What employers mean by diversity (with Arcadis)

When you're looking for graduate jobs, you'll hear a lot from employers about how important diversity, equality and inclusion are to them - but what do these slogans and promises mean in practice? Find out from leading employer Arcadis in this episode of Future You

Participants

In order of first appearance:

• Dan Mason - editorial manager, Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ»ÆƬ
• Barbra Carlisle - head of equality for UK and Ireland, Arcadis

Episode transcript

Dan Mason: When you're searching for graduate jobs, you'll hear a lot from employers about how important diversity equality and inclusion are to them lately, so let's find out what they really mean by that in this episode of the Future You.

Hello and welcome to Future You the podcast from graduate careers experts prospects here to help you achieve your career goals. I'm Dan Mason and in this episode, we're talking about diversity, equality and inclusion. Now, pretty much all graduate employers that you look at during your job search will have a slogan around this topic, probably a page or a few pages on their website, and a strategy that you can read. But what does that all actually mean for you when you join an organisation as a new recruit? I spoke to Barbra Carlisle from Arcadis to find out in more detail about what a large graduate employers commitment to diversity and inclusion really involves, and what difference it can make to both yourself as the graduate and the businesses as a whole. To have a diverse workforce with opportunity for all regardless of your background. This is a really interesting conversation with Barbra, but I hope you find it useful. Let's get started.

Barbra Carlisle: I'm Barbra Carlisle, I work for Arcadis and I've been with the business for about 10 years. I'm currently the head of equality for the UK and Ireland.

Dan Mason: Fantastic. Well, thanks very much for joining me. Before we get into the detail of your role and of equality, diversity inclusivity. Just for a bit of context, could you just give us a bit of an introduction to Arcadis what the organisation does, and why it's a an employer that graduates might be interested in?

Barbra Carlisle: Yes, certainly. So Arcadis, it seems a name that doesn't mean a lot to many people in terms of what is Arcadis. But actually, it's a huge global company delivering sustainable design and engineering and consultancy, on everything to do with the natural and built environment. So we've got about 28,000 people across 70 plus countries. And I obviously work in the UK and Ireland, but we've got colleagues across the world, who focus on what their clients need, and what the end consumer actually wants from the built environment. So it can be anything from Parks, to sewage systems, to hospitals, to schools, to airports. It's absolutely phenomenal the amount of things that go on in the business, and I am learning new things every single day. I work for Arcadis behind the scenes, I sit in the enabling functions. And you know, what's great about this is that they value those people who support the client facing people to deliver for our clients. So you know, whether you're doing learning and development, or accounting, or marketing and comms, we're all led to see ourselves as working towards one clear purpose, which is to improve the quality of life. And that really does drive engagement and an interest a personal interest in doing your best at work.

Dan Mason: And so coming on to then, one of the ways that you as a graduate employer, look to attract new recruits is through this proud to be me principle that you state on your website and in your recruitment material. Could you just explain to us what that means what that slogan means? And give us a sense, as we get into this subject, why is equality, diversity, inclusivity, and, you know, let me know which terms exactly you would use and why that's important to the business.

Barbra Carlisle: I think what I'd like to say first of all, is about the proud to be me, tagline. No, I'm really proud that that phrase actually came from someone in one of our inclusion networks within the UK. And it aims to really encapsulate everything about being in Arcadia. So I believe unfortunately, many other people in the business believe that you need to be proud of being yourself before you can be proud of being an Arcadian. And for us, the business needs to ensure that everyone has that opportunity. To be themselves at work. And so that's why we use in the UK, the slogan proud to be me. And, you know, this actually means not trying to be someone you're not. Doing what you know is right for you in the context of a great performance that actually benefits clients and communities that you work with. It means that you're proud to speak up, if you see something that doesn't align with our values. And if you see behaviors that you think could be improved, it's important to speak up. And if you're proud to be you, then you can do things creatively. If you've got a creative flair, you can do things thoughtfully, if you've got that thoughtful angle to your personality, you can do things like slightly crazy if you're all you know, put forward ideas that are different to everybody else in the room. And that's what we mean by proud to be me. You asked me, quite rightly, you know, what we use in terms of the inclusion agenda, and it changes but, you know, depending on the flavor of the month, but we've come to the conclusion globally, that we want to describe our employee experience and culture as being about celebrating inclusion. Diversity is about belonging. And it's also about equity about people having fair and equal opportunities to progress their careers and do exciting projects. So we're launching a new strategy in the autumn, that brings together the great work that has gone on in different regions and countries of Arcadis and pulling that into one coherent strategy. So that wherever you're based, so you could be somebody in the UK, but you've worked abroad, you might be sent on a short or medium term, or you might opt to go on a short or medium term assignment. And so it's, it's that given that consistency of employee experience, regardless of where you're located, and enabling people to be themselves wherever they are. For me, if you don't have diversity, then we don't maximise the opportunity for creative thinking, because we don't want group think. And if we don't have inclusion, then those who have those alternative, fresh ideas just remain silent, and we miss out on opportunities. If you don't have equity, then you see people who were not loud, not in the in crowd of a lot. And you lose out on potential fantastic talent. Because not everybody is an extrovert. In fact, you know, a lot of people are introvert, that doesn't mean that they should not have the same opportunities as extroverts. And if we don't believe in belonging, then we don't get the trust from people. And you're just there to do a job and leave. We don't want that. We want people to feel that they belong to our Arcadis family.

Dan Mason: And you mentioned the strategy there that you're bringing, pulling these things together. How would you characterise, so firstly, progress that Arcadis has made in these areas to date? And then also, is it something that you have firm commitments, targets? You know, other numbers, percentages that you're looking at? For the future? Is that part of how you approach this?

Barbra Carlisle: Yes, I think there's the old adage isn't there? If you don't measure, it doesn't get done? Or it gets done, if you measure it, you know, it's, I think we always need to be accountable. And whether metrics is the best way to account for something. I'm still debating that in my head. I think sometimes it's good to have metrics, but we need to look at it in a rounded way. So the first part of your question was about, have we achieved anything to date. And I would say, you know, I'm very proud of the things we've achieved over the last five years in the UK. Things like changing our maternity and paternity policies, introducing a transitioning at work policy, changing our private medical insurance to ensure that everybody had fair access to some of the benefits which hadn't been the case before. We've set up affinity groups so that if you identify or have a passion in a particular area, you can connect with those individuals who may well be in a very different part of the business, and bringing people together to celebrate differences being really important to us and sponsoring things like Pride marches, where we give time and space to the pride organisers for free and do pro bono work around charities. So there's lots of of things we've done. But as the head of equality on a bit of an activist, I always believe there's a lot more we can do. And I think this is where we've got the global strategy coming into play, which brings the best of every part of our regional businesses together to say, right, so this is the best. Now, where do we want to get to and for that, you sometimes do need to put a price on it, put a metric to it. So we've decided one of our metrics is we want 38% of our workforce to be women in technical roles. So our workforce is that gap, we have 38% of our workforce is women. But actually, they're not all in technical roles. So this is where we see a dip in, there's an opportunity for us to enhance the number of women we have in our business, who from a technical background. We have introduced in the UK, an ethnicity pay gap, which isn't a statutory requirement yet, but we feel that we need to reflect the desires of our people to know that if you're from an ethnicity and heritage perspective, is the repair gap. So we've been quite open and transparent about that. We have audits, independent audits, where external people come in and talk to our people through focus groups surveys, one to ones to explore if what we think we're delivering and the strategies actually been delivered on the ground. And I'm also really proud of the the leadership in the UK and Ireland and particularly, is very committed to learning and growing and changing. So I think the proof is in the pudding, isn't it, you need evidence that you've changed. And that evidence often comes through our employee engagement surveys, where we look at whether people feel that they're being treated fairly, whether people feel they're having meaningful work, whether people feel that their co workers listened to the willing to listen to different points of view, what else do we ask, we ask about, you know, the appetite to leave. If people are not interested in recommending Arcadis as a great place to work, then that's a massive flag for us. So there are lots of soft metrics like that, that aren't about putting a finger on the number of women in the business that actually probably more meaning for meaningful to us.

Dan Mason: Yeah, and that evidence base is probably part of the answer to the next question, actually. But as I'm sure you'll know, that students graduates who are looking for jobs, and then you know, the scanning through all these different graduate schemes, different employers. They'll hear this kind of message a lot at the moment, especially they'll hear you know, employers with different slogans, different ways of putting it, but a lot of stuff about diversity and equality and inclusivity, as we've been talking about, how do you differentiate how do you make those things a reality? Obviously, you've just been saying you can provide them with that evidence of what you've been doing Arcadis. But what are the positive practical steps that someone joining Arcadis would notice? That ensures it's not just slogans? It is, you know, it is reality?

Barbra Carlisle: Yeah it's quite a difficult one to answer. Because I haven't been on boarded as an Arcadian for the last 10 years. But rumor has it by the fantastic people who look after our graduates and apprentices when they when they join us is that our whole onboarding experience is based around their needs. And you one of my goals, as the head of equality has always been to integrate my passion for equality into everything we do within the business. So that onboarding experience should have diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging values, and behaviors and processes and systems embedded within it. So it's, you don't say, Oh, look, I'm now going to be looking at inclusion. It's just that feeling you get from the totality of the way we arranged that onboarding. And a little thing might be, for example, graduates getting a buddy graduates, and this might be something that other businesses offer, but it's those like little tiny moments that matter, you know, reconnecting him with you graduate Support Manager, having a forum for graduates to come together, having opportunities for as an individual to excel and having a very clear program of where you're going to get to. We have things that you know, as a graduate on day one, you can come and join one of our core training programs around what we call on Expedition DNA, so there's no barrier to furthering your skills and competences. Alongside working with the other graduates on the graduates program, we have, you'll be part of our employee experience. And we can, we can analyse by the length of time and your age so we can get a sense of whether graduates are feeling. They're part of our Arcadis family, or whether there's an area of focus for us. We have communities of practice for technical specialisms, so that as a graduate, you can engage and share your views with longstanding employees, again, in a very safe environment. You know, it's that ability of you to speak up from day one on the things that you're passionate about whether they're technical or emotional, or more personal. And, you know, we get opportunities for graduates to come together. And it might be where we put a challenge to graduates to say, Come in, come in, look at one of our challenges in a different way, and proactively saying your diversity and different perspective is what is going to make the difference here, and really nurturing that sense of individuality.

Dan Mason: And I think you mentioned early on in that answer about processes, one of the things that I read on the website is about, again, it's something that a lot of employers will have, but there's a zero tolerance for any kind of discrimination, harassment or inappropriate behavior, that kind of thing. What does that mean, in practice, for someone who's just joined Arcadis, new to the company? What? What sort of support are they getting? If they experience any of those things? What are the processes there? What in order to make them feel safe and secure, at work?

Barbra Carlisle: I think the first thing I'd say on that is that I'm not naive enough to think that that would never happen. There will be times when poor behaviors of others lead to a sense of perception of discrimination, harassment, or inappropriate behavior. And we've spent the last several years working really hard with our managers. So those people who have direct line manager responsibility for graduates to help them to be inclusive leaders and inclusive managers. So reducing the likelihood that they can't listen, and respond appropriately, we have so we've trained our managers to accept that not everything will be perfect, or maybe perfect and take every concern seriously, and not just say, Oh, well, it's just the way we roll here is definitely not the way we roll. We have our affinity network. So if people wanted to connect in and talk to people there confidentially, we have an employee assistance program. We have Mental Health First Aiders, but coming back to the reality of how in an ideal world, somebody would be able to raise that it would be through your line manager with the support of HR. And what we have in Arcadis is leaders who will have I'm not gonna say an open door because it's not really an open door, but it's leaders are approachable. So we have a big reverse mentoring program. I know a lot of leaders who mentor early career people and listen and take on board what they're hearing. And that's not around specifically harassment and discrimination, but it's more around those little unconscious biases or systemic barriers. So there's a very open air from our leadership in Arcadis to hear how people are experiencing, but we do have very stringent procedures to help and support people through any experience of unfair treatment.

Dan Mason: And just moving that on then we've spoken so far about equality and diversity in terms of recruitment of graduates and onboarding. Obviously, that's not something that's only important in early careers. It's something that when someone joins Arcadis, they'll need to know that opportunities will be there for them, regardless of their background in terms of their longer term career progression as well. And it's about the business being more diverse in more senior roles. What can you tell us about how Arcadis? In terms of the longer term career progression?

Barbra Carlisle: We listened very carefully to what our people are saying about their experiences of career progression. And that can be directly from their manager through the employee engagement survey or through direct conversation. With affinity network members, or with senior leaders, so when we hear that people don't feel that it's a fair and open process, we do spend a lot of time and energy and effort reaching out back in to our people to say, what is it? Exactly that isn't working for you? And we, you know, as I indicated before, we may well recruit a third party to look at our processes in an independent way to then feed back to us and say, What is it is and isn't working. And, personally, I feel we've taken great strides over recent years in the UK to make our processes really fair and equitable. But processes are only part of the journey is the behaviors that go with the processes. So we've had leadership training, ongoing training, on really understanding and how you can be bias unconsciously when making decisions. So helping leaders and managers go through that experience of what happens if you make a rash decision or a decision quickly, because you think that person will fit in and asking managers to always question themselves, What do you mean by fitting? What are you looking for? Have you got divert, so to take a proactive stance on looking at the diversity of their teams?

Dan Mason: And so looking at all of that as a whole, and perhaps ask you, firstly, whether you agree with this, and then and then to follow on from that. It's about embedding a culture across the business among all employees of equality of diversity and of inclusivity and belonging as well. You mentioned, it's not about imposing things from above. Would you agree with that?

Barbra Carlisle: It's not about things from above. But I do think there needs to be accountability of leaders. So tracking and monitoring is critical, diversity dashboard, we call them diversity dashboards, so that leaders can see at a glance, where they're doing well, to celebrate with the people that when they're not doing so well. So I do think it isn't about opposing things from above, but it is about accountability of leaders. Yeah, for sure. And I think, you know, it's also about engaging with people from the ground up, to encourage them to challenge us in the, you know, to challenge and celebrate with us, because we do some fantastic things together. So it is about that openness, having an open culture.

Dan Mason: And perhaps then you've mentioned celebrating, fantastic things that you do, perhaps just sum up finally, given that successes that you've I know you've mentioned, obviously, that there's there's still work to do, but obviously you're proud of of where our Cadis has gotten so far sum up for us why graduates should or students in graduate should look at Arcadis as as a positive potential employer. Given what we've been talking about today.

Barbra Carlisle: If I put myself in a graduate shoes, I would want to know that the business I go forward with is one that will value me as an individual and allow me to flourish as myself to bring those skills and competencies I have for the benefit of clients, but also be willing to invest in me and nurture my quirkiness, and celebrate that. And I think that's what Arcadis allows its graduates and apprentices and everybody to do. For me, if I was a graduate, I would want to be able to, it's very cliched, but I want to get out of bed in the morning and know I had a purpose for the day. And that whatever I did, whether I was in the enabling functions in a an assistant pm role in a an account leader role that I was contributing to the bigger, greater good around societal benefit. Because sometimes on a day to day, the minute I have what we do can feel like it gets lost in the ether. So I think keeping that connection between what you do on a day to day, and the greater good, and the way you benefit society is something that you can feel when you come to Arcadis one because of the type of projects that we do when we don't do projects that don't align with our sustainability ambitions at all quite clear on that. And the range of projects that we do on the teams that diverse teams, you will sometimes be challenged because dynamic diverse teams can be homogenous once they've gelled and grown together but there's always a period of wondering, Wow, am I thinking in the right way and you are thinking in the right way? You just thinking differently to everybody else? And once that's when you get a sense that that is accepted, then that's a really great place to call and flourish.

Dan Mason: Fantastic. That's a brilliant positive note to end on. Thanks once again to Barbara for that insight, and hopefully that's been useful for you in unpicking the details of the kind of thing employers really mean when they talk about that diversity and inclusion strategies and how that impacts you as a new graduate, or a new recruit in the organisation. Now, don't forget to search for graduate jobs with employers like Arcadis head to prospects.ac.uk, where you can also find lots of careers advice, job profiles, case studies, and much more. And you can follow and listen to Future You on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts on prospects.ac.uk/podcasts, where a transcript of this episode will also be available. Finally, get in touch with any comments, feedback or suggestions for the show. Just email podcast@prospects.ac.uk. That's all for this episode. Thanks again for listening and I'll speak to you soon.

Note on transcripts

This transcript was produced using a combination of automated software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. The audio version is definitive and should be checked before quoting.