you are an employee within an organisation or a manager of teams / senior leader, I hope this speech resonates with you
Introduction
Hi — I am Leyla Sokullu, and am a Strategy Manager for Elsevier, co-lead for Thrive Gender Inclusion Network. My personal involvement was driven by a yearning to connect, to a broader community beyond my business unit and colleagues — also having the opportunity to speak about key topics such as career development and gender inclusion.
Since leading Thrive for 4 years, my proudest achievements have been to see the increasing numbers and variey of members across our events. Thrive’s vision & mission are as follows:
- Vision: An empowered, inspired and connected Elsevier community which achieves gender balance and celebrates gender inclusion.
- Our mission: Partner with all to advance gender equity and equality at Elsevier and promote benefits of gender balance.
Business Impact of ERGs — What’s in it for those across the organisation or more broadly for the industry?
I’m a great believer in businesses’ impact on creating value — some scholars call it the creative destruction. In an effort to seek better, more competitive and innovative solutions to problems in need, businesses continually change and shape the world we live in. There are several great and known examples of these — Amazon, Netflix and Google — are those that have emerged in the last 10–20 years only. The way we buy, watch or ‘search’ for information has changed, fundamentally in a very short-span of time.
I’ll start with the business impact of inclusion & diversity broadly and focus specifically on the ERGs later.
The Business case for inclusion & diversity — starts with acknowledging the reality, and inequity that may not be apparent, nor comforting. This is an acknowledgement at a moral level, a sense of ‘right-ness’. The second step is whether it makes business sense.
We are fortunate to be living in a country that emphasizes, acknowledges and creates policies towards transparency on topics such as gender pay gap. As a result, we know that across publishers in the UK, there is a gender-pay gap of 20% — 40%. Another topic is that income inequality (although not exclusively) is driven by disproportionate distribution of value creation in public-markets in a disparate manner within organisations — in some cases executives disproportionately get paid more due to the bonus & incentive structures linked to compensation. Such conventions, unless challenged or scrutinised cannot be improved for the benefit of those that are under-represented or at risk.
Communities such as ERGs enable awareness, education and discussions on these topics — that otherwise, may not be aired within an organisation. They are a vehicle, platform, guide or transporter towards more harmonious, equitable and authentic interactions at work.
The second step for inclusion & diversity — is the business case. This is arguably more difficult to quantify however, there are articles in HBR that focus on metrics such as dividend return or financial performance for this. This is reassuring, however, without the mechanism which drives this, it is not very insightful.
That’s why I’d like to focus on the real value, which is the intangible impact of having a psychologically safe, diverse and inclusive workforce, decisions and day-to-day interactions. This, in a micro-casm, is exemplified within an ERG, a community of people that aspire to make everyone feel comfortable being their authentic self, where there is profound respect for shared and different realities. Such a safety, sense of acceptance and expression, allows for cohesion, harmony within an ERG. Within a business, it starts to create ripple effects, of voices, questions and statements. The greater inclusion is driven across the business, the better teams are formed, the better decisions are made. And that’s how businesses create daring, exciting and innovative ideas which ultimately help them outperform competitors — financially and culturally.
Zero Sum Game
the Zero Sum game, refers to the perception is that inclusion / diversity — benefits minorities, at the expense of majorities, others. People may feel or experience fear, worry, apprehension, tension regarding inclusion initiatives or talks. A man may say, my promotion is at stake, because I am not a female. They think, if some win, others evidently lose.
This is important to address for two reasons: 1) It is false 2) It is a source for a true conflict — which is an opportunity to learn for all parties involved
A process and outcome should not be confused. The game is a process and winning / losing is an outcome. For example, in economics we are taught that resources tend to be finite. University applications, job applications make it seem as if there are limited opportunities and intense competition. Universities have limited spaces, there are ‘limited’ jobs. The fact that the process is competitive, may be correct — but this doesn’t mean that there are certain ‘winners’ and ‘losers’. The game is a process, however, the outcomes are not binary, nor as negative as winning / losing — as most perceive it to be.
I find job applications are a useful analogy, as most people in the room will have had several experiences regarding job search. When we think of getting jobs as a competition — we miss out on the reality. Ability to contribute to society in a financially viable manner, is not a competition, getting jobs is not a competition. It is the tunnel, the path we walk, until it’s our turn to exit. Just because someone took the first exit, or the 20th exit — doesn’t mean we’ve lost — we simply haven’t arrived at our destination. When someone else gets a job we applied for, it’s not because we ‘lost’ at the game, it’s because — for the requirements and needs for the role, we weren’t right at the time. For another company, we are the right person, for their requirements. For this reason, driving equitable processes within the workplace is not a competition or a zero-sum game either.
There is a lot of evidence to suggest that actually, opportunities are increasing. There is multiplicity, in jobs, universities and the pie grows — when it is not stable or declining. Some great points of evidence for this excluding COVID era are:
- Stock market / public market valuations
- GDP growth
- Wage growth
What is wrong, however, is when in a game someone is handed more chips to play with than others, ‘unconsciously’ given their education, race or gender. When you’re on the road with a BMW and another person has a bicycle, that may not be even accepted in certain highways. What is problematic is that the share of the growing pies is not distributed equitably- due to systemic reasons regarding race, gender and other dimensions.
So to recap, the zero sum game — first, is false, and second is an opportunity for all parties involved in this thinking to learn and reflect. Let’s 1. reframe whether we are winning / losing, or whether that is just perpcetion 2. evaluate the road we are on, and whether others are truly having the same opportunities, access as we are. 3. If they are not, let’s help them, so we can have a enjoyable ride.
Perseverance: The importance of perseverance when creating a culture of change
I want to talk about three topics regarding perseverance: the default audience mode, individual perseverance and importance of cultural change.
My 4 years have shown me that there is a wide variety of shades of awareness, education and advocacy regarding gender inclusion. It varies from a default audience mode to being a speaker, or platform sharer, questioner to leadership.
In audience mode, individuals are usually listening, forming their views, self-educating perhaps and trying to see whether what they will say is relevant or safe to say — in company meetings, inclusion initiatives, 1/1 conversations. Majority of people in organisations tend to be in this mode, and ERGs help to activate this crowd towards a more participatory mode.
In the participatory mode, there are a variety of roles one can take on — to share their platform (passing on the mike), someone that questions ; challenges a group / meeting to see whether ‘we have the right people on the table’. Also, they can start sharing their experiences, for inspiration, connection and advocacy.
The more change-oriented individuals become, they start naturally evolving into leadership and exemplar roles — my co-chair Erin Hill Parks, an Acquisitions Editor is an excellent example for this. Erin initially attended our events, and in the beginning of 2020 asked to join the Committee, and later became the co-chair for London Thrive. In our last 9 months of working together, Erin has grown from someone attending events, sharing new-posts to chairing discussions, leading our committee meetings and participating as the gender-inclusion lead for the Gender Equity Task Force at Elsevier.
An stellar example of her leadership, was only on Monday — where she mobilised our committee, the Local HR team to provide a safe-space and courageous conversations for the events that occurred this week regarding Sarah Everard’s death. Reflecting back to my proudest moments as being the co-chair of Thrive, it’s such individuals, that not only raise awareness but also grow into leaders and exemplars of gender equity + advocacy during their day to day.
Now onto individual perseverance and cultural change. These are inter-twined, once you recognise, which group you fall in — the audience, a participant or leader -hopefully the latter two — you realise you are part of a larger part of history and movements. In this, you have to persevere — Every. Single. Day.
Every day, every single day — we make trade-offs. Quick comments, conversations, meetings or business decisions we make continually define which group you fall into. Next time when you’re in a meeting, will you ask whether everyone that needs to be in the room, is in the room indeed? Will you speak about the way in which a colleague may speak over another collegue?
Cultural change, I get excited about this. I see there is a trend towards greater empowerment and culture change across the world.
De-institutionalisation of investments in the US for instance, ability for almost anyone to directly invest in bitcoin, or equities — creates an equitable process for anyone regardless of their savings / wealth. Whereas 20–30 years ago, individuals didn’t have as much autonomy of how to manage their financial savings — as companies managed pensions. Or the wealthy who had sufficient deposits were able to access financial markets & investments.
A similar trend is present in education. There are education platforms that allow vocation specific skills-acquisition, which are empowering major communities across the world. Coursera is a great example — which provides unparalleled access to the greatest minds and lectures from stellar institutions worldwide. Several employers such as Linkedin & Google are removing university degree requirements for hiring — Google has recently started their own degree programmes focused on specific vocations such as analytics, UX or engineering.
Such de-centralisation of power or access, drives empowerment of individuals — and democratisation. In a similar vein, within an organisation, the rise, continued support and visibility for ERGs become part of a larger cultural change — that is centered on empowerment and equity of individuals, employees. Where employees, as individuals bring their authentic selves to work, drive respect for one another and find common ground in their differences. Where wisdom of the crowds drive and create the businesses of the future.
Where all can find a part to play — as a speaker or leader, and I hope you do too.
