Helping people gain a sense of belonging and grow to be a good ally is vital to a successful diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) and HR strategy. PwC believes its inclusion networks provide a path to educating people on the challenges of underrepresented groups, while also supporting invidivuals, so they can bring their whole selves to work.
Christine del Rosario, Trust Solutions Partner and a leader of the Pan Asian Community Inclusion Network Leader for PwC, recently talked to HR Exchange Network about how to ensure these groups are successful and promote a healthy workplace.
HREN: What are inclusion networks?
CD: The inclusion networks focus on the culture of belonging, which is pretty central to our strategy. What we have done over the years is create 11 inclusion networks. We use those groups to help execute on our strategy.
- Abilities and Allies Inclusion Network (A community that supports those with disabilities and caregivers)
- Black Inclusion Network
- Environmental Inclusion Network
- Inter-Belief Inclusion Network (a community that brings together people of faith with Christian, Hindu, Jewish and Muslim subchapters)
- Latino Inclusion Network
- Pan Asian Community Inclusion Network
- Parenting Inclusion Network
- Shine Inclusion Network (a community that supports LGBTQ+ individuals)
- Veterans Affinity Network
- Women in Technology Inclusion Network
- Women’s Inclusion Network
We have a good number of people engaged in those groups. They help us with [creating] the culture of belonging, and they also really focus on allyship and helping build connections to support members of our community. We encourage people to join them and invest in making those personal connections and also for professional development. We have different pillars within those networks that help us drive our strategy. But a lot of it is also focused on building awareness. What we try to do is encourage folks to join different inclusion networks, and really try to emphasize how to put yourself in someone else's shoes. One thing I advocate for all the time is to try to join an inclusion network [outside your identity], so you get to experience what it feels like to be different or the one who is different in that group in the hope that you would be more empathetic to others who often find themselves in those situations.
HREN: How are inclusion networks different from Employee Resource Groups (ERGs)?
CD: Inclusion networks go beyond your traditional ERG model, because they try to offer this dynamic community. We talk a lot about intersectionality collaboration. I already touched on the allyship element earlier, but I feel like intersectionality comes up quite a bit. People get excited about that, because they're like, ‘You know, there's one element of me, but that's just one. And there's there are also these other elements.’ So, the inclusion networks allow us to focus on that intersectionality, and we also do collaboration between the inclusion network, so that helps with that. I'll give you an example, for one where we do small connectivity events for our inclusion networks, where there would be a host and then a small group, which allows you to actually facilitate a more meaningful relationship with individuals. There are times when we have partners host these events, and for the allies in the group, who might not know the language of the ethnic-focus or whatever it is may learn something.
INTERVIEW: DEIB - Making Inclusion a Top Priority
When I debrief with them, it's also a great learning experience. We try to also educate the majority on some of these things, even if they're not the majority. If it’s a veteran’s event, you can understand what it means for that person to have gone through that. It just gives you a very different perspective of their experience. There’s the experience of being empathetic to someone else's experience, and then you have a personal relationship and you hear their background. I think that's one of the most powerful things. This isn’t an ERG because you get to know more people and hear from them.
HREN: How have these inclusion networks been successful?
CD: We look at how we execute on those 11 across 60-plus offices in the United States. And we look at executing both virtual and in-person connectivity through those events, which help lift a feeling of belonging, the community, the diversity, We held some during COVID, when we couldn't have in-person connectivity, which a lot of people really wanted. Even through the virtual ones, we get so much feedback after those sessions. People say, ’It just felt so nice to feel that you're part of a community.’
Even after some of the hate issues that we have faced, we would host an event and have 800 people sitting on it. The feedback we received afterward with the participants saying how much better they felt just by being part of that bigger community [demonstrates success]. These groups and activities help us drive the connectivity, increase social interactions, learning for professional development, as well. We focus on those things, and we try to do it depending on your experience level.
The other way that it's successful is we try to get feedback from our members when we are figuring out how we're going to execute our strategy. We have a strategy that's our north star, but how are we going to execute it? Sometimes it's the tougher part. We get feedback from our members on how we might want to execute the strategy or what's important to them.
When we execute our strategy, and so, like, I'll give you an example that has come up a couple of times in terms of when we ask for feedback from our people. One issue that came up is how to make sure you are prepared as you transition into a new role, or you're trying to get promoted…Or how do you develop your leadership so that people see you in a different light and can then view you as being ready for promotion to the next level?
Our team then went away and started to think through how we can come up with a program that will help us address this concern. We put together a program that we executed, in which we actually got executive coaches for those ready for promotion. The feedback on that has also been positive. So we're trying to tailor those experiences based on what we hear from our people.
HREN: What are some of the ways that you think employers are actually getting inclusion wrong?
CD: Our membership has gone up from 15,000 to 20,000 in the last year. So for us, having first that base to start with is good. That's one-third of our workforce. So for us, the starting point is that we are able to touch a lot of people. We think that we focus on how you advance whatever your initiatives are by listening and looking for gaps and areas to improve and how you try to drive some of those initiatives that you want. The thing that I think is a barrier for many is not getting feedback across the different levels of the organization and implementing based on those results. You can come up with a strategy at a high level, and then you execute on that. But if that doesn't address the needs of the different individuals, based on their experiences and challenges, you can’t tailor programs that will help you address these to be on a more effective level.
The other problem is failing to get leadership support. Also, getting support from the one level below executive leadership or not getting active engagement at that level is where a lot of the challenges come from. You'll often hear people say this as a community, maybe the less-tenured people want to connect. But if they don't see the more senior folks be engaged, then they're trying to figure out how much time this should really be part of their work. We tell them all the time that being able to feel that you belong is very much an important part of what they do day-to-day. The networking and the relationship building are as important as anything we do as part of our jobs.
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