The Role of DEI in Recruitment
January 2023
An empowering collaboration with AWS, ProWoc, and SPACES, our DEI recruitment event emphasized leadership buy-in, data-driven initiatives, and the imperative of allyship in fostering inclusive workplaces.
Diverse Voices, Unified Strategies: Insights from our DEI Recruitment Event
Back in January 2023, we had a full house at our event ‘The role of DEI in recruitment’ in collaboration with Amazon Web Services(AWS) in the Nordics, ProWoc - Professional Women of Colour Denmark, and SPACES.
Our speakers Nathalie Håkenstad & Phaedria Marie St. Hilaire shared their thoughts on the definition of diversity, intersectionality, bias, and how you can implement a DEI strategy in an organization.
As well as inspiring words of encouragement Nana Bule shared a tragicomical statistic: in Denmark, more CEOs are named Lars than there are women CEOs. This seems like a remnant from a past that many of us, modern millennials and Gen-z’s don’t want to live in anymore, and the ball is in our court to shape a future we want to leave to those who will follow us.
Marianne Fischer-Rasmussen shared some of the statistics from Accenture’s DE&I recruitment efforts to even out the playing field and create a truly diverse team. Something that really stuck with me was a Verna Myers quote:
“Diversity is being invited to the party and inclusion is being asked to dance”.
We need to make sure that we make minorities feel welcome to join the actual activities, not just feel like token bystanders there to meet a quota.
During her talk, Nana Bule showed this video which highlights and ridicules the gender pay gap problem: it is simple enough that kids know that it is not fair but somehow still very difficult to make an end to. I think we all need to ask ourselves why that is and how we can combat this on a personal and larger scale. If we’re not actively working to end the gender pay gap, we are silently allowing the status quo to continue.
Femme Lead was invited as a partner to share our mission and vision and work with female role model visibility as well as what value we want to create for the community. We were joined on stage by other local organizations: Female Leadership Academy, Professional Women of Colour, WonderCoders, and Seed Network.
To conclude the IWD Fair, we took part in a networking session where we got to meet members of the Accenture team and get to know the other partner organizations better. Even though we still have work to do to break through the glass ceiling it is always inspiring to get together with like-minded organizations and discuss the kind of change we want to see and make. Check out the video above to see the event highlights!
Let's continue to expand the guest list and invite more people to the party (because the more the merrier) and remember to ask newcomers to join in the dancing!