Interview with Professionals

Interview with a professional

How do you or your company address and encourage diversity and inclusion in the workplace?

WISI is an equal opportunities employer. Diversity equity and inclusion (DEI) is crucial for our organization to ensure a positive employee experience and to achieve optimum employee engagement.

Now more than ever DEI is a key competitive strength for any business. While diversity represents the combination of people we have in our workforce, inclusion speaks to how well we function as a team and the way in which each individual’s contribution is valued. I believe that diversity, equity and inclusion work hand in hand so fostering a culture of belonging and inclusion allows us to embrace our differences or rather our uniqueness. We have employees from different cultures, backgrounds, religions, ages, races, sexuality, welcome to bring their game and join our team.

There are a lot of things to consider when creating, maintaining and improving diversity and inclusion in the workplace from the gender-neutral language in job postings, ‘culture encourage innovation and boost productivity and we can only truly do that through the integration of people.

How has diversity and inclusion changed in the past twenty years? With the

My dad enjoyed history and I remember reading a book about World War II. Believe it or not, diversity in the workplace goes back as far as that time. Many men were carrying out their military service so it opened up the workforce for women to enter and many did. But even in the following decades, women had a hard time taking an active role in the workplace and it wasn’t until the late 80s or 90s that women began entering the workforce more that diversity in the workplace could bring. For example, different age groups were brought together which challenged the traditional norms (from the younger generation) but they

brought a heightened sense of awareness about diversity. It’s made us more aware in terms of celebrating our differences and holding each other accountable for our actions but also in educating us about different cultures, habits and attitudes and how unique the world in which we live is.

With the increase in remote work and online meetings, how do you maintain and foster company culture? Will there be a change as we move back to work in person?

how we interact with one another. It’s what drives and motivates our employees, it’s our brand narrative and overall ethos, it’s basically our DNA and I’m very passionate about it. workforce but also for opportunities and growth. Fortunately, WISI is strong strategically and we are agile, which allows us to adapt to dynamic environments pretty quickly. Our number one concern at that time was to protect the health and wellbeing of our employees and their families, so even before it had been declared a pandemic, we agreed unilaterally to encourage everyone to now work from home. This coupled with a constant communication stream and support in the form of tools and stipends made it clear that we were in this for the long haul together, and no-one should be worrying about their jobs. The pandemic showed how strong and resilient we were as a team and it brought us closer together. It fostered belonging and inclusion to unify the company by taking care of our people through compassionate acts. Along with all of that, hiring had (and continues to be) at an all-time high over the past year so maintaining our culture with that level of growth during a pandemic required a lot of effort. It created new challenges for onboarding, team collaboration/connectivity, but also personally, physically and mentally; but we all worked together and have come out the other side even stronger.

Another challenge with growing during a pandemic is that probably more than half of once would be seen as the norm to walk over to someone’s desk, going to grab a coffee or catching up by the watercooler was no longer the case. We had to think of new ways to do things such as virtual lunches, lunch and learns, daily stand-ups etc. That in itself can etc. There’s no hiding from some of these situations so it allowed us to learn more about one another, revealing things we had in common and we were able to engage more authentically and with compassion. We also meet weekly on Friday for a virtual companywide meeting that keeps us all connected to one another and allows us to stay up to date on important company news as well as professional and personal achievements. I also conduct regular check-ins with every employee.

With regards to the question ‘will there be a change as we move back to work in person? I think the ‘new normal in terms of work practices will probably stay for many. For us, I can projects, to discuss strategy etc. That’s a new chapter to write about so watch this space!

Is there anything else you would like to tell our audience?

Our journey isn’t over and we may need to pivot again at some point so don’t worry if you don’t have all the answers. None of us do! We all need a helping hand at some point so feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn if you’d like to talk. I’m also intrigued as to what great things other companies are doing right now. Let’s learn from each other. Reach out if you’d like to learn more about what we do here at WISI and also check our career opportunities here at WISI: https://wisi.tv/about/careers