Finding, retaining, and developing culturally diverse talent can certainly be challenging — especially within systems that have historically exhibited biases against various groups. Companies have to constantly look for ways not only to acquire this new and diverse talent but also to meet their needs and help them succeed in order to ensure retention.
Could you share with us some key milestones in the D&I journey of EY Romania?
Diversity and inclusiveness (D&I) are core to who we are and how we work. Globally at EY we have been on our D&I journey for decades. And while we have made substantial progress, under our global NextWave strategy and ambition we have committed to increasing D&I progress throughout the organization. A couple of the key global milestones with a significant impact also for EY Romania are:
- Signing the Global Executive Diversity & Inclusion Statement; EY Global Executive, EY’s highest leadership body, has made a visible commitment to EY people and to the market to accelerate D&I at EY through. Not only does this reinforce that D&I is a key business lever, it ensures that we hold ourselves accountable for progress, starting with the tone at the top.
- Launching the Fast forward; This is the EY global platform that engages our people, our clients and our communities to advance gender equality.
- Launching Inclusive Leadership for All; This is a new web-based, mobile-enabled learning program available to all EY people across all ranks and geographies that is focused on the foundational behaviors of inclusive leadership. This program will help our professionals work effectively across all differences, build strong and lasting relationships, and enhance skills to recognize and address inclusion/exclusion dynamics.
EY Romania is striving to align with the overall EY Global agenda and followed closely the global developments. During 2021 we have increased the focus of D&I initiatives targeting the Romanian practice by establishing a local governance D&I body, developing a local D&I framework and signing the Romanian Diversity Charter.
What aspects of diversity management have the highest priority in your company?
I would have to say that despite the fact that EY Globally has a good range of priorities around diversity management I would stop at considering the ones having the highest priority being:
- Accelerating womens equality: A critical component of EY’s D&I agenda concerns the advancement of women. At EY we are creating an inclusive culture to enable women’s potential to truly transform society and build a better working world.
- Supporting inclusion across differences: EY people are made up of diverse talent and perspectives. We recognize all differences through raising awareness, building understanding and sparking conversations internally with EY leaders and people, and externally with clients about inclusion in the workplace.
Which D&I activities have been implemented in your organization so far?
Driven globally but also cascaded locally EY has implemented a series of D&I activities such as:
- Continuous diversity, equity and inclusiveness learning: We’re committed to developing and building inclusive teaming and leadership skills for all of our people — across all ranks and roles through an ever‑expanding suite of various learnings, and practical related resources and tools for individuals, teams and leadership teams.
- Supporting belonging through holistic well-being resources: We have committed to cultivating a culture of belonging by providing a broad offering of benefits, policies, tools and resources that support the health, well-being and flexibility of our people.
In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges faced by the sector in creating a diverse and inclusive workforce?
Strategy consulting firms are naturally at the forefront of this drive for diversity and inclusion in the corporate world. Nonetheless, creating a diverse and inclusive workforce can be challenging even for such companies.
Being globally present and aiming to focus on teaming and collaboration across difference regions, countries and departments, consulting organizations can face challenges in incorporating different groups.
The various biases individuals in the organization may have can lead to a tendency to stereotype and can limit the broader view of the individuals within the organization. In the end, this will reduce the benefits of diversity.
What business benefits do you see as a result of increasing D&I?
Greater diversity and inclusive environments drive better decision-making, stimulate innovation and increase organizational agility — crucial to helping our stakeholders respond to the now, prepare for the next and reframe their future.
A diverse environment leads to including varying points of view in decision-making, operations and actions this being fundamental to establishing long term value for EY people, as well as long-term client, social and financial value. This helps us to fulfill the EY purpose of Building a Better Working World and enables all EY people to have exceptional experiences.
Can you name three diversity challenges that companies have to pay attention to?
The first one that comes to my mind related to the communication challenges. Contrary to conventional wisdom, great minds don’t always think alike. In fact, great minds come in lots of different shapes and sizes. In order to leverage these differences to drive innovation in tomorrow’s businesses we need to make sure we bridge properly the communication challenges.
Finding, retaining, and developing culturally diverse talent can certainly be challenging — especially within systems that have historically exhibited biases against various groups. Companies have to constantly look for ways not only to acquire this new and diverse talent but also to meet their needs and help them succeed in order to ensure retention.
Last but not least, diversity can be challenging to effectively implement in practice. Diversity in itself is such a subjective matter that simply means different things to different people. Ensuring that the overall organization you are managing addresses the right way the different needs around diversity can definitely become a challenge.
What do you do to convince your colleagues to see the value in diversity management, or even more to truly get them on board?
EY people, our clients and external stakeholders expect more inclusive workplaces; and we also expect more from ourselves: more accountability and more transparency.
To ensure employees see the value in diversity management strengthening inclusive leadership behaviors is key — from role modeling and holding others accountable, to equitable decision-making, to checking-in and building connections with empathy and curiosity.
Interview by Dana Oancea. Copyright Carta Diversitatii