Vodafone as a whole has a D&I strategy, which covers the three Cs: colleagues, customers and communities. ‘Colleagues’ is what we do for employees. We work hard to make sure there’s a talent and gender balance in every team, we look at career life stages, and then we look at making sure there’s an inclusive culture.
The ‘customers’ part is to understand that we have a really diverse customer population, and make sure that we try and match it where we can. A lot of women are actually the decision-makers and the buyers of mobile phones, and yet you often find mobile phone shops staffed with young males − an imbalance that we’re trying to address. We also make sure that the customer experience is accessible for people with disabilities.
The last part is ‘community’. We have a strong Vodafone Foundation, which does a lot to support communities, often in developing countries where we are present. One of the aims is empowerment for women in and through technology, and education for women and children.
We have D&I representatives in every one of our local markets. We have active women’s networks in most of our local markets, LGBT networks in a lot of them, and active community programmes in many countries. Strategy and policies for D&I are set centrally and then our local markets are expected to follow.
We have a really excellent global maternity policy; for the first six months following a return to work after a baby, mothers can work for four days a week and be paid for five. We recognised that we didn’t have the right percentage of women returning from maternity leave, or if they did return, they did not stay. We’re aiming for 30% of leadership roles to be taken by females.
Vodafone’s Irish company has set up a returners’ scheme. Four years ago the company gave an opportunity to a group of people who had stopped their career for caring and other commitments. The returners were offered training in technical as well as soft skills to build confidence back up after a break from the workplace. After the initial programme, several stayed on at Vodafone. That’s something we’re looking at rolling out in various other local markets. It’s good to recognise that it’s not all about maternity leave and mums – we need to be sensitive to other groups of people and help them to work in an effective way and back into our organisation.
I have a split of 50% female and 50% male in my team. I am proud that the team includes a job-share, several part-time workers, as well as remote workers who are home-based. I concentrate on the output, which means whereyou’re doing your work is not important – it is what you are delivering. Vodafone’s technology really helps here because every person in the team has a laptop and a mobile. We hot-desk, we are contactable on our mobiles, or through our laptops on video conference or instant messaging. We can print documents at any of our locations using our security card. For us, our work is where we are, with our technology. I don’t mind which hours my team members work, as long as they can get the work done.
We’ve had three listings in the Power Part Time Top 50 list run by Timewise. I was listed in 2013, and two of my senior lawyers and job-sharers Kat Grote and Amy McConnell were listed in 2015. That’s just fantastic recognition that you can have a senior, responsible, job while not working traditional full hours. To implement flexibility in the team, you need somebody who believes in flexible working to get the ball rolling, and then you just need to make sure that the people who are working flexibly are really, really good at it. I worked flexibly for almost ten years at O2, and I made absolutely sure I made it work. If I hadn’t, I would have been letting myself down, letting my boss who believed in me down, and letting down many other people in the organisation who might at some stage like to work part-time too. I think most women take that responsibility very seriously. As a result of this you end up with really loyal and motivated employees because they recognise they have a chance to manage both work and home life on their own terms.