Inclusion and diversity (I&D) are essential guidelines for building a more egalitarian society and they are the guidelines mainly demanded by millennials and generation Z. It is these young people who demand a clear positioning from brands and the development of affirmative actions in companies. At Philips, the company I work for, it's no different. The engagement surveys carried out on a recurring basis pointed to the need for changes to meet the demands of these professionals. This was one of the reasons why, a year ago, I suggested the creation of the R&D committee at Philips Brazil. The other reasons: personal purpose, growing movements in society, risk mitigation, ESG...
I didn't imagine that I would cover so much ground in such a short space of time, and I met people who were passionate about different causes and willing to do something new. There were many lessons to learn, and the first came right after the idea was born: we needed the support of senior management. In order to get the local board on board better, we invited the leader of one of the divisions to be the project's sponsor, as the person who will disseminate the committee's actions among the company's leaders is known.
With a sponsor on board and a small group of committed volunteers, we decided to learn from 9 other companies - after all, if someone has already traveled the same path, it's worth understanding the difficulties along the way and adapting the existing tools to our reality. At this stage, I found people who were open and willing to share on the subject. The possibility of having more people engaged with the guidelines and being able to help in some way with the growth of another committee were reason enough to share details of the implementation.
Some curiosities from this stage: in one large drinks company, the main advertising campaigns are circulated by the committee before being aired to avoid possible unconscious bias in communication, in another, the intern program focused on low-income people includes the payment of a salary and benefits in advance, thus guaranteeing resources for transportation and meals away from home (in pre-pandemic times, this initiative was essential) from the first day of work.
After months of designing the committee, I presented the initiative during the quarterly results meeting and invited everyone to get on board. There were 80+ volunteers, people eager to debate, learn and share about R&D issues. At the very first meeting, I realized that these 80+ people had different interests and so we created four affinity groups: Gender, LGBT+, PCD and Race.
The groups have defined their own interaction dynamics and created safe spaces where personal experiences are shared and topical issues debated. Together, these people turn insights into ways of raising awareness in the company. And we use the communication tools available to deliver this content: Yammer's internal social network, a monthly newsletter, chat sessions with external guests and formal training, which will be mandatory for 100% of employees in 2021.
In this short space of time, we have also worked on more bureaucratic aspects, such as the Committee's Bylaws, which describe the roles and responsibilities of volunteers (affinity group leaders, sponsors, members) and budget management, one of the sponsor 's achievements in securing funds in our first year of existence.
For the next few years, we'll be setting targets for growth in team diversity and the implementation of affirmative action, but for now, all our actions are related to raising awareness. We understand that at this early stage, it's more important to draw everyone's attention to the most pressing issues, to generate reflection on the company's current situation and to create an inclusive and respectful environment. After all, as Brad Feld, founder of Foundry Group, said in his talk during SXSW 2021, "it's very easy to create a concept of inclusion and expect the people you want to include to come to you, when the right thing is for you to go to them", and I go further, we should go to them when the environment is suitable to receive them.
