On October 29th, Women Empowerment Council members Henkel and HPE cohosted a discussion and workshop centered on making inclusion work.
To start the event, Rajat Agarwal, Corporate Vice President of Henkel, welcomed everyone to Henkel’s Ask Academy. Agarwal noted WEC’s growing presence in Shanghai and emphasized Henkel’s commitment to WEC’s mission of advancing gender equality. Although Michael Zhu, Managing Director of HPE China, was unable to attend in person, he tuned in virtually and shared HPE’s D&I philosophy. At HPE, inclusion is placed ahead of diversity because, as Michael Zhu said, “diversity without inclusion is just like inviting someone to the table but not letting them speak.”
To dive deeper into the theme of making inclusion work, Jing Yao, Global of Marketing and Strategy, Lifestyle Adhesives, shared more insights from Henkel. Over the past 10+ years, Henkel has launched many D&I initiatives such as their “Inclusion starts with I” campaign, Global Diversity Week, and overall strategy refinement with D&I specific KPIs. Henkel also initiated a Global Inclusion Workshop with over 800 participants and nearly 50 sessions both offline and online. These sessions focused on fighting bias and prompted people to ask why it matters, why does it happen, and what steps we can take. Henkel also conducted an internal survey to check it’s D&I health and discovered Henkel does in fact have an inclusive environment, opinions from both men and women are valued, there is a healthy work-life-balance, and D&I is perceived as an important topic.
From HPE, Ya-nan Hu, Head of R&D Center, Communications Technology Group at HPE China, shared some of HPE’s leading D&I policies. Embracing the future of work, HPE now practices an “edge to office” model that gives employees more flexibility to work remotely. HPE also offers a Wellness Friday, which allows employees to take a few hours off once a month to focus on their mental and physical wellbeing. HPE’s EAP 24/7 professional psychological service further demonstrates HPE’s commitment to mental health as it is not only accessible for HPE’s employees, but also their family members. HPE’s arguably most impressive D&I policy is the 26 weeks of paid parental leave for every employee. Yes, that’s right—this includes fathers.
After sharing from Jing Yao and Ya-nan Hu, the audience broke out into small groups for a workshop, each tackling different topics. Participants discussed issues ranging from gender bias, stereotypes, confirmation bias, group think, and affinity bias. After working in small groups, representatives from each table shared their group’s learnings with the larger group. Each group had similar feedback in that everyone agreed we need to not only be aware of these issues in our work environments, but also actively fighting against them. Moreover, we need to advocate for ourselves and others and confront our own biases.
All of the speakers and workshop participants provided thoughtful insights on how to make inclusion work and we appreciate both Henkel and HPE for their contributions to gender equality in China and beyond.