Today I’m speaking with Portia McCahill and Petra Tileschova from Media Research Company Nielsen. I met Portia and Petra a months back at the launch of their employee resource group MOSAIC which is an acronym for Multinational Organisation Supporting an Inclusive Culture.
From the moment I entered the building I noticed a vibrant culture that very much appeared to be very supportive of what MOSAIC represented. I was delighted to speak with Portia and Petra so that they could share the benefit of their experience with us.
In todays show we discuss several things including
- The underlying reason for creating MOSAIC
- The social experiment Petra used to test the UK job market
- Their plans to use employee resource groups to embed new starters and much much more.
Here’s some of the wisdom that Portia and Petra shared:
The culture of an organisation is crucial for creating inclusive change
Petra explains why an inclusive culture is crucial when developing initiatives to promote diversity. She describes how the existing culture at Nielsen made it easier for MOSAIC to be integrated into the organisation:
“We don’t have to start from scratch because it’s something we already have as a mentality, as a culture as a part of the company…”
Art can be used to foster inclusivity
Portia explains how Nielsen decided to use Art to demonstrate the commitment of the organisation to highlighting the diverse cultures represented within the business. Portia describes how they used a mosaic to represent the nationalities of their employees:
“We have 57 different nationalities based her in our UK office, so we decided to visualise that and place a flag representing each different country of origin of everyone.”
Authentic personal stories can be powerful for revealing different experiences in the workplace
Petra describes the challenges that she experienced securing work within the UK job market and explains how she conducted a social experiment to investigate the discrimination she perceived in the recruitment process with some disturbing results:
“The job I looked at as Petra was still available 3 months later, and then I thought I’m going to make a little experiment… so I created Victoria Smith…. I applied for the same job, keep in mind that Vicky had a worse CV than myself , she didn’t speak French, she wasn’t that educated…and Vicky did get a call back, Petra never heard back at all”
SLIDE SUMMARY
THE KEY TAKEAWAY
What personal stories can you use to highlight employee experiences within your company?
Show notes
Here are some selected links to for the resources and reports I discuss in the episode.
Media Research Company Nielsen
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