by Janus Boye
“The most important thing in diversity & inclusion is to speak less and do more”
As a part of his role as Global People Movement Lead at Telia, Chris Hovde also works as diversity lead and generously shared his recent lessons learned on the topic
It is hard to disagree with the impactful opening line by Chris Hovde in our recent member call, but how do you actually take diversity and inclusion to the next level?
Chris is a diversity lead at the award-winning Swedish multinational telecommunications company Telia. Their Virtual Pride has been recognised externally and they have been crowned as the most family-friendly workplace and as a rainbow hero.
As he said in the call, diversity in the Nordic countries has so far tended to be mostly focused on gender equality, but their focus at Telia is much broader.
Below I’ve shared some of the highlights from the call, what gets Chris excited, and a few of the challenges along the way. At the end you can find the entire recording.
Let’s start with how the diversity team at Telia really succeeded in getting senior management support for their work.
Setting diversity and inclusion targets
Telia has ambitious targets for 2025, which includes a 50/50 gender balance in the extended leadership team, a yearly decrease in the gender pay gap and much more as shown on the slide below which Chris used in his opening.
Clearly, you need to get management onboard, and to Chris transparency in terms of revealing data, has been the magic ingredient. It is the power of data, which you can use to break gender stereotypes. When Chris began his efforts, data on diversity and inclusion was truly helpful in creating attention and a compelling case for change.
In 2021, age, gender, and region of birth for various target groups were disclosed in the Annual and Sustainability Report.
By also publicly communicating the goals to the shareholders, the management at Telia is fully committed to generate real change - going beyond just talking about improving things.
The most exciting to Chris is actually the voluntary diversity, belonging and equality survey, where he is participating in the working group. A survey is tricky on this hot topic, so he is very careful to do it both without scaring people and breaking the law. The new survey should both address the knowledge gaps caused by the lack of gender and diversity data and also help get even data quality to track progress.
To Chris it is about the basic human right to be your true authentic self. To quote:
“If I try to act as someone else, or if I am concerned with what others might think when I reveal that I have a boyfriend, then it takes much of my energy and focus”
And to continue:
“Everywhere I go, I clearly see that the more diverse teams I meet automatically are more inclusive, have a higher level of psychological safety. Being your true authentic self, is to me the essence of diversity”
It is also about well-being and social responsibility, and to be blunt, it’s productivity at the end of the day. In a world with a huge shortage of talent and skills, Telia is also working on reskilling and upskilling, which is further acts to increase diversity and bring in people with diverse backgrounds.
Diversity as a part of the company DNA
Sharing recent highlights from his work, Chris also shared the below slide, where you can see progress in the past years.
The slide shows that the work started in 2019, but naturally Telia has been considering diversity and inclusion earlier on.
To get an understanding of where Telia is on the journey, they’ve shared a few stats on progress. Here’s three key performance indicators as of 2021:
Gender Balance in the Extended Leadership Team: 37% Female & 63% Male
Common equal pay and gender pay gap analysis carried out in all markets
Raw gender pay gap decreased by 2 percentage points in 2021, compared to 202020% managers took the Unconscious Bias e-learning and 38% managers have been trained on Inclusive Recruitment Practices
To paraphrase Chris, Telia has used three years to get their own house in order, and then this year, their 2022 focus has expanded to also deal with suppliers and partners. This means that when Telia looks to source products or collaborate with externals, they now also look at diversity and inclusion as a criteria to decide which company to work with.
Stepping up on diversity & inclusion
It hasn’t been an easy ride according to Chris. In particular, he emphasised that the challenge is two-fold:
It’s really difficult in the beginning until you get the breakthroughs - whether internally or catalysed through external recognition
It can feel like a never ending uphill struggle with blood, sweat and tears, because fundamentally you are challenging people’s personal beliefs.
The final slide as shared in the member call with Chris Hovde from Telia
At Telia the work continues with many initiatives, including quarterly talks, e.g. on ageism, black lives matter, from ability to disability and pride.
To quote Chris:
“The real problem is to create an inclusive environment where everyone feels a sense of belonging. Today we care more about political correctness rather than what really matters.”
As a part of the Q&A, Chris also shared that at Telia they are in the process of closing all women’s networks as research found them to be counterproductive. Instead they run diversity networks where all are invited, and with the intention to connect anyone from minority groups to white males. Chris doesn’t want the white males to be mentors, but to be connected internally with a diverse network, where they can act as sponsors in the internal conversation.
Learn more about diversity and inclusion
If I say SDG 5 and 10, do you then know exactly what I mean? As a part of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, these are the two ones, which you can connect your diversity and inclusion work with.
SDG 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.
SDG 10: Reducing inequality within and among countries
Jem Henderson from the UK also covered this topic back at our 2019 conference and connected it with corporate innovation in her highly rated talk titled: There is no box to think outside of - diversity and inclusion for innovation.
In 2020, Nicolas Bry from Orange in Paris shared the story on how Women want to be intrapreneurs as much as men and in late 2021, Anke Maibach from TCS was our expert of the month and she included diversity as one of their three major challenges. To quote:
“Differences make us stronger and diversity and inclusion have been a fundamental focus at TCS for a while. This also greatly impacts the words we use, how we hire, talent development and taking action to support career progression for all.”
Finally, do lean back and enjoy the recording below.