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Mercer senior principal, Anne Le Blanc joined HR Leader’s roundtable on 6 October to discuss diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). She outlined Mercer’s thoughts on DEI, tips to help other organisations get it right, and why offering remote working is important.
Shandel McAuliffe, editor at HR Leader: “How is Mercer promoting DEI?”
Ms Le Blanc: “DEI is really close to our heart in terms of helping our clients, but we’re also really proactive within our own company as well… How do we make sure that we are more inclusive for our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander candidates to get into a graduate program? Because the hurdles are so high but they’re unattainable. So, how do we change that, the ‘hurdling’, to be much more inclusive, to enable a greater intake?”
She continued: “That also applies to the gender balance, not necessarily in terms of changing those hurdles, but really being more meaningful around the targets that we’re setting.”
“[We’re] setting the targets from a gender perspective, but also really challenging the norms and the traditions around what the hurdles are... the concept of innovation and really needing to think differently,” said Ms Le Blanc.
Editor: “What advice would you give to businesses to be more inclusive?”
Ms Le Blanc: “Mercer and the World Economic Forum partnered together to write The Good Work [Framework]. They are five standards that have been designed. But in one of those standards, around diversity, equity, inclusion, out of the survey and the research … only 28 per cent of companies have a diversity and inclusion strategy, and only 33 per cent of executives [have] the metrics tied into their pay.”
Ms Le Blanc added: “If we really want to keep moving that needle … then I would encourage organisations to understand and firstly establish, do they have a DEI strategy, what it is, and if they don’t, certainly make a start. It’s progress over perfection, make a start.”
Editor: “What could Australia be doing better in DEI?”
Ms Le Blanc: “Skills is definitely the number one priority for HR and for executives.”
So, I think that is really the big push forward, is skilling, reskilling and upskilling, giving people an opportunity to switch careers mid-career, but do that through the lens of DEI. So really think about how we [can] do this in a really inclusive way and how do we bring people in with us?”
Editor: “Why is offering remote working important?”
Ms Le Blanc: “Our research [says] that six out of 10 people will stay or join a company that has hybrid or remote or flexible working options. That’s a pretty big enticement for companies to step up to that plate, to be able to cater for all needs across the various different parts of our communities, because we are a collection of communities inside those organisations.”
The transcript of this roundtable episode, when quoted above, was slightly edited for publishing purposes. The full conversation from the event is at the link below.
RELATED TERMS
The practice of actively seeking, locating, and employing people for a certain position or career in a corporation is known as recruitment.
Professionals can use remote work as a working method to do business away from a regular office setting. It is predicated on the idea that work need not be carried out in a certain location to be successful.
Jack Campbell
Jack is the editor at HR Leader.
