Leading with inclusion: Dublin Bus

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and i can't see her um but i just wanted to say welcome again um so
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i'm jane mcdonald i joined the cipd ireland team uh in september of this year and i work
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with the team um and lead on engagement and projects within the team itself um before i joined the team i'd worked
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in uh people change for quite a long time actually and like all of you as a hr practitioner you know
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there's been lots of changes over the years um specifically for the last seven years though before i joined cipd i was
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working in diversity and inclusion itself across a lot of different sectors um
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and i think that today's session is particularly interesting and really relevant and current
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because you know it's fair to say that we all recognize the importance of both being more
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diverse in our companies and our organizations so that we're reflecting our communities our
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stakeholders our customers but also that how being more inclusive
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within our organization really helps to make our people feel more connected to them and to us
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and gives them a sense that they actually belong and i'm not sure anyone i don't think
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anyone would argue with me that nigh in this year in 2020 with everything that we've been through
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more than ever um we really do as individuals and as groups and
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populations we really need to feel supported in all aspects of our life um and
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particularly around our working life um to me that feels is even more important
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so i'm absolutely delighted as i say that today we're going to be uh talking through
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what dublin bus have done around this incredibly important subject and at that point therefore i'm going to
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hand over to leslie leslie anne who's going to tell us more
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about today's session about today's regional session um and what we can expect over the next
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hour thank you thank you jane and welcome everyone and just before we
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um i suppose introduce our guest speaker i just want to share the results of the polling question
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and what's coming in is you can see there and 44 of our attendees today
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say they have an adi strategy in place which is great to see because we see it's a particular focus
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of our organizations today and 18 of and the attendees are working
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on some initiatives and 32 which is interesting to see that i don't have anything in place but
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are looking to introduce and 10 and don't see it as a
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focus right now in their organization so that was good we just thought it was good to kind of do a check
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and with our audience today see where we are and our edna focus within our organization
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so um let me introduce myself and i'm the chairperson of the north
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west and cipd uh region and we're delighted to collaborate with our other regions
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across ireland on hosting these virtual events and we're seeing a fantastic uptake of the events and and
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i think it's going to be the new platform for the remaining i suppose couple of months is where i
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suppose facing the challenges with covet and virtual and and that but it's great that we can
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still facilitate these workshops and these webinars so on behalf of the cipd northwest
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branch i'd like to welcome you all today and i suppose uh what this
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particular topic of focus is going to be around equality and diversity and inclusion and
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and we know from i suppose and even from the polls there the polling question
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that it is a particular strategic focus within our organizations today and
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organizations i think are seeing how um having a diverse
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and representation having a more inclusive working environment is impacting our
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business in a positive way as in it's in the statistics suggests that it is it and
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overall our performance is enhanced when we create that working environment and within a diverse
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and employee base so today we welcome vivian cavanagh who is the employee
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development and equality executive with dublin boss and she is going to vivian is going to
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share with us how dublin boss have fostered a diverse and inclusive working environment
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and and she will share some of the initiatives that and dublin boss has
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worked on over the last 20 years and in creating that inclusive working
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environment so it's going to give us an insight into how a business has grown
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and evolved over that amount of time and they haven't not they haven't only been recognized nationally obviously in 2018
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we would have seen dublin bloss was awarded the diversity and inclusion award at the cipd hr
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um awards for their workplace gender transition policy and vivian is going to
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share all she's been instrumental i suppose in dublin boss's focus around this area
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and she'll share some of the diversity projects she's worked on one in particular that stands out just
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to mention is their open day for women which actually resulted in a 32
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increase in females and being employed through dublin bus and dublin bus for for those of you
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who may not be aware they employ over 300 3500 employees and and that what's
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significant enough and you'll see it in vivian's presentation today that and they truly i suppose
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with their within that population of their employees they uh it reflects on the society that
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we live in for example um out of that population and said they employ employees across
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72 countries of origin so and they believe it reflects the society
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we live in and also i think i think you'd all agree it it shows their commitment to embracing
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the ireland of today so without further ado um i would like
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to um hand you over to vivian cavanagh who's going to share their journey with dublin bus and so
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whether you're looking to introduce a new edna strategy if it's the focus of your
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business right now today or you're looking to enhance your edna strategy i hope you find today's
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webinar for the next 30 minutes or so and very worthwhile and we will be taking some uh questions
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at the end for vivian so please send them through the chat function submit your questions
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to the group and clear a content from our north west branch we'll navigate the questions at the end
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okay so i'll hand you over to vivian now thank you very much thank you leslie and
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thank you to cipd for inviting me to talk to you here today hopefully everyone can hear me and see me we're not going to have any
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um technological issues and i'm just going to share my screen now so fingers
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crossed you will all be able to see my presentation so i think that should be on screen now
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yeah um so yeah as leslie um said my name is vivian cavanaugh i'm the employee development and equality
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executive for dublin boss i've worked with double boss for uh nearly 22 years now so
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i've spent my my entire career there um starting out in one of our depots and
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working there for a number of years before i came into hr worked across a number of areas in her
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um you know recruitment and then equality and worked directly with our previous equality officer
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um and then i've been doing this role for um just under seven years now
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so i am going to talk about diversity inclusion in dublin bus um our policy that we've had in place
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the um suppose the approach we've taken the challenges we've had because obviously
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there is challenges that we all have um and also examples of of some of our initiatives
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that we've done as well um so i'll just take you through first um
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this is a quote it's from the head of hr and linkedin um when we listen and celebrate what's both common and different we become a
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wiser more inclusive and better organization i think that's a it's a really good quote to um
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i suppose just to explain diversity why we do it we want to be diverse and we want to be inclusive in organizations
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you know we all know there's huge benefits to us and it's certainly something that we very much believe here in dublin bus
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i'll just give you some background on dublin bus um maybe for for people who aren't um as aware were the largest public
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transport provider in ireland um with over 142 million customer journeys
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in 2019 um and 57 million vehicle kilometers traveled in 2019 also
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and so we carry the most passengers in the country even though we are based in in dublin and
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surrounding areas we have over a thousand buses in our fleet which are all um wheelchair accessible and we have
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over three and a half thousand employees which uh leslie mentioned from 72 different countries of origin um
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and that as i said that is very representative of the society that we live in it's um it's about 20 percent of our
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employees are from um outside of ireland originally and we and about i think the last census
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information had the irish population at about 17 or 18 from outside of ireland so we are very
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much representative of that is something that's very important for us and 2 600 of our employees are bus drivers so
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that's the the majority of our employees our bus drivers and for the majority of our employees from outside of ireland
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would be in the bus driving grade also we have 130 dublin wide routes that we
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operate um and also we have our um community spirit initiative um which we just
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launched for this year last week and which supports um i suppose community
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and um community groups in within the dublin bus network which we've been doing since 2004 and we
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have supported over 2000 different community groups so from that they can apply for
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grants and of 5000 euro 2000 euro and 1 000 euro and again that's something else that's
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very important to us we are very much based in the community of dublin we're in all communities more than most
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other say businesses or organizations would be and you know we're in all of those
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communities so supporting them is very important to us um and while uh devon bus is very diverse
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in some areas uh we weren't always diverse um and i have a the next slide the photo that
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i'd like to show and dublin bus was set up we were part of the cie group what are
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originally i suppose our origins came from we were the dublin tramways so we've been operating since about the 1800s as dublin tramways
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then as part of of cie and then 1987 we were set up by the
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individual company uh along with bossair and irish rail and so in 1987 this is what our
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management team looked like um so as you can see from that it's all
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male it's all white and most would be older male um and you know we are a
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public transport company we are very male dominated transport companies worldwide are male dominated
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we are still male dominated and but i'm glad to say our management team has changed um slightly
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so this was in 2017 our management team so as you can see there is um many more
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women there um and it's like probably slightly younger um as well now since then even that has has
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uh changed again in the kind of three years since that photo was taken um and i suppose
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as i said we are male dominated and the traditional or the average employee
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i suppose you could say in dublin bust is male white irish straight probably about 45
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that if you were to look at their three and a half thousand employees and and average all out that's what they would look like
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probably catholic as well if you're going into to religion um but that is changing um and i'd like
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to share this story um this is saran kostika
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saren is our head of operations and he was appointed our head of operations
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just in august of this year um sarin was born and grew up in romania um
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he came to ireland in about the late 1990s with his family um with his wife and um
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his son they had a second son then when they were here um and he spoke very little english when he arrived in ireland
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um he got a number of those jobs initially to try and he worked in restaurants and kitchens trying to improve his english
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and then he applied for position as a bus driver dublin boss and he started with us in 2001
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um so sarin has worked as i said for the last 19 years and done bus started as bus driver and then was
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promoted into the inspector grades after a number of years he was seconded into our technology development
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department and based on he had done some studying and while he was in ireland
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around technology i.t and there was a temporary position available there and he was seconded into that for that he
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worked there for a while he was then promoted again to um depot management positions what we call
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a depo administrator in a ring then depot and then promote again to area operations manager in our
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central control um and then i said this year was promoted to our head of operations on
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our leadership team um so siren sirens is a really good story of dublin
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boss and you know progression in dublin boston people coming in and most people do work here for a for a
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long time as i said i've been here for for 22 years and we have a number of people on our senior leadership team who
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have started out with bus drivers and progressed up and but i really do think saren is is a great example of of what
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diversity looks like and inclusion looks like in dublin bus and he gave me permission to share a story
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which i'm obviously very grateful that he did and so i've mentioned around the
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demographics of dublin bus um ninety three and a half percent of our employees are male
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so only six and a half percent of employees are female so we are very much underrepresented um women are very much
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underrepresented in the company as i said that's normal around the world or i don't say normal it's a common
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around the world in public transport unfortunately and in bus driving the currently 4.9
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of our um employees our bus drivers are women so that's 131 out of the 250.
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only 2.3 percent of our engineering employees are women and this year was the first we took on
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our first female apprentice heavy vehicle mechanic and we had a female apprentice mechanic
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uh when we were dublin city services as part of cie and she's actually our our um manager in charge our training center
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now and but this year was the first within dublin bus being set up that we had our first female
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apprentice and we'll hope to grow on that in the future and what's unusual about dublin bus is in
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our administration employees 56 of them are women and so there's more women in admin and
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dumbbells than there is men and and 27 of our executives are women
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um so we actually are scoring better kind of the higher up
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the organization you go when you get to our leadership team we have one woman on that so that's um 16
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of our leadership team um woman and so it's actually at the kind of
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entry-level grade so certainly because bus drivers are the huge proportion of our employees that's
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the where we need to get more women into and that's where our main focus is and trying to get more women in especially because people progress
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through the company as i said you know bus drivers progress on to be inspectors maybe chief inspectors
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depot management um schedulers we have them in loads of different loads of different areas in the company so if
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we don't have women coming in at dust we are never going to get more women at you know middle management and senior
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leadership um team as well as i said similar to say sirens journey
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and in terms of our board the most bored 45 of our board are women so that is very
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um not quite gender balanced but fairly closely four women and five men
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um but that they're appointed obviously by by the government so um i'll just move on so this
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is um just some photos of as i said you'll see i use a lot of images in my presentation i think it it tells a
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better story than um than just listening to me talking as well so these are just examples of some
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of our employees and you'll see the top right that's our i know it's a bit blurry but that's our female apprentice who started this year
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uh below her there's another male apprentice and you'll see some bus drivers um we have shabazz who is from
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um sri lanka and at the bottom left you'll see vivian barry who's our first female
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chief inspector and so it just gives it it's kind of a snapshot of the diverse employees that
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we do have in dublin bus and so then to to go on to suppose how we developed our strategies
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i know leslie asked the question about um how many people have strategies in in their organizations and not do
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so our our first um i suppose our diversity journey started in dublin
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bus about 20 years ago um probably the late 90s around the time of the celtic tiger so
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obviously with immigration the influx of immigration due to the celtic tiger there was a lot of people coming into ireland from
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outside of ireland and our cultural diversity in dumbos happened organically
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we didn't go out um we didn't go recruiting abroad to try and find
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employees or um you know purposely target any any um
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certain groups or anything like that i think people just we were recruiting in the early 2000s a lot
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so we had people coming in from other um ethnicities and as those people started the company um
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other people saw them so that the friends family members of them were you know said they're working there
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they enjoyed it it was a good employer and also just um our customers saw people who looked like them
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and then decided oh well maybe i'll apply for a job there as well and so our this is our cultural
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diversity grew organically and due to that we realized that we needed to focus
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more on diversity inclusion in dublin bus so our first equality officer was appointed in
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2001 and we carried out our first equality review in 2002 and as opposed to look at what the
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democrat graphics of the organization looked like then and what areas we needed to focus on and
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then from that we developed our first strategy and action plan in 2003 and then have updated that over the
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years so um our latest we've gone from strategy back to a policy uh this year actually but
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um so our latest one was uh developed in 2017 then updated this year
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um and that strategy or policy provides us with a framework to develop an annual action plan around diversity
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inclusion uh human rights and we also include well-being in there as well so be
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another area that i'm responsible for and we kind of do feel that it you know
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it does tie into diversity inclusion as well um and and especially this year with covert it's been an area that we've
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really focused on because you just felt like we really needed to um we are a service that's uh you know
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front line uh we never stopped working our bus drivers were out there um delivering a service uh throughout of
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this pandemic um and we know that a lot of people have struggled whether their own health or family you know just
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the changes that have happened with covert so well-being has been a big focus for us this year as well
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um i i mentioned um just about how the say the cultural diversity happened organically for us um
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and you know how you you know we know that our customers saw people who looked like them and then some of them decided
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to join the company that for us is really important in terms of us representing our customers our
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customers are um the people of dublin you know and within our network so it's everyone in
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that area so it doesn't matter what your ethnicity your gender your sexual orientation
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and your um socio-economic background we are in all those areas and we want to
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represent all of those people so we want our employees to be diverse and
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just to rep for number one to represent our customers and many other supposed air benefits to
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that which i'll talk about a bit later as well but that is very important to us in terms of our customers and the communities
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that we serve those those communities that we're in delivering a service to and i suppose the other area that
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changed around that time was the introduction of equality legislation with the employment equality acts and
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also this equal status act um and obviously that puts a focus on the um nine grounds so obviously these
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are the nine grounds um and we use them as suppose a starting point for our
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diversity inclusion policy and our action plan that comes from that so these may be the main areas that we
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that we would look at um as well as i said say the broader the the well-being
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and human rights obviously is another area as well and so that kind of gives us a starting
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point of of what areas we need to to to look at um obviously gender is one
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that's always kind of uh top of our list because we're so male dominated we do want to to increase the number of women in the
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company and we've also done um things around um lgbtq plus
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um disability like accessibility and so we focused on a number of them
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over the years but as i said that it's a good place to start but it's certainly not um
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the only thing we do and also we try and do more than what simply required us in legislation we think that's a very
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basic but we want we want to go further than that we want to do more than what is we just have to do or what's expected of
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us so then to bring you through some of our initiatives
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um the first area i'll talk about is accessibility so i mentioned to you that 100 of our double bus fleets now
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low floor wheelchair accessible so um so all of our fleet is wheelchair
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accessible and our new buses now have um a wheelchair space and also a buggy
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space as well so making them even more accessible um i think 50 yeah over 50 of our fleet
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now has both wheelchair and buggy spaces and obviously in the future that will be that will be 100 as well and we operate
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a travel assistance scheme um which i think many people probably don't know about
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and it's probably something that we don't uh shout about enough to be honest with you so in this picture you'll see
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is our um accessibility officer dolores on the right uh roger who's our travel assistant and
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we actually have another new travel assistant working with with roger um melanie which i don't have a picture
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of that was one of her old ones um there roger but the the scheme
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supports it's a free service that helps people with learning mobility and sensory difficulties so people can contact
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um dublin boss the travel assistance um department and book uh sessions with our travel
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assistants so roger for example would go out to somebody it could be somebody who maybe hasn't used their services before
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it may be somebody who's acquired a disability and needs some help with with using services now it's not
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just dumbbell services roger will bring them on and bring them on the darts on louis so
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it's any public transport within dublin that roger will do and he would go
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and say meet them from their house and if they are trying to get to school or college or
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to work or you know wherever they're trying to get he will do that journey with them and build them up to it over a number of
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days probably about a week or two and travel with them and help them get used to it so they can get used to getting onto the
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bus you know using their card on the bus finding a seat and you know now when to
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press the bell to get off et cetera so in 2018 i don't have the 2019 figures but in 2018 we supported
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1047 customers um in learning how to travel independently on public transport system
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so it's it's a really fabulous scheme as i said i don't think we we advertise enough in
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terms of you know um the general public knowing about us you know all the different accessibility
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groups and disability groups are well aware of it and they go out and do talks with them as well um about dumbbell services and about the
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travel assistance scheme so they're very aware of us and they did something we're um very proud of um because it gives
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people with um i suppose within who have any kind of an extra need or
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special needs you know they it gives them the independence to be able to use public transport
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um and we've had so many success stories from us and and the people who work at roger are
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just hugely like thankful and you know he he's like practically a saint i have
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to say that he he's a great great man and does such a great job so it is really
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um a scheme that we are really proud of and the next area is um gender
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and so i think leslie mentioned some of the statistics um there earlier as well so as i said we are very
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underrepresented by women unfortunately uh six and a half center employees are women four point nine percent for bus
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drivers are women uh four point nine percent is actually the highest it has ever been that's the highest number of women we've ever had
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as bus drivers um and we are hoping to obviously continue increasing that
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and in 2016 we first ran open days for women so uh focusing on women coming in applying
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to be bus drivers so how they worked was um they came along we ran them on saturdays people booked
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in slots they came along they met some of our female drivers and inspectors
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and they were brought out one of our training buses and they with one of our training instructors and we had a kind of an area
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set up in our yard that they were able to drive the bus on because the s was one of the reasons
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we know women don't apply for the position a bus driver well there's a number of them one obviously being male dominated you
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know they don't see that many women doing the job so maybe think they can't do it they think it's physically difficult to
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drive a bus it's not i've done it myself and it's it some people say it's easier than driving the car
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and you know it's it they're automatic they're not you know you know power steering so it's not
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physically difficult some people think it's maybe a dirty job thinking back maybe to the 80s when we had much older
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buses and they were much uh they weren't environmentally friendly and things like that
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uh it's very clean and also the safety issues but there's a huge number of safety features on our bus
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you know the the cab area they're they're secured in that emergency button under their seat that
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they can hit that brings them to central control and directly the radio system will kick in uh cctv
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all over the bus and so it is a very safe job as well um so they get brought out on the bus so they
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can do it themselves and see god this is not as hard as they thought and they have great fun
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they chat to our employees and they've been hugely successful for us so um in 2016
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i think that was the statistic leslie shared we increased the number of women by 32 and then in 2019 we had um
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over 1500 women applied to attend the open days which was incredible and we had to keep adding more and more on about 600 women
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attended them and unfortunately covert hit and we had to stop them um but we will
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do them again in the future uh but of that that 600 we've taken on 35 in the last year
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and i think there's still some in our system it's not a quick process because you have to get your um
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your provisional d license and uh do a kind of a cpc case study test
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so um the from attending the open data actually applying sometimes can be six
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months if not longer and so we do think we will get more but that's a 35 increase um of dr female drivers
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um over the last year which is incredible it's still too low um but we are very
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much focused on this and we will continue it and hopefully in 2021 we can we can
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carry out more open days and covert permitting and because they are just we just know
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that they work we get the number of women and we set ourselves a goal of doubling the number
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of women we had and we're obviously not there yet um but we'll keep we'll keep trying keep um and
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keep doing the different initiatives that we know work for us the next area is lgbtq plus
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so um dublin boss you know we're we're a public sector well semi-state
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organization so we're very much aligned with public sector they said we're male dominated and we'd be seen as very traditional and
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conservative um but for us we actually want to prove that we're not that
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traditional and conservative and that we actually can be up cutting cutting edge of diversity
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and we've been hugely supportive of pride for um well over 10 years probably closer to
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15 years um supporting the pride parade in a number of ways whether it's you know giving buses to different
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community groups and poster spaces things like that um but in 2017 a group of our lgbtq plus
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employees approached us and asked could they get more involved that year so the photo you see on the left is a
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group of lgbtq plus employees it was the first time that um
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any of our lgbtq plus employees kind of you know very publicly said that they were lgbtq plus
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um we had this photo shoot we had the pride committee there with us as well
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you can see that we had the posters on the side of the bus and we wrapped our bustling rainbow colours and which we've continued to do has been
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really popular as well the last few years and so for me it was a really proud moment that i felt that these employees
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felt comfortable enough to to come out and say you know they are lgbtq plus um you know
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they work for dublin bus and we've built on that each year so in 2018 we worked with our
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marketing department and our marketing agency and um did our proud dad's video which
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some of you may have seen and we were hoping to show today but technology wasn't uh wasn't working with us but i
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would certainly encourage any of you to look up these videos they're on um the double boss youtube channel double
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musk news and so proud dads um and they're tear jerkers just to warn you as well so
32:06
proud dads looks at uh fathers of lgbtq plus um children and one of our own employees
32:15
involved in stephen so stephen is one of our bus drivers and he's a part-time trainer in our training center as well
32:20
and he surprised his son liam um who's home from he lives in london but he'd come home
32:25
for pride and he drove up in his rainbow wrapped bus and surprised him to bring him to the pride
32:32
parade and there was another a number of other fathers um and their children that they surprised
32:39
as well and it was it was huge i can't i haven't actually can't remember the number of
32:44
millions of times around the world so it was just really really successful for us the following year
32:50
then we did another video um and again we're in the in the parade we're in the parade every year
32:55
in terms of our buses are and and we did the long road to prize so this
33:00
was uh focusing on maybe older members of lgbtq plus community who um maybe have never attended the
33:08
pride parade and maybe never felt comfortable or for whatever reason and younger members of lgbtq plus community
33:14
and i suppose went to to them and invited them along so again another tearjerker video which i would
33:21
definitely recommend people watch and unfortunately in 2020 with covert again
33:26
the pride parade was cancelled and but we partnered with belong to which is um a it was a
33:34
charity service for um lgbtq plus youth so we gave them a hundred two-sided
33:41
average advertisements we could you can see there on the slide advertising their services and the
33:46
message being growing up lgbtq uh plus isn't all rainbows and the ceo
33:52
of belong to afterwards said that after the campaign there was a 200 increase in their service service usage
33:59
which is fantastic i suppose the whole idea was to get their message out there and know that the support was there
34:05
people needed it so you know these are campaigns that we're really proud of and that we want to try and um
34:13
grow on every year and and do more and and get more of our employees we always get our employees involved in this
34:18
as well and because we want to make sure it's about our employees it's also about our customers and then
34:24
as i said the communities we serve as well so the next area um is our workplace
34:31
gender transition policy and guidelines and so this was launched in september 2017.
34:37
it was a proactive measure that and was aimed at creating a supporting work environment for both our
34:43
current and also future trans employees so i decided to bring this in because i knew
34:48
that sooner rather than later an employee would come forward and say that they were trans and bus um and actually when i was
34:54
at the final draft of the policy our first trans employee did come forward and say they were trans and so i had this policy ready there to
35:01
to support the manager in question and also the employee as well and so i said the objective of it is to
35:07
provide support and guidance for trans employees but it's also about providing information and recommendation
35:13
from managers hr and just other colleagues of trans employees so we we want people to know that we do
35:19
have trans employees or that if you are trans you know you come and work in dublin bus and i suppose it's about
35:25
increasing information around um trans issues um and the people are more
35:31
informed as well and so obviously the gender recognition act came in 2015
35:38
which allowed people to self declare their identity so i suppose that was another um reason why we wanted to bring this
35:45
policy in also i worked with tenny which is the transgender equality network ireland
35:50
um on the policy because obviously i wanted to make sure i got their input and was sure that we were covering all
35:56
the areas we should you know have the right information in it and they have publicly stated that
36:02
it's one of the most comprehensive policies um developed in ireland they've also said that we were the first irish
36:08
organization to implement the policy so a number of the um multinationals it
36:13
could be like facebook and google had policies but they were pot they were policies from their kind of corporate
36:19
headquarters which may not be in ireland um but ours obviously was very focused on ireland
36:24
um and as leslie mentioned we won the cipd 2018 award for this which again was something we were really proud of
36:34
so i suppose what's important to remember is that all of these initiatives that we do we don't just do
36:40
them because we have to or we need to and we do because as we care so
36:45
we we want to do these things and we believe that actions speak louder than words and as i said we're very much in in all
36:52
communities in dublin and you know we want to be supportive of them in in many different ways
36:57
and we also it's really important to us and we work very hard at finding the most
37:02
authentic and impactful ways to express communicate and bring life to our diversity inclusion policies
37:09
we don't ever want to be viewed as jumping on a bandwagon so we're very careful about the initiatives that we're
37:14
involved in and that they're um fit in with kind of the culture
37:20
and ethos of dublin bus so as i said some of the examples with us i
37:25
said obviously roger's there again from our travel assistance scheme um africa day we've we've support
37:31
provided buses for africa day for a number of years um darkness into light we've um
37:36
supported that um in the phoenix park we were they've said instrumental in increasing the
37:41
numbers because we provide free shuttle buses into the park and
37:47
again unfortunately didn't happen this year and then also this year we partnered with the samaritans um to
37:55
bring um i suppose bring more focus and around their what they're calling
38:00
the 24 7 campaign so they're that they're there 24 7 for people and
38:05
again with covert this year and you know we've seen lots of things highlighted about people's mental health
38:11
and and issues around mental health and and you know possibly there could be another mental health crisis because of covet
38:17
you know that we found it was so important for us to to partner with samaritans and and bring this message to as many people
38:24
as as we could and we are also they're also developing some workshops for our
38:29
managers internally and which we're hoping to run over the next month um and they're around how our managers can support our
38:37
employees who maybe have any kind of mental health concerns and as i said we have a large number of
38:44
employees um you know many people maybe have anxiety or depression or
38:50
you know bereavements anything like that so we want to suppose equip our managers as
38:55
best as possible to to deal with those issues um but diversity is also good for
39:02
business i mentioned this earlier about being important for us to be representative of our
39:07
um our customers um but some of the benefits for us so our employees we want to show that
39:14
we're being inclusive and diverse you know of them and um
39:20
of their differences um it's also about attracting employees as well you know
39:25
lots of people talk about the you know the talent pill that attracting the most we're very conscious of we're only
39:31
getting applications from men for bus driving we're only getting applications from 50 of the population you know so that is an
39:38
area we want to tap into certainly so we have the best choice of employees when we're recruiting customers have
39:45
mentioned a few times we want to make sure we're reflecting the society we live in and the customers we're serving
39:50
and also make sure we're remaining relevant so if we're um you know diverse and inclusive and
39:57
our employees are we're reflecting on our customers it means that we will have a better understanding of what it is our
40:03
customers want and need from us and then also around communities said community is very important to
40:08
donbus we embrace the ireland of today um and we take action on the issues we
40:14
all we care about so there's a number of areas we've we've mentioned that um initiatives we've worked on and
40:20
they are areas that we we do care about
40:26
um at a very basic level it makes sense to us and make sense diversity and
40:31
inclusion and as i said i've mentioned around let's say the war for talent you know retention
40:38
you know attracting the the best employees that you possibly can uh we don't want to only be focused on
40:44
one success of society as i said the the old typical dublin bus employee may you know male white
40:50
irish middle class or middle age sorry uh you know the average employee we want to be more diverse than that
40:57
you know whether it's an older employee or someone from a different ethnicity or socioeconomic background etc we also
41:04
want to reduce group think so the more diverse you you have you know you get more ideas different ideas
41:11
uh better ideas for problem solving um i don't know some of you may have heard this theory from christine
41:18
lagarde it's called the layman sisters and it's based on the collapse of lehman brothers bank
41:24
so lehman brothers recruited um white men from ivy league colleges uh
41:30
young men and that is what the majority of their employees were and christine lagarde's theory was that if there had been more
41:36
diversity there specifically women because women are more risk-averse the bank wouldn't have collapsed and so
41:43
it's a really interesting theory around that um different lived experiences also bring better decision-making
41:49
you know so you have a range of experiences voices opinions and that reflects the society you live in which is really important for a business
41:56
um and it allows us to be more in tune what's going on with our communities so it makes business sense and also
42:02
makes sociological sense as well so then um how to get started and how
42:09
many of you have as i said have strategies in place but suppose for me
42:14
my suggestions or recommendations to people be number one do an audit so you need to know what your your um
42:20
organization looks like how diverse are you how inclusive you are and talk to people to talk to people
42:26
in the same industry as you or in other industries just to outside of your own to get different people's opinions what's worked for them
42:32
you know what were their challenges what they did and it's something i really like doing people come to talk to me as
42:38
well and i just think we can all learn from each other and i also look at
42:43
experts in the areas that you find you have challenges or problems in so we've worked with uh have worked in path
42:49
the immigrant council of ireland uh transgender equality network ireland national women's council
42:54
ibec you know so this huge number of different groups that you can contact and get information for
43:00
and that's that is really important setting out an action plan again suppose that makes you very focused on what
43:06
you're actually going to to look at start small you don't have to do huge campaigns
43:12
um okay we've done a number of big campaigns but most of our work is much smaller stuff
43:17
it might be internal might not be stuff that we're advertising externally but that's really important to to kind of build on um and
43:26
inclusive leadership training as well i know lots of people talk about that and it is i'm very lucky here that
43:31
for a long time we've had really supportive uh leadership team around diversity inclusion and supportive boards as well who pushed
43:38
the agenda and so it's not difficult for me to go with an idea um something like the uh gender
43:45
transition policy that i mentioned you know that that was really new and as i said not many organizations had
43:50
one at all and and i got no pushback from us nobody you know asked why are you doing
43:57
this or why do you need this you know they were completely supportive of us um which i know i'm very lucky for
44:03
um but i think certainly the the training um we've done it recently again with our
44:09
leadership team and our management team and that is important uh for all of us i mean i i got a lot
44:14
out of it myself even though i'm doing this day to day and build incrementally so don't do
44:20
everything you know don't think you have to do everything at once build on it slowly listen to your employees you know they're you know really
44:27
important uh their feedback their suggestions their ideas and
44:32
yet be consistent but building on incremental things won't happen overnight we've been on our journey for 20 years
44:38
now there's still uh things that we're learning and things that we have to improve on all the time
44:45
and i think that's it i was as i said finishing on the video but we're not going to show that so um happy to take any questions and i
44:52
hope you found that uh beneficial great thanks very much vivian um fantastic um i think
45:00
opportunity for our viewers to see the journey dublin boston you mentioned the the phrase cutting
45:06
edge i think you're certainly dublin bosses leading in a lot of respects in in some of those areas so um i know good
45:13
few questions have come in vivian so um i'm going to pass you over to kira and kyra's going to navigate we
45:19
might not get all the questions in but we'll try it we'll do our best okay thanks
45:24
thanks leslie and and thanks to you as well vivian um that was really interesting and then
45:30
there's been a few positive comments as well on the chat box just about some of your initiatives so um that's good to see as well you
45:37
have a few questions um so maybe i'll just tell you because i know we're conscious of time as well but
45:44
i was just in terms of of rolling it out and the the implementation of it and i'm
45:50
particularly given such a later force did you encounter any resistance um throughout the implementation and i
45:56
suppose how did you overcome and those challenges um well i suppose
46:02
there's two things there so um implementation is always difficult for us just with the number of employees
46:07
that we have um sorry excuse me from talking so long i'm getting croaky um so communicating with our employees
46:15
because they're a um you know most employees are on the road driving buses so they're not in offices you know they're not people you
46:22
see day in day out so communicating with our employees in general is is difficult we use i suppose for implementing
46:28
anything we use a number of different channels so we try and include things in in training programs in induction or
46:35
other training programs that we're carrying out we use our internal communications channels we we've started using yammer internally
46:42
which has been quite successful for us um old-fashioned posters and walls we um
46:47
we have no sports and all our locations and a lot of our information goes out that way um sometimes we do what we call road
46:54
shows again pre-coverage where we go out to our depots locations um
47:00
early in the morning i've done that where i've been there since half four in the morning so we can get our drivers before they're starting to work or late at night go and
47:06
try and meet people uh so there's a number of things like that that's our biggest challenge in terms of
47:12
implementing something and also it's not quick for us to implement something it takes time to so that you know we can get to all
47:18
employees and the second thing i think you mentioned around kind of challenges in terms of resistance or that
47:25
very little resistance i'm not going to lie and say we never get any um internally or externally um but um
47:32
it i suppose give you an example and i think it was one of the pride campaigns we worked on i got a
47:39
anonymous letter from an employee who was expressing their um
47:45
um what can i say that they weren't very happy that we were supporting pride and but from that i suppose what i'll
47:52
say is they chose to send it anonymously which told me that they didn't feel comfortable
47:57
saying who they were um and and that they share had this opinion um which to me is is positive that they
48:04
feel that they know the type of organization we have that they can't just come out and say yeah i don't think you should be supporting lgbtq
48:10
plus people um but i think it's because we've been doing things for so long and
48:17
people know about the com the company and the culture even when they're coming into the company they know
48:23
that we are diverse and it's something we're very proud of and that we do work on these initiatives so um coming
48:29
in people are used to it people are proud of us vast majority of our employees are proud of us and
48:35
so i think for us thus we haven't had a huge amount of resistance luckily yeah okay you might want to put on your
48:43
video there actually um oh sorry i didn't realize [Music]
48:49
um just you mentioned people are very um they're very proud of it particularly
48:54
when they start just in terms about providing their own data i mean you mentioned about auditing do you want it often and
49:01
i suppose in terms of how do you get the data from staff in terms of the diversity and
49:06
the metrics around it yeah that's that's certainly another challenge for us and i suppose for
49:12
everyone now with increased data protection regulations on that and
49:17
when we did our audit we had someone external come in and all just so it was it was surveys and and things like that
49:23
and it you know for us that's a difficult process because it's not we can't do it online and majority of
49:29
our auditing has to be done paper based because again bus drivers they're not they don't have double bus
49:34
email accounts we have to be in the depot get them hand them a form and hopefully get them to to give it
49:40
back to us and some of the information i have i'm able to access it so
49:45
obviously we have people's um gender when they start country of urge and we get from their driving license which we have again on
49:51
on record for people and for most of our employees um we don't have staffs on things like
49:58
sexual orientation religion um and things like that so we only have a
50:03
certain amount of of information but audits yeah it's a big process not not gonna lie and said for us especially because
50:09
it's their paper audits and we include information on our internal com surveys which we do about every two
50:16
years um and i would put all the kind of diversity questions so and ask people to submit the
50:22
information uh anonymously um but that is a challenge
50:28
okay okay and and just a fun question do you have do you have um edi metrics that you work
50:34
towards um every year um i suppose some of the things are are
50:40
difficult to measure certainly some some like our open days for women
50:45
that's very much on we're looking at the number of of people who applied to come to the open days who attend the open
50:50
days who then apply to be a bus driver and many people start things like that are very easy to measure
50:57
um some of the other things um are more difficult to measure and that that is something
51:02
that we're always trying to to find how do we measure x y and z and you know things
51:08
like training depending on what it's around you could look at our complaints um whether it's customer complaints or
51:15
internal complaints are they reducing i would certainly look at the number of um complaints we get under our dignity
51:22
respect policy which luckily is is quite low given the number of employees we have so it it's metrics like that that we use
51:29
okay okay um i'm conscious of time there was lots of questions there now and i know even you can probably go in and
51:35
have a look at them yourself too later on but um look at thanks to everybody for sending in the questions and i'll hand it over
51:41
to to mary gillespie who's another member of the um the northwest committee and just for
51:48
a few words as well
51:53
hi mary yeah hi how are you how are you and vivian on behalf of the northwest um
52:00
cipd branch um i would like to just present you albeit virtually with this fearing after
52:05
print as a small token of our appreciation it was such an engaging presentation i really enjoyed
52:10
it and took a lot from it so thank you very much there you go
52:15
thank you very much
52:21
so on behalf of the committee and not just from the northwest and i think our audience today as well
52:27
and our cipd regions and thank you uh so much for presenting today i think
52:33
you gave us a lot of food for thought and i hope it was helpful for anyone i suppose starting out on their journey or
52:39
looking to enhance their own strategy and so before we finish um i'm going to
52:45
hand you over to lavinia and she lavinia dog and ryan she's our um
52:50
cipd chairperson of our midwest um region and vivian lavinia is going to
52:57
um share some two events that are up and coming between now and january so thanks very
53:03
much and i'll hand you over to lavinia oh thank you leslie and and to all the committee in the
53:09
northwest region for hosting today's event which in actual fact was our final webinar for our regional series for 2020.
53:16
vivian thank you so much for very interesting and if you don't mind me saying a very
53:21
honest view of dublin bus and the transformational journey that you've gone on with diversity inclusion
53:26
and i think i definitely can't let the day go without saying thank you to jacinta who ensures that all the technology here
53:32
flows seamlessly so thank you uh jacinta so before we um before i close it out what we would like to do
53:39
um today is to just run a final poll to hear from you our members on what the future of cipd virtual events you'd
53:46
like to see in 2021 so um just if you'd like to run that poll there for
53:52
us and we certainly would like to invite everybody to participate in that and we'd like to hear from you and while you're participating
53:58
in that poll um i would like to make you aware that while today is the final regional series event cipd at national
54:05
level are hosting an event on the 15th of december and the topic
54:11
on that will be all about letting go of what you can't control so we certainly invite you to register
54:17
for that but with no further ado um i'd like to finally
54:23
make you aware that the cipd will open the cipd in the midwest region will open the regional series of 2021 in january
54:30
and as chairperson of the midwest i'm delighted to invite you all to join us on the day our event is in collaboration with the
54:37
university of limerick the topic we plan to discuss will be all about employee well being
54:43
covert and beyond so it's lovely to hear that we're putting in language like beyond covert at this stage today so the
54:50
format will involve two speakers who will bring you insights into the research the experience and the views
54:56
from both the academic perspective and also the hr practitioner perspective so with no
55:02
further dude like to close out today i'd like to thank um thank everybody for their participation for the great content great event
55:10
and definitely an hour spent well spent for all for for all of us who joined today so thank you and we look forward to
55:15
seeing you at further events thank you
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