How Tate & Lyle is putting DEI at the heart of its growth plan
A Chief Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Officer is one of several new ingredients the company has added to help improve its employee experience.
Tate & Lyle, a leading global provider of food and beverage ingredients, recently added an exciting new role to its leadership team: Chief Equity Diversity & Inclusion Officer.
Within People partner Nicole Bradfield spoke to Lauren von Stackelberg, who’s in this new role, about the evolution of equity, diversity and inclusion in their workplace, how Tate & Lyle is stepping into this work and what leaders should consider as they develop the ED&I strategy that’s right for them.
Her main takeaway? Only the businesses that commit to putting ED&I at the heart of their growth strategy will attract great people, build brands that people believe in, and develop long-standing reputations for generations to come.
A leap forward for ED&I at Tate & Lyle
Nicole: Your role at Tate & Lyle as Chief Equity Diversity & Inclusion Officer is an exciting new role for Tate & Lyle. What’s changing in the people and culture space that makes this role so vital?
Lauren: I've been working in this space since 2009 and so much has changed!
For decades, most companies just called this diversity. Then people started acknowledging that we can’t value the diversity that's in an organisation without the act of inclusion.
And the shift to equity is ongoing. Companies are starting to add in components of equity and belonging, and thinking about the outcomes they want to see. It’s possible to promote, retain and recruit to achieve better levels of workplace diversity that represent the communities you're in and the customers you serve. But ultimately, what's the purpose unless you're creating a more equitable world and more equitable outcomes?
Another big change is timelines. There have been a lot of misaligned expectations that this work is going to get done overnight. Companies who’ve had a PR crisis or a class action lawsuit and want to deal with this diversity ‘issue’ or address this inclusion ‘dilemma’, thinking they can have an inclusive workplace by the end of the year and ‘fix it’.
I think people are coming to terms with the fact that this, like any other business commitment, is an ongoing recommitment. It’s not something that has an end date or a done state.
“You can't solve a 400-year-old problem in a quarter, in a month, or overnight. As smart as your people are, and as much money as you have to deploy, it's impossible.”
I think companies are starting to recognize this is actually part of how we do business now. Blair Taylor at PwC likens it to the digital revolution, and I totally agree. There was a point in time where everything became digital and if you didn't adapt, nobody knows who you are now, and I think ED&I is in that space right now.
Companies are recognizing that if they don't focus on this and get it right, they won’t have customers, top talent, a brand and a reputation.
Defining an equitable employee experience
Nicole: What does an equitable employee experience mean to you?
Lauren: I would liken it to the social model of disability – the concept that people are not disabled, it's society and real estate and companies that disable people. They create barriers to access, barriers to entering the building, barriers to working equitably, and barriers to fair pay.
“For me an equitable employee experience is about ensuring that each individual within your company has the resources and the opportunities they need to achieve their own success. And that the institutional barriers or interpersonal barriers are removed.”
Institutions have, over time, created a lot of barriers that are holding people back. And we have an obligation to level that playing field, to remove the barriers we've built, and to give people a fair opportunity from which to be promoted, grow, develop, learn, be paid, succeed, and achieve whatever success means to them within that company context.
Nicole: In a recent LinkedIn post you said you ‘believe the world can and will be a better, more equitable place because our company is in it.’ What conversations are taking place in your business about how the experience of work can be fundamentally better for everyone?
Lauren: When I talk about the world being a better place – or a more equitable place – because our company is in it, it comes from being a purpose-led business.
“Working for a business where the people that come to work are mission-driven, and get out of bed each day because of how they're contributing [is the definition of purpose-led business].”
Our work around equitable health and nutrition outcomes includes everything from sugar replacement to the reduction of calories, fighting obesity and diabetes, to combatting malnutrition and undernutrition.
During COVID, the world witnessed food scarcity and challenges with the supply chain, and really started to think about the fundamental basic human right that is health, food, and nutrition.
So I think our role in society and the greater infrastructure is enormous.
The way to connect people to that is to live the values you're espousing. So we can talk about purpose and tell everybody about all these wonderful things we're doing – like the millions of calories we're eradicating from people's diets – but you also need to treat people in that equitable, human way so they believe that this is part of the core tenets and values of the company.
“It's the boring things, not the sexy parts. Everyone thinks it's celebrating Pride and celebrating International Women's Day. But an equitable employee experience is about your policies and your practices.”
Creating an equitable employee experience is about:
The ways you onboard someone new
How you create organisational networks and who has access to whom
How you look at promotion, progression, retention and talent
How you pay people fairly when they have major life milestones, like requiring a mental health leave, bereavement, having a child, adopting a child, fostering a child.
Are you creating pathways that are available to everybody?
Or are you going down traditional routes that unintentionally exclude people and don't live the values you're putting out into society.
Because if you can't take care of your 5,000 people, you're not going to change the world for billions of people.
Exploring a framework for designing equitable employee experiences
Nicole: Let’s explore a couple of the areas of our Employee Experience model, starting with connection - what have you learned at Tate & Lyle about the importance of bringing people together through the pandemic and what has changed in the way people feel connected?
Lauren: People are talking about this great resignation, but I like the voices calling it a great renegotiation. We’re seeing people redefine their own balance and ask ‘what is most important to me, and what role does my employer play in delivering that to me and to my family?’ What can both sides expect of each other?
People have also been much more cognizant of the burning societal issues, so there’s been a lot more dialogue between employees about the policies and practices that affect us all. People have been coming to us and saying, as an example, “We've noticed that there are more people suffering from domestic violence and abuse during the pandemic. How can our company implement a policy that supports an employee who is currently a victim of this system?”
This might previously have been one person sharing an anecdote and leadership thinking about it, but now it's a group of employees seeing a problem, working on a solution and partnering to say, “How do we leave this company better than I found it?”
Leading the way toward inclusion and equity
Nicole: Do you see it a leadership responsibility to create the conditions for more inclusive connection to thrive?
Lauren: It's everyone's responsibility. But primarily, anyone who has the privilege of managing a team or managing people.
It's all about asking questions:
What's one thing I could do differently to make the team meetings more inclusive for you?
What's one thing I could do that would create a more cohesive work-life balance for you?
We want people to feel seen and heard and valued. It’s okay to say that you don't have an answer, but let them know what you're going to do with the information.
For example “oh, you're asking us about mental health, we actually have a new mental health employee resource group, that might not solve the challenge you're having but I'm going to go talk to HR and understand more about how this applies to you personally. In the meantime, there is this growing community of Mental Health First Aiders that I think you should really participate in, and I'll support you spending your time that way.”
Nicole: How do you help people get comfortable with not having all the answers?
Lauren: There's a lot of assumptions that what I need must be what my team needs, what I experience must be what my people are experiencing, what's stressing me out is what’s stressing other people out.
“We're trying to get people out of assumptions and into asking. Just because you're experiencing something does not mean that someone else is experiencing it.”
You need to be vulnerable and say, “This has been my experience of this so far, and it's causing me stress. What's on your plate right now? How are you feeling?” And be prepared for them to not have the same answer as you. Look, it's not overnight. It's cultural. It's building that muscle.
It's a very big shift-change in making people feel included, and going back to equity, how do you help people achieve their individual success if you haven't asked what it is that they need to get there?
Growing business more equitably
Nicole: Tell us about what's changing in the way Tate & Lyle thinks about equitable growth for people and for business?
Lauren: I want to say ‘everything’. The only way to appropriately deliver growth and development for your people is to continually grow and develop as a company and continually question the processes that support development for people.
How do we offer mentorship or sponsorship in our organisation?
How do we teach and leverage coaching and coaching capability in our organisation?
How do we transparently talk about promotion, about pay?
How do we have challenging conversations and mitigate for bias in those conversations?
It’s also understanding perception versus reality: what companies think they're doing to support employees’ growth and development versus actually asking employees ‘are these things motivating you? Are they helping to retain you? Are they giving you the opportunity to learn?’
Companies should also look at whether the benefits they’re offering are being used. For example, I’m seeing that the average employee assistance programme for employee mental health is getting only a 1 - 2% utilisation rate across industries.
And there's a broader question: is pointing people in the direction of something they're choosing not to use the right solution? Or is it asking ‘what might you need here to better support you?’
Overcoming barriers in building a more inclusive and equitable culture
Nicole: What do you see as the biggest barriers to an equitable employee experience in businesses like yours?
Lauren: I think people are their own barriers. People's capacity to step into discomfort, to recognise and accept that they've been part of systems that have harmed other people at work.
I think people need to be able to recognise their own biases and come to terms with the fact that you're not going to eliminate them.
The other barrier is shared accountability. A lot of times when someone comes into a business with a title like mine, and especially if it’s a new post, people are like “oh, great, someone's here to do ‘this’, I can stop making the effort.”
“Lots of people ask me ‘how do I get rid of bias in my performance process?’ The answer is, you don't, you mitigate for bias, you remind yourself and your team to think about it, because it's human. It will recur, so we really need a growth mindset to make the change.”
It’s essential that it isn’t my strategy, it's our strategy. I’m not asking colleagues to sign off, I need them to sign on and be clear about the role they are going to play in their part of the business to deliver our strategy.
A culture doesn't come from a person. Inclusion and equity doesn't come from one person. Everybody has to live their role and their part. And that's incredibly challenging because some people are more prepared to do that than others and some would prefer it to be outsourced to the expert.
Nicole: Do leaders in your business feel it's possible to achieve an equitable employee experience?
Lauren: Yes, absolutely. I've never been inside a company with such great intentions. Previously people hadn't taken an equity lens to particular ways of doing things but when it's exposed and people realise, for example, that our referral system is perpetuating our diversity problem because we're paying people to refer people exactly like themselves, I’m met with, ‘we had no idea, we need to change it.’
My role is to provide the push to help people get started and the prompts to guide them along the way. To help them prioritise and understand what is most important because we can't overhaul everything overnight.
Nicole: What are your hopes and dreams for what you can achieve at Tate & Lyle?
Lauren: I think it would be incredible for this company to be known for being equitable and inclusive, and for that to be the reason people choose us.
We also have to think about what systems we've been part of over the last 160 years, and what systems we can contribute to that will change the world for the next 160 years.
Not every company has the benefit of time and reinvention. We’ve reinvented ourselves over and over again. So I see equity, diversity and inclusion for Tate & Lyle at the heart of this next reinvention.