Discover the power of Employee Network Groups as Shivani Sondhi, leader at Vodafone, shares her insights on fostering workplace inclusion. Embark on Shivani's personal journey, from her beginnings in the UK to ending up in Luxembourg, and learn how she's driving change within Vodafone's multicultural landscape. This episode uncovers the challenges and profound rewards of leading an employee resource group, highlighting how such initiatives are essential for creating psychological safety and diverse representation in the corporate world.
As we examine the often-overlooked topic of recognition and compensation for ERG leaders, you'll gain a deeper understanding of the balance between volunteerism and professional acknowledgement. Shivani's roles at Vodafone present a unique viewpoint on the impact these groups have—not just on the individuals who lead them but on the entire organizational culture.
Concluding with a focus on the broader implications of unpaid diversity work, this episode delves into Shivani's experiences reconciling her professional ambitions with her passion for D&I volunteerism. The conversation further explores the consequences of recognizing such contributions and the nuances between incentivizing work and staying true to selfless motivations. Join us as we celebrate the strength of networking and knowledge sharing, all while illuminating the path for those inspired to make a difference in diversity and inclusion.
The Culture Ministry exists to create inclusive, accessible environments so that people and businesses can thrive.
Combining a big picture, balanced approach with real-world experience, we help organisations understand their diversity and inclusion shortcomings – and identify practical, measurable actions to move them forward.
If you enjoyed this episode and maybe learnt something please share with your friends on social media, give a 5 star rating on Apple podcasts and leave a comment. This makes it easier for others to find A Dog Called Diversity.
Discover the power of Employee Network Groups as Shivani Sondhi, leader at Vodafone, shares her insights on fostering workplace inclusion. Embark on Shivani's personal journey, from her beginnings in the UK to ending up in Luxembourg, and learn how she's driving change within Vodafone's multicultural landscape. This episode uncovers the challenges and profound rewards of leading an employee resource group, highlighting how such initiatives are essential for creating psychological safety and diverse representation in the corporate world.
As we examine the often-overlooked topic of recognition and compensation for ERG leaders, you'll gain a deeper understanding of the balance between volunteerism and professional acknowledgement. Shivani's roles at Vodafone present a unique viewpoint on the impact these groups have—not just on the individuals who lead them but on the entire organizational culture.
Concluding with a focus on the broader implications of unpaid diversity work, this episode delves into Shivani's experiences reconciling her professional ambitions with her passion for D&I volunteerism. The conversation further explores the consequences of recognizing such contributions and the nuances between incentivizing work and staying true to selfless motivations. Join us as we celebrate the strength of networking and knowledge sharing, all while illuminating the path for those inspired to make a difference in diversity and inclusion.
The Culture Ministry exists to create inclusive, accessible environments so that people and businesses can thrive.
Combining a big picture, balanced approach with real-world experience, we help organisations understand their diversity and inclusion shortcomings – and identify practical, measurable actions to move them forward.
If you enjoyed this episode and maybe learnt something please share with your friends on social media, give a 5 star rating on Apple podcasts and leave a comment. This makes it easier for others to find A Dog Called Diversity.
Welcome to a dog call diversity. And this week I'm pretty excited, actually, because we're going to be talking about employee network groups, or network groups for short, or sometimes they're called ERGs, sometimes they're called business network groups there's a whole range of ways to describe these groups, but they're basically volunteer groups within organizations that usually represent a particular identity or an underrepresented group in the organization, and they're important in organizations because they help build inclusion and belonging. So this week I have an employee resource group leader. Welcome to the podcast, shivani Sondhi. How are you? I'm good, thank you. Thank you for having me on the show. It's such a pleasure and I've been wanting to have you on for a while. So you are based in Luxembourg, aren't you?
Speaker 2:
Yes, the wonderful small country of a very diverse country as well, of Luxembourg.
Speaker 1:
It sounds so glamorous, but how is Luxembourg so diverse? How does that come about?
Speaker 2:
We've got well. It's a really small country. We're only I think it's around 600,000 people, and I think over half are expats or immigrants, whatever word we want to use. So I mean there's people from all over Europe, from all over different continents, so there's lots of different nationalities here, because obviously a lot of people come for different types of work.
Speaker 1:
Oh, wow, and what. You're British born, so what took you to Luxembourg?
Speaker 2:
That is a good question. Everyone says why, if you were living in London before, why did you need to go to Luxembourg? Well, I was actually already working at Vodafone in the UK obviously big multinational company. So we've got offices all over the world. And then a few years ago, I got off of the job in Luxembourg and I thought well, why not? It's another chance to go and live in another European country Don't know where it is on a map, I've never been before, I don't know what language they speak there, but why not? It's an adventure. So I just decided to move. Oh, I love that.
Speaker 1:
What is the language of Luxembourg? I should know that.
Speaker 2:
What is it? The official language is Luxembourgish. It is a real language, but a lot of people speak French and German, but Luxembourgish is the official language of Luxembourg, oh wow.
Speaker 1:
Oh, wow, so you have a day job, yes, yeah, so your day job is in innovation. Is that, is that?
Speaker 2:
right yeah. Innovation, business development yeah.
Speaker 1:
Nice, but you you play some other important roles in Luxembourg and, I guess, in the wider Vodafone community. Could you tell us a bit about the networks that you're part of and also that you lead?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, for sure. So we've well our Vodafone kind of. Like you said at the beginning, there's lots of different employee resource groups, networks that we have, and in Luxembourg we're a pretty small market, so we've got the women's network, which has been active for, I think, around four, maybe four, so years, maybe even longer, and the multicultural network, which is the, the resource group that I lead and we launched actually a year ago, last February, so we've been active for a year, and the idea of the networks and these groups at Vodafone is that we, you know, work alongside HR and the diversity inclusion teams to make more awareness, to kind of bring that educational side and celebrate the differences that we have within within the company.
Speaker 1:
Oh, you've been going for 12 months in one of your groups. What was the process like? I guess, getting that off the ground and working out All the things like why are we, why are we coming together, what are we trying to achieve? Like, how did you approach all that work?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, that's a really good question Because actually, well, in in my, in my actual day job I say my day job team we sometimes we use this analogy like we're building the plane as we're flying it. And I feel like we kind of did that with the multicultural network because we were told kind of in the January okay, you're going to launch, like form a team and just go, we've got the launch in. I think we were given like three weeks to a month to figure out what we were going to do for this launch. So we kind of scrambled a random team together and put on this event and as part of that we then did, you know, our strategy workshop after.
Speaker 2:
But what we've really been trying to do, well, in our first year we were trying to build awareness of what the multicultural network is and what we're here to do, because I think a lot of people and not just a Vodafone, a lot of companies will find there's like an overload of information, you know, from HR, from diversity, inclusion, from the purpose of your company, from sustainability, from all these different things.
Speaker 2:
So we were really trying to find that niche in Vodafone Luxembourg and think about, okay, well, how can we bring awareness of the different cultures that we have in the building and do it in a fun way. And so we've been doing like lots of different little events, like we celebrated the Vali last year, you know, towards the end of last year, and in January this year we celebrated Chinese Lunar New Year, and then we did like little get togethers, kind of cafe lingo. That was a really cute idea. It was because we've got loads of different languages, so we invited people to come and if they want to learn Spanish they could speak Spanish to their Spanish colleague in kind of a safe environment. So it was lots of different things embracing the different nationalities, ethnicities, different races that we have in the building. And that was kind of like the first year was the more, I would say, fun side of cultural awareness.
Speaker 1:
Okay, and what's do you have, then different plans for the next year. So you've kind of you've established that first. I guess you've established yourselves as a group and you've done some great things, so have you got a longer term plan?
Speaker 2:
now we want to when I say switch, or maybe I would say, pivot a bit more as well towards the kind of educational and awareness piece. Because if we go back to the beginning of why we actually started Vodafone I think maybe a year ago or more in the recent couple of years implemented what we call reach targets, so that is race, ethnicity and cultural heritage. So we've got a program in place for that and there's now, as well as gender quotas, we've now got reach targets globally, so each market should have X percent by 2030 of senior leaders from an ethnic minority group, for example. So it's an annual report, all the data is there, which I think is super good because it holds us accountable to it. So that's kind of where the multicultural network started in the UK, in Vodafone Island and I think in South Africa as well.
Speaker 2:
So if we go back to actually why we started, what we now want to try and pivot towards is OK, well, now we're here and we really mean business. So, yes, we've had a year of the kind of bringing the cultural awareness. But if we take, for example, our, I think we have five senior leaders who are all men in Vodafone Luxembourg and our executive sponsor actually is on that leadership board, but we have one person of color on that board, so it's making sure. Ok, we need to make people aware of this. And also, how can we start to bring people up who are maybe a more junior level, let's say, like my level? I can see representation in my cohort, but I just don't see that representation and senior leadership yet. And that's what the reach targets are here for and that's what the multicultural network is here to do in the longer term.
Speaker 1:
That makes your group, then, such an important resource within the business, and I think it's one of the important roles that Employee Resource Group plays, you know, as those resources. Where am I going with this? I think it's great, it's so great to have events and awareness and recognizing the different cultures that you have within your business, but then how can we make that something that's real, that we can be held accountable, to, which you know? It sounds like that's where you're moving, which is amazing. I wanted to talk yeah, I wanted to talk a little bit about, I guess, the great things about Employee Resource Groups and the challenges, and so I've been on the other side, either being in a HR role or a diversity and inclusion role, and Employee Resource Group play this incredible role, as I've said, you know, creating inclusion and belonging. I actually had an employee, a black employee in the US who told me that that the black employees group that she was part of meant that she had a safe space to go to, and it kind of hurt my heart a little bit that we had to have a group to create safe spaces for underrepresented people, but it was also good that we had a safe space for underrepresented people, so it kind of you know, I think anyone working in DNI would hope that in the future we don't need these groups because we've created, you know, equity across diversity in our businesses. So they play a really important role, I think.
Speaker 1:
But I would say every DNI leader I speak to there are incredible challenges with these groups. So they tend to be volunteer run. They everyone has a day job and usually in big multi nationals your day jobs pretty busy and pretty demanding. And the people in these groups are smart people and they want to make change and they demand change. And sometimes when you're in these DNI or HR leadership roles it's a real tension for you because you want them to be doing these things. But sometimes you're constrained by budget, by process and structure and just your own biases around how big organizations run. Like I have certainly been challenged by all these things.
Speaker 1:
So they kind of, for me, being in those roles, they're a double edged sword. They do great stuff for inclusion. They're a great resource that you can go to and say, hey, you know, we've got targets now around you know different parts of diversity. How can you help us with those? What are the things we can do? But also they're challenging groups to help manage and also support. But I want to hear from your perspective, right, because there are challenges and amazing things on both sides of the fence. So I wanted to start with you know. For you being part of two groups and leading one group, like, what's the good stuff, what do you love about it?
Speaker 2:
So I think that I mean there's loads of good stuff and obviously challenges, like you said, but it kind of goes back to the building the plane while we're flying it, like we've gone off the ground and we're kind of we're creating something that hasn't been necessarily done before. And so if you take, like, for example, in my day job, you know we're looking at innovation, working with new technology, trying to bring digital transformation, and you know what the employee resource groups are. What we're trying to do is transformation. It's not digital transformation necessarily. It's like changing and transforming, like hearts and minds, and so it's exciting to also do something where you can. Just well, because we don't follow the process.
Speaker 2:
Like you said, hr has the formality or what comes from headquarters and says, ok, this is like the plan for the year, whereas we kind of make up our own plan, which is also exciting because I think it's something a lot of us probably haven't done before in a corporate environment where normally you know the projects will be pushed down and then we are kind of like the cogs in the wheel to make them turn.
Speaker 2:
So we're a group of like random people from across the building, from different teams, who would have probably never spoken to each other had we not formed the multicultural network. So we just get to kind of do very cool and random things that we wouldn't do in our day job. But it's also with this, you know, this vision of okay, we want to create psychological safety, we want to make a more inclusive environment, because we're all there for the same thing, which is nice. I mean, we have loads of different things going on, but at the end of the day, we're all taking extra time out of our day to do something to help the working environment.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, oh, I love that. I love that. What are the? What are the challenges and the frustrations? Like what it. Yeah, what's annoying.
Speaker 2:
I think and this is probably applicable maybe also for HR or for all the ERGs that are out there in any company that sometimes it feels like change isn't happening fast enough, because it's like well, why? Why do we have to tell people that they have subconscious biases? Why do we have to do training on on gender equality? Why do we have to tell people to be anti racist? And sometimes it can be frustrating because, unfortunately, the same people show up at the, let's say, we have events. For example, the people who are not showing up are the ones who are, ironically, the ones that we actually need in the room sometimes, because they might be the ones who say but I'm not racist, or when's International Wednesday? Well, first of all, this is why it's not being anti racist. You can go and read this book or, if you go look in your calendar, you'll see that International Wednesday is November. So it's like they're the people sometimes that we need in the room, because we have the advocates who show up day and day out.
Speaker 2:
But it's like, how do you get the people who don't know they need to be in the room into the room?
Speaker 1:
That is such a hard task to do. I don't know why I'm trying to find a solution right now?
Speaker 2:
I don't think.
Speaker 1:
I have tried various things throughout my career and I'm not I'm not opposed to encouraging very, very strongly, almost mandating. I've done that before. I've told leaders they have to bring their whole teams. I've done all sorts of things to and you know, without shame, right? Because, like, otherwise, you can't get the people in the room who need to be in the room, right? Yes, so for you, tell me why it's important to have a multicultural group. Why is it personally important to you?
Speaker 2:
I think for a lot, a lot of reasons, but probably one of the most important is is representation, because and I don't necessarily only speak for a Vodafone again for companies worldwide, small, big, for governments, for most places at institutions that you will see, there is unfortunately a lack of representation. When I say representation in my case, why is it personal to me? Because growing up, I never saw brown women in leadership. I mean, let alone seeing women in leadership. Seeing a brown woman, I mean even still now.
Speaker 2:
I think you can probably, you know, just about get one hand of names of people that you would think, yeah, actually they're famous or someone knows them, or you know they succeeded in the business world, and so it's making sure that, okay, well, my generation have it, we're better off than my parents' generation, for example, in terms of being racially abused and that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:
And it's like, okay, well, if we can help the next generation coming up or we can help the workplace that we're in or the ecosystem that we're in, what can we do to change that? Just because I would hope one day, if or when I have children or when the next generation are growing up, that they don't grow up in a world where they think, oh well, actually like I'm not good enough because of the color of my skin, and I think, yeah, for me it's simple. Really, I just don't want that to continue and I know we've got a long way to go, but at least if we can create small waves and then you have the ripple effect, then we've got to start somewhere.
Speaker 1:
Yeah yeah, thank you. I wanted to ask you about pay and recognition for people running employee network groups inside organizations. So and I did a large piece of research for one organization around should leaders of employee networks groups be paid? How should they be recognized, knowing that you do this work on top of your day job, often in your own time? And it's really interesting, there's kind of very more forward-thinking companies around diversity and inclusion are starting to pay their leaders, sometimes in a full-time capacity. That's quite rare, but sometimes just an amount to recognize Some companies are using these leadership roles as part of their talent process.
Speaker 1:
So you know being I think it's a real test of leadership skills to bring together a disparate group of people who work in different functions and come together and contribute for a common cause. And it was interesting. I ran some workshops here in New Zealand with an incredible company and we talked about this idea of how do people want to be recognized in employee resource groups and for them it wasn't about money, it was about recognition and how their groups add to the organization and add to the culture. But I wanted to get your view on this, like what do you think about this idea of being recognized or being paid or having the roles as part of the talent system. Like what do you think?
Speaker 2:
That's a super interesting question and I never, ever, thought about the pay side before, as I don't think anyone else in our resource group has.
Speaker 2:
But it's a super interesting question because actually one of the things when I was going through I think it was last year or the year before in my talent board, when you do your year end check-in with your manager, I remember it was my boss's boss saying we need to make because everyone in the building knows me for doing the diversity inclusion work, for doing the women's network or for doing the Vodafone Foundation or the multicultural network, and he was saying we need to get people in the building to know you for your day job, because nobody actually knows what my day job is, because when I'm doing an event or I'm talking, I'm talking about normally diversity inclusion, or when I'm being invited to events and it's actually really super interesting. That's why it's super interesting you ask the question because, let's say, if tomorrow they say well, the position's open and you would earn I don't know 3% extra by doing it, I don't think it would necessarily even change the way I would do it or what I would do, just because anyone doing it is not doing it for a monetary benefit, because that was never. That was never kind of incentive to join, and part of me maybe the flip side would be if you are being incentivized to do it for money, then are you doing it for the right reason, would be the question I would ask. And then does that mean people would do it because they get money out of it rather than actually doing it because they care about tackling people's subconscious bias? I mean, if the work's being done and people are doing diversity, inclusion, work, doesn't matter if they're being paid or not.
Speaker 2:
Technically is the flip side, but yeah, that's a really interesting one. I'm very convicted. I think if you put a monetary thing on it first of all, it then doesn't become voluntary, right. It then becomes slightly not voluntary because you're volunteering your time to earn money. So it's.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and I'm really interested in what you said about your manager saying everyone knows you because of your work with the network groups, but we need to get you known for your actual job. I mean, that's a real challenge, particularly for women in organizations like building your network being known for your job. How has that changed your thinking? Are you now thinking, okay, well, how do I get known for my job as well as my volunteer work? Has that shifted anything?
Speaker 2:
This is a tricky one. This is a tricky one because actually, ironically, a couple of months ago I was told what was it? Someone said to me you need to be careful about your perception of you, or you need to be careful of the perception of you in the building, especially because you're a woman. Oh, and that was really, and I was told that by a woman, and actually I think this is actually very pertinent to this conversation because it's about because it's about the perception of me in the building for doing the work. That's not my day job and what it seemed to be. I mean to clarify I perform in my day job. Just for anyone out there who's wondering if I'm dallying around Like I've always performed in my day job, that's why I have the flexibility and I'm like really lucky to have an amazing team who then know that I do my day job and then this is something extra that I do to build, to build the inclusive environment for our team and the building.
Speaker 2:
But I just thought it was very interesting because I was thinking, if the perception of what I'm doing is a negative one, then actually maybe what I came to realise is actually it's not necessarily a me problem, it's. Someone has a problem with me, for maybe because they I don't know don't have the time to join this stuff, or they don't like that I'm doing it, or the perception is I'm not doing my day job or these things, which is interesting now having this open conversation on a podcast, but it is. I think it is interesting because, unfortunately, I say this as well. If I, let's say, I walked in wearing a pink dress or I walked in wearing a black suit, someone's going to have something to say whether I'm wearing the pink suit or the black suit or the pink dress sorry on the black suit, and it's so. You can't win. You can't win. No, if your head's up, if your head's down, your head's down, it just you can't win.
Speaker 1:
No, it's true. I was wondering if that comment was about the unpaid nature of the work and that women end up doing the bulk of unpaid work, both in households and in organisations. So you know, women end up organising the morning teas and getting the coffees and you know all of that kind of stuff. And I wondered whether there was a perception around women. You need to be really conscious what unpaid work you're doing and be conscious not to do some of it. And and I'm not saying don't continue with the ERG at all, but I'm wondering if that's where the the perceptions from. And we saw during COVID that women took on most of the caring work in organisations, most of the work around wellbeing, most of the work around diversity and inclusion. Yes, I wondered if there was a bit of that as well.
Speaker 2:
That's interesting. You made that comment because I spoke. I spoke to one of my girlfriends this morning and the conversation in the last two days that we've had she was like I'm just annoyed because I'm doing all the planning and he's not doing any of the planning and I'm just worried about it coming forward. And I'm laughing not because it's funny, I'm just laughing because I literally had that conversation today with all my girlfriends and I was like, yeah, but if you don't communicate these things, then they'll never know. But it's a massive problem, though you're right in terms of women doing all the unpaid, even the thinking unpaid.
Speaker 2:
Thinking about what's going to be for dinner, like what do we pack to go on holiday, or all this stuff.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, yeah, very challenging. I wanted to finish by talking about the course that I run. That you came on sort of late last year, so the course is six weeks to get started in diversity and inclusion, and when I wrote the course and had the idea about the course, it started from a place. It started in 2020, the idea because I saw that, you know, we had a black man get murdered by the police, by the in the US, by the people who were supposed to protect us, and as a result of that death, we saw organizations around the world go oh shit, we better do something about diversity and inclusion. We're not doing anything. And in Asia, where I was living at the time, I'd noticed companies appointing people into D&I roles, who were the volunteers, the people standing up for stuff in their organization and organizations. Going well, that person's a really great person and they're interested in this work. We'll put them in this D&I role.
Speaker 1:
We won't give them a budget, we won't give them any resources, we won't give them a team, but but, you know, we've done our thing, we've created a role, and what I saw was all these really amazing great people with not always the structures to go ahead and actually be successful. So, and I think what we're seeing now is organizations pulling back on D&I work, which is a real shame, anyway, but running this course, I've realized it's not just for people who have been shoved into D&I roles and are not sure where to go. I've had people in HR roles who have D&I as part of their role, and I think you, shivani, I think you're maybe only one of two people who've been in an ERG and wants to lead this work in their organizations, which is really, which is great. So I wondered for you what did you get out of coming on the course? What was, I guess, the takeaways?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, that's a super good question as well. So I think for me, and also the reason I wanted to like find a course like you were doing, is well, first of all, it's like it's I think it was we did six weeks, right, Was it six weeks? Yes, so we did six weeks, and coming from the ERG side, kind of like you're talking about from the HR side, there's more processes, formalities in place, but, like I was saying, we're building the plane as we're flying it. And so what was super helpful when I was doing the course with you was understanding the structure behind it, because you've obviously got that experience from being in an actual D&I role and being in HR and being on that side of the fence, and I've never had that experience before exposure to that side.
Speaker 2:
I've only got the we're making it up from the women, like the women's and the multicultural network side. So it was like a kind of rubric and structure to be able to follow and think okay, well, why are we doing this? What is the objective behind this? How do we formulate our thoughts in a coherent way rather than just loads of different kind of brain dumps on the page? Basically and I think that was the important part for me is understanding the processes that we can take and taking that into an ERG, because we're, you know, making it up as we go along. But it's helpful to have that structure that you gave us from the other side of the fence.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, thank you, and I think you were in a really great group because we had some D&I leaders, we had HR leaders and I didn't. When I first designed the course I didn't know if this would work, but I created these group coaching sessions not having any idea really are people going to get used out of it? And now I know they work really well because we bring different people together with different experiences and help each other with problems. And I wondered was I thought the group that you were in was particularly good.
Speaker 1:
I thought we had we had diversity of experiences and roles and stuff. Yeah yeah, and it seemed useful. But was it useful for you?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I think well, for me, what was also super helpful is because there's there's part of this when you're doing the ERG work or you're in an in an organization and you'll also understand this, or lots of people understand this You're kind of in an echo chamber, like, if things are maybe not going well, then you're kind of echoing the same thoughts within that team or whatever group you're in, and if things are going well, then it's also a bit of an echo chamber, but to be taken kind of out of that for that, you know the coaching calls and for the sessions that we did to be able to bring to fresh eyes.
Speaker 2:
Hey, I'm having this challenge, can you help me? You guys bought so many different perspectives from, like, your wealth of experience that I was like, oh, that's actually a really different way to think about it that I hadn't thought about before, because we all, we were all doing the course for the same reason right, to get better in this space, and you were obviously teaching us with your expertise. So I think that that, for me, was the interesting part to be able to like share it in a forum that was understood.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and I learned so much from everyone who comes on the course as well. It's, it's, it's one of those unintended consequences. I get that. Guess that, yeah, you're learning as you're as you're teaching and as you're part of a group, which, which I love, tell us about what you're planning for this year in your ERG. Have you got some cool stuff planned? What are you? What are you looking forward to?
Speaker 2:
What we're actually also doing, because we've got the ERGs, like the multicultural ERGs in the UK, in Ireland, south Africa, and I think we might be launching in some other countries Watch the space. So we want to do more things together, which means obviously then it means we have to do them online, because we're across loads of different countries. But I think if we can do more things together and collaboratively, it also then means that we're doing it for, like, the wider borders, if that makes sense, and then we bring in different experiences, not just Luxembourg. We bring in Ireland's perspective we have. We have we go outside the bubble, because sometimes Luxembourg can be a bit of a bubble because it's such a small country, and so we're going to do, you know, collaborate with the other networks globally as well as kind of that more education piece.
Speaker 2:
It's okay, we will try and bring fun to it, but it's more around. Okay, how do we really tackle these, the biases that we have here, and how do we do it in a not invasive way? Yeah, because it's difficult. We can't just say to someone you've got a bias, let's fix it, because it doesn't work like that.
Speaker 1:
No, I think that's such a valuable thing to do, and I I saw it with a black employees group out of the US again that I was involved with, and they decided they wanted to move into South Africa and create a group there, and then the executive sponsor of the group said oh, what about Australia? What about Asia? We should have a black employees group in Asia. And of course, on the surface that sounded like a good idea, but it was a great learning for the people in the group in the US, our executive teams, about learning from each other and and even though black and brown people experience discrimination in all of those markets and experience common things, like you know lower health outcomes, lower education outcomes, you know.
Speaker 1:
Just, you know, more higher custody, higher numbers of people in custody, you know, in jails, even though some of those outcomes were similar, the, the experiences and the, the challenges were quite different, and so I think I love that you're thinking about doing stuff to you know together and collaborating across different countries, because I think that will bring more learning again. Yeah, really cool. Thank you so much for talking to me, shivani. It's been. I'm so glad to know you first, first off, and I love hearing about the work you're doing. I love seeing what you're doing on LinkedIn at Vodafone, so thank you and keep doing it.
Speaker 2:
Well, thank you for having me and letting me, letting me share and giving me the platform and anyone who is listening. If you wanted the course, I definitely would recommend it.
