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Welcome to Mercer's podcast series on the new shape of work. I'm Kate Bravery, Mercer's Advisory Insight Leader. And today, we'll be talking about the criticality of driving Diversity, Equity, Inclusion into a business's transformation agenda or DEI for short. This is a topic that has become absolutely critical coming out of this pandemic period, where, I think, we've all seen how pay, career, and health equity have been laid bare.

Today, I'm talking to leaders at Novo Nordisk, a global healthcare innovator, who really has been focused on making this type of transformation a priority. Welcome, Heidi Dahl, Head of Digital, Data, and IT, P&O Business Partnering, and Luigi Gagliardi, who heads up Manufacturing IT. Wonderful to have you join us today.

Thanks for having us.

Yeah, thank you.

Well, I've really been looking forward to today's conversation. And for our listeners, if you're not familiar with Novo Nordisk, they're a global organization working to defeat diabetes and other serious chronic diseases, with, I believe, more than 55,000 employees across 80 offices. So maybe we can start with some of the work that you've been doing around DEI. I know that's been your mission for the last couple of years. And I'd love to hear what was the catalyst for being very intentional about weaving that D&I agenda into your transformation plans.

Yeah, that's a-- it's a really interesting question, this one. And as you can see, also in our mission, we tend to want to do what is the right thing. And this is another example, this DEI journey. It started for-- maybe for the same thing. It is the right thing to do. And when we see something that is the right thing to do, we tend to want to do it. And that's the first thing.

But if I may jump one second into actually the business value of it, which is also in a way a driver, we have been running a cultural transformation in general for a little while. That cultural transformation triggered some change in culture in itself. It triggered a dialing up on a learning culture. It triggered to remove-- reduce our risk adversity and so forth.

Then we did steps into becoming more agile. And well, that opened up for a different type of people who we wanted to join our company. And that becomes then a trigger point for thinking, OK, if we want all these people, then we also need to create a culture where this is actually a good place to be for all these diverse people.

I like it. I love the fact that it's tied into your business agenda, but also that focus on the future, what talent we want today, rather than just the time we have at the current time. And then, Melissa, we would love to hear, if you don't mind, just how you define diversity, equity, inclusion, and maybe some of the pillars of what was on your program that you were driving.

Yeah, we can. Maybe I should start this about that, of course, we represent the IT organization in [INAUDIBLE]. So it's critical for us when we are focusing on IT talents, how to actually meet their needs, because, as you know, the market is simply burning. And--

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

Absolutely, yeah.

IT talent is really short at market. And they won the war for talent-- so these talents. So instead of being so self-focused, as I would say that we have been in Novo Nordisk beforehand, we now have to look at their needs, definitely.

And we are competing with many other organizations as digital is the kind of area-- era we are living in right now. And we are competing with small startups. We are competing with some of the huge IT giants. So we really had to challenge our, I would say, by nature, more conservative culture and transform it into be a more modern culture. And it calls for this D&I understanding, as you said.

So some of the things we have done is to be really, really focused of the-- of developing our managers, making sure that they are very, very high on interpersonal intelligence and also on self-awareness. This is about really having focus on coaching and developing the employees, offering them opportunities based on potentials, their interests, and aspiration, and not that much based on who you know and who looks like them as beforehand. So this is about really also knowing your own biases. And to cater for all these many different needs, now we are a more global and international organization [INAUDIBLE].

We also had to rethink a lot of our routines when it comes to behavior. So this is about what do we celebrate, how do we communicate, what do we offer, and so forth. And we also had to figure out this about IT talents. And think it was the corona who actually taught us this, is that being an IT, you can work from everywhere anytime. So we really had to figure out how can we change our terms, conditions. So this flexibility is increased.

It's a little bit cumbersome, I would say, because of different requirements, from tax and all these matters. But this is about really increasing the flexibility to meet the needs of the talent. It's one of the most important things, I would say. Then, of course, there's the structural part. I continue for long-- I can continue very long, Kate. So you better stop me even.

No, I love it. I'm taking notes here. One thing that's striking me as I'm listening to you is your concept of diversity, equity, inclusion is very expansive because it includes flexible working. It includes reskilling, upskilling. It includes the EVP.

And I'm just sitting here thinking how much that resonates with the work that we've been doing with the World Economic Forum on good work. Because these are absolutely all the areas that we've made progress on. Now, please go ahead. I think we're all fascinated to learn about the actual program and also maybe what you learned about what makes IT talent thrive. Because I think we're all interested in acquiring them.

So I don't want to tell anything because we would like to keep them as well, but no. But IT talents, they really want to make a difference. And they want impact. I think, actually, all we want that. It's not the only IT talents. But this is about IT things that they are so much welcomed everywhere.

So it's about creating a flat organizational structure, where they actually have the opportunity to speak up, being heard, being developed, and also impacting the business. It's very, very important. We have moved into this agile way of working, which is based on the SAFe methodology. And it actually creates these teams which are driving the agenda, more or less, on their own, as long as it's in the same direction as our strategy. So this flat organizational design-- what do we call it, Luigi? Self-managed teams?

Yeah.

It makes a huge difference for the [INAUDIBLE] in their flexibility. I have told you about that. Then it's a development. That's one of the key things.

I think beforehand, we talked a lot about retaining people. Now we talk about developing people. And that's it. Because if you develop your people, give them tons of opportunities, exciting, stretched tasks, and so forth, they will stay. So we don't need to talk about--

Absolutely.

--payment as such. We need to talk about development. So that's also one of the focuses that this-- that our managers are to be talent builders. That's really, really important to cater for the needs of the IT talents.

And the great thing about all these things that you're saying is, unfortunately or fortunately, we are never done with this. Because the more we go into opening up for these possibilities, the more we see how they impact people, the more we get yet another idea, and then another one, and then another one. So these occur constantly. We're even looking for cases like people pick their own managers now, just so you know.

I know. I have been involved.

Well, Heidi and Luigi, listening to this, this is a really broad agenda that you are driving. And I know that over the last year and a half, you've been pulling all these levers at once. I'd be curious to know what are some of the pain points in bringing this transformation, particularly culturally? You threw a lot of things out there, like in the structures, ensuring how agile ways are working, more flexibility, more remote workers, getting managers to be talent builders. What's the big change?

I think we will have the 100% right answer only when history has passed in a few years. But if I have to give my bet now, one of the very difficult thing I've encountered, and think is it's a common problem with everybody who wants to start this type of journey, is, first of all, the acceptance that we have a problem. Most of us think, yeah, the diversity and inclusion. Yeah, we're good.

And then you find a lot of numbers that explains why you may have a problem, but maybe not. And then you don't do anything. And you start seeing this as someone else's problem. I think what we did very deliberately but has been a journey together with our managers is just saying, we do have a problem. We do. Even if we don't see it now, we do have it.

And then you start seeing a lot. But this has resistance a little bit in the organization at the beginning. And this was one pain point, I would say. And then--

Luigi, can you just pause a little there? That is a problem that we've heard a lot about. And I think particularly where we've got tough times, this sometimes isn't the biggest priority. What data or what influencing techniques did you use to rise this up the priority list?

Maybe I should try to answer that because we have looked at data just about the pay equity, promotion, the talent development, who is nominated to the different programs, what is the bonus distribution, how does it look like, what is the recruitment, how is the gender diversity, and all this, which actually showcases that we are biased, and that we have tons of missed opportunities. And it calls for actions.

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I love that point about missed opportunities because I-- there is some things that become very transparent when you do the pay and promotion equity and the internal labor flow. But also, some of this just isn't transparent. Because you're right, it's missed opportunities. Fascinating. Any other pain points that you wanted to flag or you think would be useful to those listening in today?

A pain point that we-- I think we overcame almost by luck, I would say, if she would-- if we did not do this as a holistic exercise together with the cultural transformation, the journey into agile, the acquisition of new talents, the work on finding the gender balance into the management team, all this together, if we didn't do all this together, it would not have worked. I cannot imagine a situation where without starting a cultural transformation, without triggering this talent need that are different we would have succeeded with that.

Because then you don't create a burning platform. You don't see why this is important and so forth and so forth. And of course, getting that understanding from all the leaders that those things together matters, and that's why we're succeeding, it took a little bit of time. That was a pain point.

Yes, I agree. And if I should add, I think not a pain point, but what-- but a learning which really made a difference was two years ago or so, we mostly talked about diversity. And talking about diversity, it actually only create noise, to be honest, because it becomes very gender-focused or non-local, local-focused and so because we need these data.

But looking into our business need and what it called for, it was more just about that we need talent from all over the world. We cannot just hire from headquarter in Denmark, where we are located. So it actually called for an inclusive environment.

So we changed our storytelling about that, that this was much more about inclusion, not diversity. Because inclusion will bring diversity. And then, of course, it was our task to bring in equity and educate all managers and also some of the employees as well to actually make sure that we then use all the opportunities we have in our organization to actually provide opportunities to everyone and have this inclusive environment.

I'm actually always keen that diverse teams without inclusion and equity, it's actually a horrible-- I think that we-- now science says that and proves with data. And we found out very quickly [AUDIO OUT]

Burning comments there about changing the stories that you tell. I think that can be just a powerful motivator. And it sounds like the business transformation agenda, the cultural transformation were really wedded together, which gave you that catalyst. Any other bits of advice for people who are embarking on this journey or any other pillars of that transformation journey that are [INAUDIBLE] you'd like to share?

I think we have plenty. I would like to highlight a game changer on our journey. That was actually understanding this about being privileged and being very consciously about what kind of opportunities you create in your organization, especially for those groups who are minorities, you can say, and who are-- due to history and biases simply do not get these opportunities as the more privileged people they do, despite that they are just as qualified as everyone else. I think that was a game changer.

Totally.

Suddenly, we had a language. So we were able to speak about this, which just isn't fair, right?

Totally. One of those [INAUDIBLE].

Yes.

I found out that I was biased. If you ask me that-- and privileged and was asking me for that, I would say no, I am.

So it sounds like there's a lot of discovery at the business level, but also discovery just at the individual level.

Definitely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Then maybe another advice I would give is, this cannot-- as mentioned, this should never be only a number game. Start it and only leave it at the number game, forget it. There's going to-- not going to be any progress.

It works if it is combined with the cultural transformation, with this privileged-- understanding of the privileges and the biases and so on. And then it doesn't happen if the leaders at all level are not onboarded into the storyline, don't believe in that, they're not authentically participating to the big change that we are giving.

It's like DEI, it could very well have become the flavor of the month or the flavor of the year. And that would be such a mistake-- all these lost opportunities again. So we realized that for the managers to really act upon this and really own it, as Luigi says, we simply had to educate them. Because you cannot work with DEI if you don't understand what is microaggressions, what does privilege mean, what is the typical bias we all have, what is my own biases.

So it's so important, if you are to change this agenda, that the managers-- because they are role models. And they are the ones who sets the direction for the teams as well. They really need to understand at a more deep-- deeper level--

Definitely.

--you can say, and believe in it if you are to move the needle here.

Sounds like you introduced a whole new language, not only where you said, we can hire talents from anywhere in the world with different cultural backgrounds and working with them across digital temporal boundaries, we also need to introduce this new language, which will help with the thinking around inclusivity. I'd be curious to know, how did you scale that? You're a large organization. You've got managers with a range of backgrounds and, certainly, a range of biases. How did you get that embedded into the fabric?

I can start.

Yeah, go ahead.

You're thinking. I can see Luigi [INAUDIBLE].

We baked it--

Is that a good habit?

It's a good habit.

We baked it into all activities we had along the year. But every time we had a management meeting, there was DEI on the agenda, somehow. Maybe we didn't say the word "DEI," but we baked it in. So it was when we had leadership summits. It was when we had leadership timeout. It was put into when we run the bonus process, the salary process. In all [AUDIO OUT], it was baked into it.

And then people have to see that we mean it. And then situations like salary gap, then every time we talk about salary adjustments, every time we make something real that moves the needle to where we're supposed to be. Every time we hire a person, we make it so complicated to hire without a process that is open and transparent and so on. Even in the most unefficient, illogic, sometimes in a way. We mean it so much that we bring it to the-- to that level. And then people understand.

Yeah, it's about equal opportunity. So again, even though that some people think, oh, no, we know who should be-- have this position, no, you don't know that it was the best person. We need to be fair and look outside as well.

Well, it comes back to some of the comments you were making earlier, Heidi, about what digital talent want, which I know was a critical priority for you, and this concept of democratized access to opportunities. Any opportunity in the firm really feeds through in your thinking. Fascinating. But you just said something there that got me thinking.

There has been a debate about whether DEI is a separate function, whether it's part of a broader ESG agenda, whether actually it's better served when it's infused toward HR processes, all throughout the business, that it's on managers' scorecards. And there are-- these are different approaches, I think, to getting to the end goal of building a more inclusive and equitable work world for our workers. I'd be interested, actually, to hear from either of you. What's your thoughts on that? How did that work within your organization from global functions and local operations?

I mean, well, it's a question that can be answered, of course, with a classic "depends." It depends on the stage of the organization, depend on the state of the corporation, the culture, and so forth. I wouldn't exclude that it would be very useful to have a general-- an organizational-- a centralized group of people who drives the agenda, somehow, depending from where the state of the company is.

But I cannot see that being put in operation and working if this is not all the way down into each and every of the big areas like, for example, IT in our case, embedded into the management, embedded into the P&L function of the organization itself. Because that's a very peculiar thing of each organization to decide how to drive it, when to drive it. So again, a good mix, as always, good. Centrally driven function, probably yes. But I cannot see a world where this is not done locally in each of the firms as well. I don't know, Heidi, what do you think?

No, no, well, I totally agree in it. And then I think, again, due to maturity, you can say then right now, we need KVIs. And of course, they're so irritating. But again, they help us drive the agenda right now.

I hope that we will get rid of it very soon. But right now, it's needed simply to showcase if we are progressing or not. And you can say, again, especially in the IT community, where, I would say the majority is often men, it does [INAUDIBLE]. It is difficult to attract women. And we need to really focus on that to build pipelines--

Open a factory.

No, that's your area. But [AUDIO OUT] because we can talk about it. We can act upon and so. But we also need to track it right now.

[INAUDIBLE] is then that people have to see both of us together. They have to see that there is a professional help on the DEI agenda. But they have to see me as a leader of the actual teams and so on that wants this happen-- that wants this to happen. Then they get it. Then it's something that people can follow. Otherwise, it will be just another [INAUDIBLE].

Heidi, I think you gave us some great examples of what Luigi was saying here with regard to it depends on that level of maturity. And I think we're already getting a bit of a sense of where you are in your journey and where you hope to go. I think in the current world that we are, a lot of people talk about trust and accountability. Trust needs to be two way. But sometimes the accountability is lacking.

And as we start to move to more diverse teams, some of which are remote, we get a lot of metrics and a lot of goals. But sometimes, whether we uphold those goals, whether we do mention it on every meeting, whether we do have diverse slates, that side, I know many of our clients have had difficulty driving through. And I wonder if that's been a discussion you've had, and if you had any insights there.

It has been a discussion if we should have the-- let's call it KVIs or goals at individual level. But we haven't done it because we believe in dialogue. And we believe in education. So we are still trying our best to move the needle with those tools, you can say.

So we are trying to create an environment where we can talk about how come isn't it that your team-- why isn't anything changing? How can we help you? What is the challenges you are seeing? So right now, we are not like-- and I'll use the word "punish."

We do not punish those who don't move the knees because there can't be things which makes it complicated for the person to actually, let's say, hire women or have pay equity and so fair. So it-- we are trying our best to show people that we trust them, and we trust that they are trying their best to do this. And then we ask if we can help them.

Let me make an example-- the salary gap. We need to fix the salary gap. Do I give a measure or a KPI to the performance metric to my direct reports or direct reports to come to have a fully flat target? No, I don't.

But do I ask when they come up with their salary adjustment Excel? Do I ask them, what have you done there? Are you even? Yes or no? And if no, well, let's look at what we can do and so forth and so. Then it happens without needing to do-- to mitigate.

And I was just remembering. One of the other things we have done is that based on all these masterclasses and coaching circles we have had with the managers, they have learned a lot about themselves, knowing their own bias. So we have asked them to create their own action plan.

What is it I am to change? How do I need to act going forward? And we have asked them to use that when they have their one-on-ones with their managers. So that's a way of having dialogue. So let me [INAUDIBLE] that we are still progressing.

I love the way you couched it as part of a longer-term-- as you mentioned earlier that with a never-ending cultural transformation and the learning component for people that have been on this journey with you is obviously high. And I think it's fascinating the way that you've embedded that responsibility for them to take action and to move the needle. Heidi, you mentioned a few times about women in tech. And I'm wondering if we've got a few minutes maybe just to go there. What has enabled you to attract more women into your organization? Any insights that you can share there?

We are working a lot actually with the employer branding, focusing on that segment and being quite transparent about it. And it's not like-- that the men population, they are losing anything or whatever, because they are still here. And they are doing great. But we simply need to give them an opportunity to be more visible into our organization.

So it's about employer branding. It's about sourcing for them. So that's about the attracting. And then we are working with the neutral [INAUDIBLE] job ads also to try to attract the-- all genders, no matter what, because we can't see when it comes to IT, the words being used in job ads are often a little bit what we call masculine. [INAUDIBLE].

There was another huh. My goodness. [AUDIO OUT]

But then it's another thing that until it surfaced, it's actually [INAUDIBLE].

And one more thing, that that's mostly about attracting new joiners. Internally, we're also working, again, with the segment women. So we have talent development programs for our high potentials women. We have had 27 women participating in 1 and 1/2 year long development program, also just giving them a lot of different opportunities to be seen, heard, and accelerate their development.

[INAUDIBLE]

I think those mantras of being seen, heard, and democratized access, really, are a thread that goes through a lot of what you're saying there. And one last technical question from me. And then we will have to close. And the other one that you talked about right at the beginning was flexible working.

You said, we need to get a lot more flexible in how we hire talent, particularly IT talent, that potentially could be based anywhere on the-- in the world. It's always such a hot topic. I know we weren't planning to chat on it today. But I'd just love to hear your thoughts around how best to drive that change and anything that you can share about your current flexible working policies.

Well, we have the flexible working. So it means you can work from home, from your holiday house or whatsoever. And we have the 21 global hubs, where you can also be working out of. It doesn't mean that you need to be present in one of the global hubs. You're just hired from that hub. So 21 hubs--

Big cities of the world.

Yeah, working-- and what else do we have? Yeah, that we have-- flexibility is not only about where you work from. It's also if you want to work part-time. Actually, we have the opportunity where two persons, they can split a job. And we have the-- that you can work 9 out of 10 working days. So we have a lot of different ways of working here.

And supported by the fact that we're a global organization, we are also establishing global roles in local places. For example, if we have a presence in a factory in the middle of Brazil, then we allow for a person that is sitting there to have a role at global level. In that way, the possibilities becomes really, really many.

Absolutely. Again, I think very much ties into that philosophical red thread coming through about not just democratizing access to opportunity, but saying to people that opportunity can look very different, depending where you are. And nothing is precluded. Compressed workweeks, job sharing, [INAUDIBLE] I'm getting pretty excited about all the myriad of different opportunities that you have and just a very expansive view of what you mean by DEI.

And maybe as we close out, we can zoom forward. Clearly, you've had a very big change journey over the last year and a half. What does the next year and a half look like? What are some of the next frontiers for you in driving DEI into transformation?

Well, you can say that this journey we've had by now, it was demanded by business, also people, of course, because that was the-- what was happening in the society as such. But in our organization, it was a top-down-inspired approach. So right now, we're-- we want to complement that by making it a bottom-up approach.

So we have these employee network groups now, where the-- they own the agenda going forward. And then we simply just support it with whatever they need. Of course, it needs to be a little bit realistic as well. But just about that we can imagine what they need. We can't. So now we actually involve them to own the agenda together with us.

And then there is a phase after that one. I'm looking forward to the phase that you just mentioned. I'm also looking forward to the one after that, which is when this is not even a topic. That it becomes so much embedded into the culture that we stop talking about that because it's obvious.

And I think we will stop because we can see on data that the group of our managers, they've become more and more diverse. And they will definitely have an eye on creating inclusive and fair work environment. So suddenly, it will not be something we talk about. It will just happen.

I have a sneaky suspicion that both of you, in one guise or another, will always be talking about this. And your agenda to making sure that DEI is business as usual will continue. Heidi and Luigi, thank you so much for sharing all your insights and learnings today.

I won't do it justice in my summer. But some of the ones that really registered for me was that we need to do what's right. Absolutely. But we've got to marry it with business values and those imperatives that get everybody focused on it.

We need to move from a self-focus on what we mean on D&I to a talent focus-- what's important to not just the current talent, but future talent we want to attract. And as part of that, we need to make sure that we raise the insight and awareness of the managers, give them a new language around microaggressions, biases, privilege, but also encourage them to be talent builders. A big part of that transition is making sure that we highlight that we have a problem, even if it's not transparent, because of the missed opportunities by not having diverse representation or inclusive work culture.

And I liked your comment, Luigi, about, we've got to make sure that we don't just cling to what we report on, which is kind of historical. But we look forward about how to build that inclusivity. And the big red thread, which I've mentioned many times, is it's very clear that at an individual level and at an organization level, this was just a big learning journey. And I love the fact that--

Very true.

--all your metrics is based on making progress and moving in the right direction, which is really exciting. I cannot wait to see what is the next chapter. Maybe you'll do the honor in coming back when we do get closer to it maybe not being a topic but is embedded in the organization. But it's been wonderful just to hear your journey today and share those points of expertise that people can leverage as they embark on a similar journey.

Thank you ever so much for joining. Listeners, thank you for tuning in. If you're interested in more on diversity, equity, inclusion or, indeed, any topics associated with the new shape of work, please do check out our interview series on mercer.com or, indeed, wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for joining me today, Heidi and Luigi. Wonderful to have you join. Listeners, thanks for dropping by. Wishing everyone a great rest of day.

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