Barcelona, Spain July 9th, 2020: Worldsensing is continuing to push for greater diversity within the workplace, going significantly beyond its statutory duties relating to matters such as gender equality. The company has launched a number of diversity-related initiatives under the auspices of its diversity team, which includes eight employees from right across the business.
The team aims to help Worldsensing iron out inequalities, prevent discrimination, protect against abuse, promote equal opportunities and foster a supportive and motivating workplace environment. One of its most important initiatives so far is a confidential whistleblowing service called Tell.Me. The Tell.Me portal, hosted on Worldsensing’s intranet, allows employees to send anonymous messages to a three-person complaints evaluation team consisting of director of people operations
Gènia Bozzo, head of legal affairs Paco Hernandez and Ferran Álvarez of the diversity team.
This trio reviews anonymous feedback to see if it can lead to better diversity and human resources policies or indicate potential legal problems that need addressing. Whistleblowers can choose to exclude one of the evaluation team members from receiving a message, for enhanced confidentiality. Any feedback that may have legal ramifications is escalated to the board and acted on within 48 hours.
Inclusive language guide
Alongside Tell.Me, Worldsensing has introduced an inclusive language guide that aims to help employees take cultural and gender-related sensitivities into account within the company’s written and visual communications. Allied to this, the diversity team is working on a code of conduct for oral communications. Communication is an important challenge for Worldsensing since the company employs staff from across more than 20 nationalities.
Finally, the diversity team has provided specialist management training and is looking to roll out similar courses across the whole company. Diversity team member Anna Antó Gilabert said encouraging diversity was important in helping Worldsensing staff to enjoy a wide range of perspectives, which can help improve the company’s ability to solve problems.
This echoes studies that have shown that, for instance, inclusive teams make better business decisions 87% of the time and drive decision making twice as quickly and with half the meetings of less diverse counterparts. Tapping into this source of competitive advantage is a major opportunity for Worldsensing, which like other engineering and technology firms faces a lack of diversity in key areas of the business, such as product development and sales.
Diverse staff mix
The company has already achieved an enviably diverse staff mix in certain areas and is working to improve matters across the board. Although some activities have been put on hold during the coronavirus emergency, there are plans to continue developing the diversity agenda when normal working conditions return.
Importantly, diversity team secretary Denis Guilhot says there is broad management support for the initiatives underway. Guilhot had an early introduction to the value of diversity. When he was growing up in France, his mother was involved in the feminist movement. Then he became a physicist and “lived a lack of diversity most of my adult life,” he said. “For me it has always been beneficial, but at the same time is lacking in lots of situations.”