Springer Nature’s appointment of a Global Director for Diversity & Inclusion in 2018 signaled how seriously the bigger players take the issue of diversity and inclusion — with notable results.
While we have so much to analyze and write about, our posts the last few weeks have taken a decided turn toward diversity and inclusion given the upcoming Outsell Women’s Conference and the work we need to do as an industry. This past week, Kate Worlock, Outsell’s VP & Lead Analyst for Education, Training & Human Capital Management, took note of Springer Nature’s great move.
Springer Nature’s D&I activities began in 2016 with the launch of a task force to understand the challenges and existing data and to set a direction of travel. As a newly merged global company, Springer Nature felt that driving diversity was important to its success, helping it serve a diverse set of customers, enabling recruitment of top talent, and developing a culture where people can perform at their best.
The task force determined two focus areas based on internal data. The first was gender representation in global leadership positions. While there were lots of women in the workforce, this didn’t translate into leadership roles: 55% of staff were women, but this figure fell to 39% for the top three levels of leadership. The second area of focus was international representation in global leadership positions. Change was driven through five fields of action: executive leadership, recruitment, talent development, metrics, and a broader community-building aspiration. Springer has a target for gender representation in global leadership positions of 45% women by 2023.
Tangible initiatives include an internally developed course on diversity and unconscious bias, which was rolled out to all employees. Additionally, Springer Nature created a recruiting checklist to allow for diverse shortlists, make people aware of unconscious bias, and help HR professionals and hiring managers broaden their use of untapped communications channels to find more diverse talent.
Springer Nature is also running two mentoring pilot programs, both on a global basis, with an evaluation point at the end of 2019. One focuses on international talent, matching colleagues with mentors from different countries and continents, while the other focuses on parents, with parenthood identified as a widespread challenge impacting career development. Their D&I activities are all designed to support a culture where they are part of the corporate DNA. This is a potentially critical growth driver given research suggesting that diverse teams, led inclusively, support innovation and improve decision-making. However, while there might be a clear business case in terms of performance, there’s also an awareness that this is the right thing to do.