Continue reading “Foreword: DLA Piper on Diversity”

At McKinsey we have been researching this topic for the past ten years. There is still underrepresentation of women on corporate boards, but the underrepresentation is even more striking on executive committees. Continue reading “Sandrine Devillard, director, McKinsey France”

The strategic case

At Shell, diversity and inclusion has always been part of our DNA. D&I is a competitive advantage in today’s global marketplace. Data from McKinsey & Co’s Why Diversity Matters report shows that companies in the top quartile for gender diversity are 15% more likely to outperform their competitors. Continue reading “Donny Ching, legal director, Shell”

Diversity and inclusion is a concept that is very strong within Deutsche Telekom. As early as 2010, the management board of Deutsche Telekom set a goal for 30% of the company’s management roles worldwide to be filled by women. Continue reading “Dr Claudia Junker, general counsel, Deutsche Telekom”

Taking the moral position, that diversity and inclusion are ‘the right thing to do’ has not motivated change in business. Yet there has never been a senior leader that has said to me, ‘I want to treat people unfairly’. Continue reading “Lisa Kepinski, founder and director, Inclusion Institute”

The benefits that diversity and inclusion bring to the organisation in terms of strategic thinking… it’s a completely different world. When I talk about diversity, I mean not only gender and geography, but also background, education, upbringing, and the way we think. Continue reading “Barbara Levi Mager, general counsel, Sandoz”

Atos is strongly convinced about the importance of diversity as a key value driver for the group’s future continuous growth and competitiveness, and has launched the ‘Atos Group Diversity Program’, with group executive sponsors, a group diversity programme manager and a group diversity committee. Continue reading “Alexandre Menais, executive Vice President, M&A strategy and corporate development, Atos”

In our business there are always two discussions around the motivation for creating a workplace that is inclusive of LGBT members of staff. One relates to matters of the heart, but there are also matters of the head. Continue reading “Ian Johnson, Founder, Out Now”

Total’s diversity and inclusion strategy is predominantly internally driven. For many years we’ve recognised that it is not only the right thing to do, but there is also a business case for diversity. Continue reading “Dawn Lannin, Vice President of Legal for Europe and Central Asia, Total”

Gender diversity

Gender is an obvious diversity issue for us as a company that primarily employs engineers, and therefore is not known as an employer of lots of women. Continue reading “Juergen Reul, general counsel, BMW”

The business case

Diversity and inclusion improves excellence in execution and risk management, and it gives strategic advantage. It improves execution by enabling better problem-solving; it’s an early warning system for bad decision-making. Continue reading “Nia Joynson-Romanzina, founder and director, iCubed”

ROLE MODELS

My mother is a lawyer and all through my youth, during the summertime, I would work as an intern with her or her colleagues, going to court, seeing criminal and civil cases. Continue reading “Miral Hamani-Samaan, director of M&A, corporate transactions and international governance, Hewlett Packard Enterprise”

ln Europe, diversity and inclusion takes on a cultural dimension – around identity, national culture, and languages. In the early years of the diversity and inclusion profession, issues of ethnicity and ethnic groups were less in the frame in Europe, whereas gender was much higher on the radar screen. Continue reading “Farrah Qureshi, CEO, Global Diversity Practice”

‘Diversity’ can become a pop phenomenon, a buzzword. What you need to do, if you are going to talk about it, is also to walk to the talk. You have to live it instead of communicating it all the time. Continue reading “Lena Ernlund Malmberg, former head of legal IP, Nilfisk”

At Dell, we believe that we can serve our customers better by reflecting them, and we also believe that if you create an inclusive environment, you’re likely to be more innovative. So for us, D&I is very much a business imperative. Continue reading “Benedikte Leroy, Vice President and EMEA general counsel, Dell”

Diversity and inclusion is about having a diverse workforce and team, but it is also about being inclusive, not just in terms of gender, LGBT, ethnicity and so on, but of diversity of thought. Continue reading “Kirsty Cooper, group general counsel, Aviva”

At JTI, we perceive inclusion and diversity as talent management, and believe that what makes a company is having the best talent. To that end, we try to ensure that JTI is a great place to work, driven by diversity – be that of thought, ideas or people. Continue reading “Ana Isabel Montero Corbin, legal director, Japan Tobacco International”

Global statistics, collected by global analytics group Gallup, say that only 13% of people worldwide are engaged in their jobs, that the majority of people who resign from their position do so because they don’t feel their skills are required and used, and only 2% feel like their workplace supports them. Continue reading “Tinna Nielsen, founder, Move the Elephant for Inclusiveness”

The diversity of European diversity

Europeans know a thing or two about diversity. After all, a neighbour in the next town might speak a different dialect, or the nearest big city might be over the border in a different country. Continue reading “Shaping diversity: part one”