Getting Started with D&I

I’ve been asked many times on a number of occasions on how we were able to get going with numerous diversity and inclusion (D&I) initiatives in the company in such a short span of time, so I thought it would be good to share some thoughts on how to get started.

It’s not a HR driven programme 

This is the common perception that many organisations have, that all D&I initiatives starts from and is led by HR. Whilst HR plays a big role in supporting the culture, business leaders in the organisation should own and “corral” their employees towards creating a diverse and inclusive workplace.

When business leaders take on and drive D&I initiatives, not only it adds better credibility and ownership, but also will see more people participating and “following” their leaders.

Be clear on what you want to focus on

The D&I world is a big one, and there are many areas to drive (age, nationality, ethinic origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, religion, marital status, disability, etc) - it can get rather daunting if you don’t focus. Your company vision/mission statement is a good start and see if there are any D&I areas which can help drive that vision.

Pick a few to start on and focus on those core pillars.

[We focussed on Gender, LGBT+, Multi-generations, Differently Abled, and now Racial Diversity]

Make it voluntary, unless you have wads of cash! 

Find people in your organisation who are passionate to certain causes (aligned to the pillars you want to focus on), as these are the people who may be best to lead and drive the culture change. The reason for their passion may be because of some personal story or involvement, so they would definitely want to be able to create that “wave of change” in their workplace to support D&I.

But if your company has the funding to have dedicated individuals or teams to manage and drive D&I in your workplace, go for it. This is the ideal scenario of course, but is very rare. That’s not because organisations do not find them important, it’s just that resource constraints play a part especially in local-entity based organisations. The group office may have a dedicated team, but not the local ones (where D&I initiatives drives a bigger impact).

Form a coalition

Now that you have your focussed D&I pillars and your passionate leaders, it’s time to form the D&I committee or council. HR and Internal Comms must be represented as well. As all committees go, formalise the participation, pick a chief, assign your volunteers to the pillars, create a Terms of Reference, create programme charter and get ready to make some noise. This will take some time as there will be very diverse people in the room from different backgrounds with different levels of passion and drive. The meetings tend to get distracted….focus!

Get your Executive Sponsorship  

This is very key to the success of any D&I campaign at the workplace. Apart from funding to do planned initiatives, the Executive Sponsor plays a big role in amplifying the voice as well as helping you maneuver through the different potential obstacles that may arise. And they act as a voice of reason as well.

Spread out your initiatives for the whole year

This is a tough one. When you have passionate leaders wanting to do many things to create awareness on their chosen pillars, they will “want to do many things” and when everyone does that, you’ll potentially see many overlaps over the year. These overlaps will cause confusion to your employees who may not see your focus and it might look messy. Can you imagine running a gender and disability awareness week at the same time!

Space it out, ideally one every 2 months just to give your employees time to absorb and accept. D&I culture building takes time, but it needs to be consistent. Once you’re more established, you can increase the frequency to each month.

Make some noise!

With your D&I charter, plan and resources in place, it’s time to go out there and tell all your employees about it. Visualise the message as much as you can, through Executive Sponsor messages, videos (iPhone movies are great too), posters, event schedules, intranet pages, etc. Better still, organise a launch event to introduce the campaign at the workplace. Get people to come, and have some food!

You can always reach out to NGOs or other D&I leads in local organisations. There are many of them, and you can easily find them on LinkedIn. Ask them to come and share in your company - they’d love to.

Meet regularly and share learnings

You’ll be surprised how much you can learn from running different D&I activities. Some hits the mark, some doesn’t. Not all will be popular, and those that are not will receive some feedback. Use these feedback to improve and be ready to slow-down or speed up. Have the council meet monthly to discuss through all the planning of activities, and keep the members engaged. A good best practice would be to run a simple survey after each activity to get employee feedback anonymously.

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Culture building takes time, and takes a lot of effort. But if you’re firm and strongly believe in your D&I vision, things will eventually fall into place. I was lucky to being part of an amazing team of passionate individuals in AXA Hong Kong who stayed true to our vision and mission of driving the culture and the D&I agenda for the company. It’s been almost 2 years, and has been a huge success. Lot’s more to do of course, but it’s off to a great start.

The AXA Hong Kong D&I Mission:

AXA is committed to promoting Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) by creating a work environment where all employees are treated with dignity and respect and where individual differences are valued. AXA is committed to equal opportunity in all aspects of employment.

We oppose all forms of unfair or unlawful discrimination and will not tolerate discrimination based on age, nationality, ethnic origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, religion, marital status, or disability. 

AXA is dedicated to cultivate a diverse and inclusive environment where all employees feel fully engaged and included in our business and strategy to become the "Preferred Company"