Rethinking the role of HR
David Liddle, CEO of the workplace mediation provider the TCM Group and president of transformational culture platform the People and Culture Association, hosted the keynote that opened the conference.
HR must rethink its role in organisations, to make inclusion a strategic function in the workplace, Liddle suggested.
“HR stands at an inflection point,” Liddle observed.
“In one direction, irrelevance, where it becomes nothing more than an administrative function and overseeing a set of checks and balances in its organisation.
"In another, exciting people in a future direction, bringing people together, fostering a new social contract, developing psychological contracts and safe spaces where we can thrive and flourish and be the best.
“There’s a choice they need to make,” he urged.
He encouraged HR to move away from grievance procedures and move towards a modern form of transformative justice.
“If we don't think about culture through the lens of humans and make culture human-shaped, we will forever be putting a great big Band-Aid on our conversation.
“If we embrace transformational, empowering, inclusive, just systems, eventually we will become the strategic function of the workplace.”
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Inclusive office space
A leader of the design and building company Oktra hosted a panel that emphasised how office design can contribute to inclusion in the workplace.
“An office is a space that supports teams to grow and perform in the business because they have taken control of their environment and where they work,” Monica Passey, Oktra's design and strategy director, commented.
Oktra works with HR teams and uses their insights to understand how changing an office environment could boost inclusion.
A quarter of employees experience frequent barriers in their workplace, Oktra's team found, after conducting a survey of 1,000 people, and 20.6% believed that their workplace was completely inclusive. Meanwhile 33% indicated that inclusivity was limited or non-existent.
Passey encouraged employers to set up affinity groups or committees to understand what people want from their work environment.
“There are certain assumptions we have for different groups, but actually it comes down to personalities as well,” she said. “Insight and data can help”, she explained, to understand how the architecture of an office can change employees’ experience.
Sean Espinasse, creative workplace director, gave an example of a client who said it was disorientating not knowing what floor they were on at any given time.
The team worked with them to create a different layout for each floor, and they can also, for example, create different hot and cold floors to accommodate individuals' preferred temperature.
“It’s about diversity and what kind of office environment you could make to create a flourishing work culture,” Passey added.
Choosing the right DEI consultant
Employers who engage DEI consultants that do not deliver results can harm the reputation of their organisation, Ashanti Bentil-Dhue, CEO of training and advisory service the Competence Center for Workplace Equality, explained at a workshop.
Choosing an external DEI consultant or in-house practitioner can be challenging, however, as DEI is a largely unregulated industry compared with HR, she explained. This is because there is no competency framework for DEI professionals.
“There are risks involved in not thinking about competency in your procurement and hiring process,” she warned.
“There are competencies and skills we need to be looking for when hiring a professional DEI partner. DEI as a function should be a profit centre, not a cost centre. For a lot of organisations at the moment they’re sitting on that balance as a cost.”
When choosing a DEI partner, HR should look at indicators of ROI, she encouraged. “We should be able to match these initiatives to three things: reputation, productivity and profitability.”
“You have to understand the business transformation that the organisation is seeking to achieve, and map your solution to that.”
HR decision makers must possess the language and questions needed to assess whether a DEI partner will contribute positively to their organisation, she advised, rather than being taken in by passion and lived experience.
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Recruiting military spouses
The closing keynote highlighted that employers could fill their talent shortage by recruiting military spouses.
Heledd Kendrick, CEO of Recruit for Spouses, a job platform and training provider for spouses of people in the military, shared her experience of looking for work while her husband was deployed.
“Forget your career now, because you’re a military spouse,” she was told.
This was common among other military spouses she knew, as their husbands would be deployed for nine months at a time, after which they would have to move elsewhere.
Employers would be reluctant to take on people who moved around so often.
“The military spouses that were on my patch were doctors, surgeons, bankers; they had good careers but they really didn’t have a voice,” she remembered.
Before Joselyn Kanyua, project and grants coordinator, met her husband, she was working at UN-Habitat in Kenya. When she moved to the UK with her now husband and first child, she was forced into care work, despite having two degrees, as employers did not want to hire her.
Cerise Upham, managing director, explained how Recruit for Spouses helps military spouses find work.
“We work with our career academy, providing coaching and mental health support. We help [military spouses] promote their skills, communicate their talents with employers, and find remote or flexible working opportunities.”
