This is the 36th in a series of business tips from industry leaders that Enterprise Times has interviewed. Earlier this year, Enterprise Times spoke to Michael Douroux, GVP, Northern Europe & South Africa / Country Manager, UK Ireland. Douroux is an active participant in the employee councils within Workday. ET asked Douroux how a company and he deals with the issue of trust, belonging and diversity
“Regardless of your background or your creed or your worldview, especially if you’re in a leadership position. Focus on building a company and a team that is resilient, agile and prepared to meet the challenges of the present in the future. You can’t do that if you take a traditional approach to hiring the same people from the same organisations.
“I think it takes creating an environment where we can have candid, honest, direct discussions, surface conflict and go at the issues together. But be really intentional with your leaders and have the long, dozens and hundreds of hours of discussions to challenge the team to say, ‘look, we’re going to do this for the right reasons, for the right principles, not to fulfil requirements or quotas.
“We’re trying to build a balanced team that reflects the diversity of the 50 million users on our platform’. One that has a level of resilience because we’ll have more external challenges and shocks, the competitive markets difficult as it is. We’re really trying to build that balance into our team, and you need to be extremely intentional with talent acquisition, internal promotions, etc. It doesn’t just happen.
Get involved yourself
“I think you’ve got to get involved, I participate and I’m an executive sponsor to Black at Workday group internally. I helped start our VIBE Council in the US and then came over and had some of that same influence here. Like anyone else, I’ve got competing priorities on my time. I’ve prioritised it. We’re starting to see results out of it.”
