EP060 - How to create a diverse and inclusive remote team with Rowena Hennigan at RoRemote
About the episode
This episode’s topic is an important but sadly often neglected one: diversity and inclusion. DEI has a different meaning in the corporate world than in distributed companies. DEI is a much broader term for remote teams, with more challenges to implementation. Yet, diverse teams drive innovation, and inclusive ones ensure loyalty and psychological safety. To discuss this, I have Rowena Hennigan, founder of RoRemote.
About the guest
Rowena Hennigan is a global expert in remote work & digital nomadism.
A Board Member, Advisor, Founder, Keynote Speaker, Academic Professor, and a Linkedin Top Voice. She is a popular LinkedIn Learning Instructor on the topics of becoming a digital nomad and staying productive when you travel and work.
She is the founder of RoRemote, a remote work consultancy. She’s been remote working since 2007, originally from Ireland, now living in Spain with her location-independent family.
Connect with Rowena on LinkedIn.
About the host
My name is Peter Benei, founder of Anywhere Consulting. My mission is to help and inspire a community of remote leaders who can bring more autonomy, transparency, and leverage to their businesses, ultimately empowering their colleagues to be happier, more independent, and more self-conscious.
Connect with me on LinkedIn.
Want to become a guest on the show? Contact me here.
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Welcome everyone on the leadership anywhere show. Today, we will discuss a super-important, but sadly often neglected topic, diversity and inclusion. Now D EI has different meanings in the corporate world that it has in the fully distributed world. While most conversations are driven by race, gender, and sex around this topic with the addition of distributed teams, new terminology is needed. A much wider, broader one to include global cultural issues as well. I think I have the best person to discuss this topic with, Rowena Hennigan, founder of RoRemote. Her personal journey and commitment to DEI in remote teams is truly special. Welcome, Rowena. Welcome to the show. Truly appreciate your time. Welcome here.
Thank you, Peter. At last, we managed to make the time work to sync so really happy.
At last.
Exactly. Really happy to be here with you. And from Spain over to Italy, we've just got the Mediterranean Sea just in between us. It's so nice to get this recorded today.
I'm thrilled. I'm thrilled. So before we start the show, please introduce yourself to those who are those few people who doesn't know you who you are, what you are doing and how did you end up working remotely? And how did you end up in Spain with this beautiful Irish accent?
Oh, thank you so much flattery will get you everywhere, Peter. So my name is Rowena Hennigan. I'm originally from the west coast of Ireland, Galway, if anyone knows it on the Atlantic Sea there, beautiful part of Ireland, beautiful part of Ireland. But I consider myself a global citizen. I left and started traveling Ireland when I was 18 and I've lived in traveled in lots and lots of different places across the world. And I started remote working when I was based out in Asia, actually Australia, Asia in 2007. And I didn't even, yeah, I didn't even know it then, but I was one of those early digital nomads. I had a project that I was working on with Vodafone. I was corporate side for many years back then. And the team, the freelance team there at the time, the contracting team, we were working between Australia, Fiji and New Zealand, would you believe it, Peter? So that was pretty good.
My God.
Yeah. And so I was visiting all those different places, started making my way back to Southeast, through Southeast Asia for a project in Europe. And my consulting client back in 2007, there was a little bit of a stall on the paperwork. And I ended up being based around Thailand, sending emails, reading documentation and starting the project remotely. So that was my first taste of combining remote work and travel. And back then, Peter, I was young. I was a bit naive because I was a young woman in tech, right? A young woman in tech. I was really enjoying my lifestyle. I felt I had, I'd worked hard for it. Yeah, I worked hard for it. But I felt that, I had been in the right place at the right time. I'd done a master's in marketing in 1999 and looked at the creating virtual and Internet communities. Back then, believe it or not. So that's what my master's dissertation was on. People don't often believe that when I tell them and I'm like, yeah, I'm literally one of the originals when it comes to tech and understanding the potential of the internet and logically, putting the two together, the internet enables us to work remotely. So fast forward 20 years after that, back in Dublin, I had met my partner and we were together, happy. We found out we were pregnant. That was really great. I was 40, 41 at the time. And our daughter was born. And unfortunately, after a few months. Thank you so much. She's 10 now. It's 10 years ago now. But she developed childhood asthma. So Dublin and Ireland are very damp, as many people know if they visited them.
And everyone understands that.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, everyone. Exactly, but everyone understands why we spend so much time in pubs when it's raining so much. But yeah, we were in Dublin with this newborn, and unfortunately Peter, she developed childhood asthma about seven, eight months old. And the next three years just so difficult for me and for our whole family because we had a chronically ill little baby. I was trying to get back to work. It was nigh near impossible and my two part time contracts that I had at the time, Peter, the employers were very, the contacts were very supportive one was a university in Dublin and I said it's the only way I can manage to do this if I can work from home a little bit because she's so ill and they supported me. So seven years ago, eight years ago, that was my life where I was in this house in Dublin going, wow, if I didn't have access to remote work, I could be a woman at 44, 45 years of age with no potential career, with no access to work. And that's really where the RoRemote, if people know me story comes from, because without remote work access, I wouldn't have had access to work. And I didn't really realize, I'll be honest, back then, what that meant. I just was so tired. I was so desperate to try and keep the career. I had worked many years for, and not even just that Peter, I just wanted to have some independent earnings to contribute to the family and household finances. So I was there...
And also, sorry to stop you, but also, but you were able to spend time with your daughter. Needed you really well because because of the illness on top of everything. That means you have a daughter. Also some serious sickness that's required mom to stay home with the kid as well. At least supporting her.
Exactly so we were that's also beautiful. That's also beautiful, so I was able exactly and it's precious. I was able to support her by not completely sacrificing one for the elder or having to be in the compromise where I had to lose my income. I also compromise and got time with her, so it's really that it is really like an example of the hashtag for a family first, it's also it is also an example of how caregiving because my husband was also able to work from home, Peter. So if you look at the if we start to look at DEI, Equality and Inclusion, there as well, his employer also said, your daughter is very sick, you work from home when you need to, support your family. So we had this dynamic going on in Dublin that really made me go, hey, back in those days in South East Asia, Ro, when you were enjoying your travelling, little did you know that remote work would be actually a lifesaver to you now, a family saver, a career saver, and really change how you see access to work through remote virtual work.
And those also relationship saver as well, by the way, because caring for someone who is in need of care also gives a toll on the relationship as well. And while you're both can and able, were able to stay at home. That was also great for the relationship and I just have to tell you that you're really lucky to work for companies who are so open to your problem and your issues and able to support you as well with that journey. Yeah.
Yeah, it's totally exactly totally and back then those employers, those bosses, those leaders were many of which, by the way, were women themselves and realized with a newborn with a young baby, the situation I was in, they knew and they trusted me. They led with trust. I'm sure, in lots of your podcast interviews, you've covered that topic, but this is an example of leading with trust and trusting your team, your workers to do their best jobs because they will write a tired parent, a tired caregiver who works two hours a day can often do as much as someone sitting around for six hours because they have other responsibilities. But it's exactly that. I was lucky. I was privileged. And the next chapter of the story, which leads on to me building RoRemote as a consultancy and as the way it exists today is that as things unfortunately didn't get much better in Ireland, as she didn't improve her health, our daughter, we looked at global mobility because a doctor said to us in Dublin, you should get her out of Ireland. The way her health will improve, her chest will dry up is to get her to a dry climate, get her to Spain or somewhere. We both looked at each other and we realized myself and my husband, we had that privilege. We had that global mobility. My husband's employer supported him to move to Spain. I kept a couple of part time contracts going. The university contracted me again, TU Dublin, and I'm still with them as adjunct faculty to this day as an international contractor, one of their few remote lecturers who are based globally out of Ireland. And there's that, the story still goes on because we said to ourselves, we were all based in Europe, you and I, peter, but European mobility, again, we don't want to take it for granted, but it is something that meant we could bring it to the next chapter. We could start our life in Spain. We could make sure that we could support her health. And it really changed our family's lives.
That's a really great journey. Thank you for sharing so openly. And where do you live right now? I guess in the high plains of Spain, dry air.
Exactly. So we're in Zaragoza which has some of the minimal rain on the whole of Spain. We did our research. We came here in August. The year before we moved from completely and we nearly melted. It was the driest place. And I've lived in Indonesia and lots of different countries. And yeah, it's very humid. It's very, yeah, it's completely dry heat. Our daughter came off all her inhalers about six months ago. She's not on any medication. She's happy. She's in a circus troupe. She sings professionally in a choir. All the things eight years ago, I had so many fears about Peter as a parent that her lungs not working well would cause long term issues. They've all gone out the window. And due to being able to influence her health through global mobility. And that's part of the story, because this is all geographic diversity. The world being your talent pool as a corporation. This is the other side of it for the individual. There is also now the potential of global mobility. And some of us think of nomads. But we don't think that we may need global mobility as people being displaced by, say, a climate crisis or war or a local weather event or whatever it may be, Peter. And our story is an example of that. So my passion and my work is, where do I get the energy? It's because it is so blooming personal to me. It's really personal to me because I really do believe that remote work is and can change the world for better for people. It is the future of living because it gives us more choices.
This is so well said and I want to tie that into the overall conversation that we are having about inclusion and diversity from an individual level as well, or else also from a company level as well. I guess let's start with loyalty. I think that's a really great topic to discuss. I do believe and agree with you that working remotely should be a choice made by the individual based on whatever factors, in your case your daughter. So it was a highly personal choice but it can be something else. You are at a war, situation in your own country and you might need to migrate to a place which is more safe. You have climate change or you just belong to a group of people, which is not well received in your own country, shall we say. Like LGBTQ communities and you want to move to a more open and more diverse place to live. That's also an issue again, so many choices, but it's all motivated by personal situations. When a company allows you to do so and make those decisions and allows you to work wherever you want as an employee, you become more loyal. You will get stuff done in less time your productivity increases. So there are metrics that we can attach to that that this kind of trust from the company translates into employer loyalty as well. Wouldn't you agree?
Oh, totally. Totally. And that's the thing about remote work that is not being communicated well in terms of the media that we see online for different headlines. The bigger picture of remote work impact is not being covered off. There's various reasons we don't have the data Peter. First of all, for all these as an academic as well, as someone who's built some of the only academic accredited courses in remote work skills, I know from the research that I do that we are lacking in a lot of the data. It hasn't caught up yet.
I started working remotely in 2014, way before the pandemic. I was spending like 10 years in London, for example, and in Budapest, my original hometown in office environments, and started working remotely in 2014 and it's so great when I able to meet with people who started way before me and even I call myself as a dinosaur. But you started in 2007 And that's like the ogs of everything around remote work work and yet still Data is not there fully Just because the whole situation, the whole remote work case, the whole issue is so new, so novel, still, that we don't have these trend reports that we have in enterprise companies. Isn't that the case, maybe?
That is the case. I worked for many years in marketing. Internet marketing, digital marketing. There's lots more industry standard reports that you would leverage, which are global. You could look at different regions. A lot of them developed in recent years to have wiki and wizzy tools that you could use on their different websites, that you could compare. Even if we think of Google Trends or anything like that, but that doesn't exist yet for various reasons. So the data doesn't exist because it's relatively new. The data doesn't exist, and this is the hill that I'll die on. And anyone who follows me on LinkedIn will know I talk about this a lot. And so people can confuse work from home only with true remote work. So even Professor Nick Bloom out of the States, even some of the early Leaders in terms of tracking data himself and his team, they've recently changed some of their data points in their different industry wide, American industry wide questionnaires for corporates where they're asking about outside of the home, Peter, they weren't checking on co workings on remote working that were happening outside of the home, right again, They weren't also asking, or this is beginning to change about freelancing and contracts. So when they asked within companies, they were missing that dark side of the remote work data, which is many big corporates like me back in 2007, when I was working with Vodafone, I wouldn't have been included in a survey if it existed then, because I was coming through a third party contractor working remotely, but reporting into Vodafone, right? So there's lots of gaps, which I'm always calling out in the data. Sometimes I get in trouble for it.
Which is by the way, the contract work so let's jump in again, contract work is actually and they're just a mild guess so maybe I'm wrong but given the experience and the talks that I have with other people is the majority of the remote workforce. Just right. Just because it's just we still yet to have a global taxation of remote employees and stuff like that. So it's legally speaking, it's really hard to track if you detach the location from the where you are working and who you are working for so the majority of the workforce who are working remotely are still in a open international contract agreement, ICA or whatever they call it.
Exactly. Exactly. And they're in, for each of these different gaps, we could spend a mountain of time talking about the different reasons. We also have to realize that it's employee centric, a lot of this data, right? And therefore. It misses that, whether you want to call it the dark side of remote work or the missing element of remote work, because a lot of people are contractors, a lot of people are coming through third party suppliers. The other piece is a lot of the companies, traditionally the big fours, the Gartners, the Gallops, they're not, they are, again, they're focused on big B to B certain type of clients. So their surveys are going to be aimed at them. They're aimed at them as a market. Again, not only do they have to catch up in terms of how they understand remote, hybrid, all these different new models, they also are not including the freelance movement properly in their surveys. So again when I open up these different reports, I can see gaps in the data. We don't have enough data to start with in terms of across the world and good, reliable, evidence based non corporate sources, because again, you could muse that some of the big four or these other big survey companies could have a bias towards corporate real estate because that's where a lot of them will, CBRE has always been part of their portfolios. So are they very much looking at hybrid? And when I dig into many of these different data points and reports. Peter, I often go, where are the automatics, the Git labs, the remote. coms, the companies us as remote work experts and leaders have come to use as our benchmarks, the Zapiers, et cetera. They're not there as much because they seem to be sidelined and forgotten, right? Even though gitLab, as we know, traded on the Stock Exchange, I think just two years ago now. There's massive numbers of blind spots, and that's why we need to be so careful about talking about the wider benefits of access to work, DEI, and the data points, because remote work as a research area is really lacking in general data points.
And it's important to, that you mentioned this shall we call it gray area on numbers, because when we talk about DEI, for example DEI is at least on an enterprise level or the classic business level. It's very much a numbers driven decision making situation. So pretty much it's all about how, what's the percentage of X groups of people within the workforce females, LMBTQs, moms, whatever. And when you are missing these kind of data points because of remote work, because the workforce is so fragmented fractionalized and contractized it's really hard to provide some numbers to make good decisions on the leadership level, on the if you're a remote company or you are a partially remote company at least. So what do you think, or what's your experience how a company can make proper modern DEI standards and decisions if there's lacking the data on the generic workforce.
It's a really good question. And I think what it comes back to is when I worked in Vodafone that I've mentioned, when I worked in various telcos early in my career, a lot of my work was in BI, was in reporting and with data. Okay. I worked with telco data models and all the time the business would come to us, the tech teams, and they would say, Hey, give us that report. Okay. Cause we need it. And I learned the hard way, Peter, to turn around and say, What will you use that report for, those data points and those insights, okay? And often they couldn't answer, and this would be the way that we would prioritize, particularly as a consulting team in different big organizations, and organize those requests. Now, there is a logic to my story, so follow the thread, because people often ask for data without a plan of how they're going to use the data, what actions they're going to take, and where DEI, remote work, culture, all these elements of a modern workforce where it's equitable, where it's open and transparent. What we need is diverse and inclusive leadership. And in the SLTs, senior leadership teams on boards, we don't have that. All the data shows that. Okay. All the data shows that. So I've realized in this last few years of doing my advisory work that I wasn't sitting, I didn't have the proper seat at the table. So this is why I went earlier this year and did my European women on boards training. So I could sit at board level. I have two board level voluntary positions at the moment, and that's when at board level or SLTs, when the conversation starts or run on the agenda, it talks about data. You have to have someone who's responsible for a setting the requirements for that data, but also what are you going to do with the data? Because data for data sake doesn't mean anything. That's one of the things that gets missed in a lot of the conversations I'm in about, how can we be a more inclusive remote work organization? What are you tracking and why are you tracking it? And then the more important question, and I know you do fractional work, and a lot of people who've been on the podcast do too, is who is going to own that data going forward? Who's going to own that project? Who's going to see it not just as a short term flash in the pan, Okay, piece of data where we pulled some data on how wide was our interview process. Where did people fall off in the application process because of different criteria, et cetera, et cetera. All of that needs to be a sustainable longer term investment and a project that's scoped out on that. And that's where both top down and bottom up. We need people who are bought in completely and responsible. So when you ask me how can an organization, factor in DEI or factor in remote work or any type of virtual working into their organization, they have to have someone either fully responsible in their role or part time responsible in their role for that initiative. And that's where it has fallen down. Project teams where they don't have responsibility, the same way an overworked marketing team trying to do too much or a HR team. It's just going to fail Peter after that.
It's so interesting that you said that because it's, sorry to jump in again, but it's so interesting because what you are saying here right now is that pretty much for all the problems that we have In this case with DEI in remote work, they need the same solution that DEI in non remote work in generic terms, right? So changing the leadership and nominate someone who is solely responsible of taking care of that initiative within the leadership level, senior leadership level. Am I correct?
Exactly. And the how that would fit in to the reporting back to the board, back to the SLT. What would, what would that role and responsibility look like? It's really interesting as I've done more research in DEI. I'm actually reading a book, which we can pop in the notes by called Demanding More. And it's looking at DEI and one of the things that blew me off my chair last week when I was reading it, Peter, was the strategy plan that Sherry, as head of DEI for Valtech, a massive organization globally, the practical strategy, she recommends in one chapter for how to be inclusive in your DEI plans for an organization. It could have the title changed and have remote work and virtual work put at the top of it. Transparency, it's got to have a, have a clear charter, a plan, have touch points, have someone responsible. So this is the overlap. This is the overlap between an inclusive remote work workforce and team leadership leans heavily over and there's massive overlap into DEI strategies and policies. That's the compliment I've noticed, that's the integration I've noticed. That's the thing I've noticed. And exactly to your point, but to repeat it in our modern organizations for anyone, any leader is listening. My biggest recommendation is if you are interested in this, if it's a need other than reaching out to me, hopefully I can guide you. But secondly, look at having someone's role. Part or fully responsible for this, we know, and I'm sure many of your conversations previously on the podcast, Peter have talked about how do we make remote work in our organizations. We do it with a role or dedicated role and it's the same thing with DEI. And I'm not saying definitely that one person can do all of this or one role can do all of this, but I am saying you need dedicated resource and responsibility for it.
Let's discuss one more thing because I think it's important to talk about that too. In your opinion, what's the key difference because I think there is a difference key difference between like generic terms of DEI and DEI with remote work. Let me explain from, well, an American standpoint DEI in the US. Sorry for oversimplification of everything, we have limited time on this show. Yes. DEI in the US is very much gender and race driven discussion. And most of the percentages, most of the reports, most of the whole setup around that is is race and gender driven. Now, when we have remote work added into the picture suddenly, we end up in a even more diverse diversity question. We add in nationalities. We add in religion. We add in different cultures and so on. In my opinion, and you can I can explain yours as well. In my opinion, the remote work related DEI is a much wider discussion with much wider and more data points or trackable things because, we are not just one country anymore. It's your talent pool is the planet. And on the planet, we do have multiple types of people around the globe which means more diversity.
Exactly. And I agree with you. I agree with you to a point that again, if we use American, I know you're simplifying it, right? I know you're simplifying it.
Sorry about that.
No, that's okay. I know you're simplifying it. What DEI means to you as an individual or an organization will always be evolving. Okay. So let me explain that. So no organization is static. We're not static as human beings sitting here during this podcast. We've aged a little bit. We've learned a little bit. The climate has changed outside. I'Ve definitely aged too, but we, if we talk about some of, if we reflect earlier in the conversation, when we talk about things like, Oh, maybe I'll be a caregiver. Maybe I'll end up disabled even temporarily. Maybe I'll be impacted by climate crisis. Maybe I don't think any of us can say maybe anymore. It's more than likely we're going to be impacted by climate crisis, right? In our modern world. So we go from this maybe remote work, or perhaps remote work is a nice to have to remote work isn't for everyone all the time, but it's for everyone sometimes, right? And the pandemic proved that. Okay. And when I had to argue about remote work back before the pandemic, one of the angles I used to take, which you might find interesting as well, is disaster recovery and business continuity. Cause a lot of the American companies were very interested in that. They didn't want downtime. They didn't want outages. They always wanted to be ready for whatever might be around the corner. Corner from a risk assessment perspective and remote work can be the answer to that. Okay. It can be the answer to that if you've been enabled to policy, but DEI is so vast. It's so vast and where it's exactly what you said there, Peter, when we think about outside of one country, the term you're looking for is geographic diversity. Okay. So if we were a company working in, I don't know, Croatia, and we suddenly hire people from Spain or we spread out and maybe hire a Turkish resource, then again, we're adding in this multicultural element. We're expanding outside of borders. We are bringing diver, geographic diversity into our company. We're embracing a global European wide talent pool and therefore geographic diversity. Hooray, says all the leaders. But let's flip it round, right? Let's flip it round. That individual in Turkey may be in a rural area. They suddenly have inclusion in the workforce from a rural area in Turkey where they can bring benefits to their community, to their family. They can work. They can have access to work. They may bring financial benefits. And so the sort of trickle expands out in terms of that impact and that's the bit where for inclusion that I in DEI is so important because if you don't enable and if there's any leaders who are listening saying we have an office we want to go the hybrid route. And as I get older, I disagree with hybrid more and more, particularly fixed hybrid, because I realize that it is limiting. It is stopping that inclusion. So you cannot say you have a remote work model where you are attaching people to an office. And therefore you are canceling out any of the benefits for DEI that someone may have, you're cancelling out that inclusion in the workforce if you suddenly geographically restrict people to work for you by insisting they come in once a week or twice a month to a location which they can't travel to. So that's where I think there needs to be much more consolidation in the understanding of all these remote work DEI and how DEI is a massive area of remote work that's untapped and why I agreed to talk to you about it today. Because certainly for me, in all the work that I do, advisory training, all the way I've been building remote work awareness globally for years, this is the one, this is the gem that people, I'm not saying we figured it out yet, but it is the one that really, on a socioeconomic level on a ESG level Peter from an advisory board position that people really need to start giving more attention to. It is the one that is the rough gem in the corner in terms of how remote work can be seen differently in the world.
I wanted to tell you an example, my example usually I don't share it, but just like the legal background and complexity of what I guess most remote worker individuals are doing. I don't consider myself as a complex setup or complex case. But just FYI to illustrate that there are no black and white situations, not even in an individual level. The whole discussion is so diverse that there are no black and white answers. So most of my client, I provide fractional leadership services mostly. Half of my clients are from the U. S. Another one from Europe with UK included, it's that's debatable where they are standing.
Yes, exactly.
I consider them as Europe. But from a legal standpoint, it's also a complex situation. My business vehicle is in Estonia everything is taken care of there. I'm a Hungarian citizen by birth, on my passport is a Hungarian passport, but I do live in Italy. So it's so insanely complex, even on my personal level. And again, I don't consider myself as a complex case. So when I get a, for example, if the company that I'm working for would interview me, please tell me Peter, what's your nationality? Where are you working from? Where are you fitting in a geographical background? What's your personal situation? I'm not a hundred percent sure that I'm able to answer these questions as well, right? Just by the sheer fact that I'm all over to this and it's so hard to track these things even on an individual level, I think.
But that's, let's, let me give you the outsider view to that. So yes, it's complex. Okay. But you're a valued member of whichever society that you pay your taxes in, right? And that, again I don't want to I sometimes think the word privilege is overused, okay? But you have the freedom to earn. You said it yourself, you don't have to go to that office anymore. Maybe in a minute, you can share a little bit about your own health challenges and background.
Of course.
If we rise out what you rise away from what you've shared there, you're contributing to society, paying your taxes, doing good purposeful work, right? And you're I'm sure you support other freelancers like I do. I'm sure you've, you're like all people who've got their businesses. They're also, this doesn't get discussed in the freelance models. And they're also providing, paying for software. They've got their business costs where they're also keeping other businesses in business by what they do. And there you are, as doing your own thing, contributing to society, paying taxes, an entrepreneur in your own right, and you're self sufficient and resilient. And I'm ex corporate as well. There's no way, I'm not earning the same amount of six figures I was earning in the noughties, Peter, but that I would never swap that now for the liberty, the mobility, the choice of who I choose every day, who I work with, the autonomy and agency, I'm registered in Spain, I pay my taxes in Spain, I happily agree. And gratefully use the Spanish health service and thank the above every day for access to that for my daughter and my family because it's an amazing service. But in two years time, three years time, could I consider Estonia? Could I change? Yes. And we have the passports that give us that privilege. So that is one of the things that I have been working through in this journey for me of understanding DEI, Peter. It's that if you understand DEI and you want to have impact, if you get as a remote work advocate that you do have luxury and privilege and you are a have rather than a have not, talk about this stuff, do a little bit to educate people, raise other people up. Because I have a refugee, for example, on my freelance team based in Ethiopia, he's been with me for three years doing very good remote IT support work, through Noral the social enterprises that supports refugees working remotely. And since I took him on contract three years ago, I went, here I am with my little bit of income now, able to engage him in Africa. He's making an income. This is one, so when we try and talk about geographic diversity and inclusion. The nuance in that is just so deep. It's so deep that you with your freelance business there, that's not a massive corporate with millions to spend on marketing and branding, that when you choose monthly to pay someone and engage in another freelancer, You can really change someone's life and quality of life by employing someone internationally or contracting them internationally and giving them work from the developing world where they wouldn't have added, where they wouldn't have added.
Totally. And also one more layer to that situation, by the way not on my personal level, but but in like generic terms So some of the future episodes of this podcast will feature because I truly believe that this should be discussed companies who are working with I wouldn't say freelancers, but like people, developers in in developed countries and really interesting places as well. So one of the companies actually contracting people from Tashkent and other companies contracting people from Latin American countries not the well known ones like Brasilia and Argentina, but smaller ones. And they are providing this kind of freedom to those people locally. And like selling their services in the markup to buyers in Europe and in the U S but on the diversity level, again, back to the percentages the companies that are buying these kinds of services, they will see only the vehicle, the umbrella. In most of the cases, they don't see the underneath layer to those companies where, these companies are, employing people all over the places as well. So it's interesting and it will be super fun to see how this will evolve, how we'll be able to track geographic diversity. In a very, layered scale, not just on the employee level, but, the companies that are employing other companies that are employing other companies and that company is employing individuals. So it's like multiple layers attached to this. It's interesting to see.
Definitely. And some of all of this coming back to the point on data, I think it's also really interesting to draw the parallel line or the line across from when we mentioned earlier GitLab and some of these remote first companies that would be known for best practices and how transparent they already are. And some of them are reporting very openly on their profits, on their annual reports, transparency reports. And they often report on things like the diversity of their existing workforce, et cetera, et cetera. And it's gone unnoticed. OpenOrg is doing some great work on that. I've seen it.
Yes.
And that is part of this jigsaw puzzle. If we can have more open reporting and sharing online through open source through shared websites where companies start to open up in teams and solopreneurs. Everyone starts to open up more about their models and what, how they're tracking and how they're Monitoring themselves, these different data points, we can start to really build off that transparency. And what's interesting to me being in tech for so long is that open source and all that coding part has been much more open Peter, then, and then actually more the leadership side, if or the organized organizational side. And I've always found that fascinating that what has made people so hesitant about sharing so openly as organizations that may be profit making or otherwise. And that's one of the things that I'm very curious about. And it's on my list of learning goals for 2024, to look more into that transparency piece, because I do think it's part of this overall awareness and communications that we need to have about. How will these models work and what people are tracking? And there's already some really good benchmarks out there. So hopefully we'll see more.
Sure. And let's give some incentives to those who are listening to this show on why they need to, or why they should share these diversity numbers as well. And I think we can approach this From the value perspective you mentioned for example through your personal journey that you value really much those companies were allowed you to work wherever you want based on your personal choices. And I think that's important to factor in, for example, in my case as you pointed out before. So I have a heart condition, which I was born with. I wouldn't call myself the disabled or something but still, I have a health issue which is still ongoing. And my personal choices made me to decide that, yes, I should work remotely because I'm more productive that way. I'm not that productive in office groups or large teams and that was a personal value for me, which I chose to pursue. And I always worked with other companies who also valued me as a person contributing to their whatever growth or whatever values. And if you approach this from a personal level from my personal story, your personal story. And I'm sure that although we might sound unique, we are not that unique. And our situation is might be like sometimes I wouldn't say desperate, but gray sometimes because we have these health issues or any other issues, but it's nothing compared to people who are currently growing up in a war zone or directly impacted by climate change or harassment or, anything like that their personal choices are all made through personal values, and they are picking companies who are valuing these personal choices. And I think it's important to share tying up to the company's company level. It's important to share for a company that they value these personal decisions. They value these individuals because it doesn't matter where they are coming from, what are their personal situations are they are contributing to the company's overall values, generating value, profit, revenue, whatever you call it, regardless of their situation. And if you, as a company share these numbers openly and freely, I am 100 percent sure that you will have less issues with hiring and retaining talent on a generic sense.
Okay, just a totally and just one stop, there's lots and lots of stuff.
That does a long story.
So no, but no, but it makes sense because there's one stat that I just came across this morning, there's so many stats, but 81 percent of people under 40 from a recent PwC survey valued, considered, a really important criteria in choosing a job is the ability to have flex, to have work from anywhere. So even in that younger profile it's a given for them. If they're going to be a computer knowledge, digital worker, particularly post COVID they're going, I want to be able you can use all the cliches you want. The genie is out of the bottle. People know that they can do this. So if you're trying to stuff it back in there it's just not going to land, nobody is, you're not going to get the talent that you want or need. But what I always struggle with understanding, what I always struggle with understanding is partly the leadership resistance. So you spoke there about the DEI arguments. Okay, Peter if we have this data. This means that we can show that we're a diverse company, employer, that we welcome applications, from diverse groups, geographically, and representing all these potentially wider diversity. That's really important. But what we're generally talking about, let's be very clear here, okay, is that we're talking about tech and highly qualified workforces. Okay. It's generally there of a certain level. And 20 years ago, we could have been having this conversation and we could be saying only the Western world produces good developers. We all know that's rubbish now.
That's rubbish.
When I was in Thailand, all those years ago, I worked with a team of amazing Indian developers. Okay. Mostly Indian, a couple of Kuwaitis. Amazing, right? That was 15, 18 whatever years ago. So we know that the talent is out there. If you want a tech and if you're running any kind of tech company or a company that relies on tech to do its business, here's the writing on the wall for you with this. You need talent that's innovative. If you want talent that's innovative and top notch, you will find them via remote work. Remote work is not something that you give and take away. It's an operating model. It's an organizational model. And then all the pillars that flow down from the benefits, DEI is a massive one as is diversity in the talent pool, innovation, all these things that. As a business consultant many years ago, people paid me to tell them about all these different pillars, leadership all the things in L& D, people that are curious, that are learning all the time. They, all of these things are reflected back to you in remote work. But it's innovation that we know we want in modern tech companies and innovation comes through diversity. Many, and Sherry Atchison's book quotes these, so we'll pop this in the notes if people want to read. She has loads of evidence about diverse leadership in companies are much more highly innovative, particularly in tech companies. If they have diverse leadership and right down through the different ranks, right down from the ground, to the ground, they, if they have diversity in their hiring, if they have gender diversity, geographic diversity. I'm going to throw another one in here because we already mentioned it, but we didn't call it out specifically. If they have working policies that include back to work, part time, contract, right? Even in their model of employment contracts, if they offer diversity in those types of contracts, they enable inclusion. Because if they offer work share job sharing, Peter. Part time if they have programs to help women, maybe back to work or parents back to work. All of these things enable inclusion and diversity. And it's all part of being an innovative, dynamic, modern tech company. So that's the argument that I always try to bring people back to because they say, but we're in tech, but we're like this. And I'm like, but if you're in tech, you cannot ignore as a competitive advantage, what remote work will bring to you as an organization.
Innovation is basically clashing ideas together and filtering them through a workflow. And if you have a homogenous group of people at your company, that's not really innovative. And it won't be that innovative. So you need the diverse group of people it's not just gender wise, not just race, but everything should be diverse because the more diverse the group is, the more innovative become. We often forget that, by the way, and that an innovation, by the way directly translates to revenue and product development.
Perfect. But what's also really interesting about that, and I'm going to put, we both can put our marketing hats on because innovation and marketing are also, as strategically very linked. If you have diversity in your workforce and you're building a product for a global market, which now all SaaS companies, many SaaS companies are, many tech companies are, again, you're understanding the market you're trying to serve better by your workforce actually reflecting that. If we have a company full of cis white tech bros trying to market a global product to decision makers and end users, B2B or B2C, that don't reflect that one segment of cis white tech bros, we're also missing a massive obvious reason to have a diverse workforce.
That's a direct growth point, by the way, on the revenue. But I think also it's important to say that yes, you sometimes directly influence the growth of the revenue with these kinds of decisions. But also you can save a lot of money as a company just by and again, going back to the publication of diversity percentages within your company and claiming or branding your employee brand, although I hate that term into that, yes, you are accepting any kind of group of individuals from any places of the world. It means that the people that you are working for you will be more loyal, which means indirectly translates into revenue by saving money on recruitment, saving money on churn and so on and so on. So you don't need to spend that much, right?
You don't have to spend that much. And again, linking back, we're talking about hopefully one or two people, of course, with the board and executive board or SLT guidance, owning this topic in your corporate. So they would over a period of time. Build out this reporting, build out these data points. And linked to that, I want to mention one other thing, because I know your audience, you do have some corporate, but you do also have some startups and founders. Increasingly in my advisory work, Peter, I'm seeing a trend, and this happens with SDG and exec board reporting anyways for VC funding and funding to be related back to DEI measurements as well. If there's anyone tuning in that needs another argument, and I think the list we've given is quite long, right? But if you're thinking of knocking on doors, looking for investments, and particularly if you fall into some of these categories where you have a privilege I want to get personal for a minute. I have privilege, right? I'm white. Okay. I went to a university. I have a master's degree. I come from upper working class, maybe middle class in Ireland, albeit in the seventies and eighties, which was a little bit more difficult. I am happy to have some savings money in the bank. I'm lucky I'm privileged. I have shelter. I have a home. I have most of my health and my sanity intact, Peter, in the nicest way possible. But with that privilege that you have, you need to realize that's me sharing mine. I'm still learning about it every day as part of looking at myself through a DEI lens and doing the type of impact work I want to do. A lot of that involves self reflection and self awareness. And as part of that, if you're listening to this and you're saying we want to raise funds. We want to do this. We want to do that as a startup or a corporate. We want to do some self examination. You need to ask yourself hard questions. You need to say, am I the best person to be looking at this data? Have I bias? Am I reflective of our market? Am I reflective of the workforce I want to bring in of the team? And if you are, for example, a cis white male and who has a university degree then you're probably more than likely top of the pyramid already, right? You're already there in terms of your positioning in society. So you need to turn around humbly and you need to say, who else do I need on my team? Who do I need to get advice? How do I become more diverse as my role in this leadership type team. How do I bring on the voices that need to be heard and engage with them? And even I try and do that because I realize that I'm not by any means, I'm not a person of color. I'm not born or live in a place with a lot of social disadvantage. I have a university degree, which already leverages me up, Peter. And so this is the type of honest talking that needs to happen and it's not easy. So that often, and people aren't willing to do it, they're not willing to do it.
Absolutely. Self reflection is key, and it's not very well practiced by leaders, by the way but it should be practiced by everyone else. And I want to give one last reason to the audience. It will be super corny and cheesy, I know. But being nice pays out in actual revenue for your company. Just do it because you want to be nice a little bit more. Want to include those people who are in need or underprivileged. Or just having a little bit more diversity because it drives better revenue, because it drives better innovation for your company. While you are also can be seen and also act as a nice person.
Exactly. That kindness, that night being nice, kindness and being humble. That's part of all of this, isn't it? That's part of all of this. And that's part of why I do some of the work I do. I volunteer my time for two boards that are, that one is a social enterprise, one is association charity. And that's why I do what I do, because you have to give back as well. But I also, I think what's interesting about the kindness and being nice is that gratitude. And part of the DEI work, and I guess all good leadership work, Peter, is that self reflection, is that humbleness, is that willingness to say, look, I'm not perfect. I'm learning. I'm trying to understand. I'm listening. And that's why I don't think we should finish too quickly. I want you to, I want you to realize that you sharing about your heart condition was really important. And that little bit of vulnerability, which we've both shared during the podcast certainly helps.
Sure.
It helps. It's a simple thing, but It's the type of conversation we're two strangers. We just know each other a little bit online.
That's the first, that's the first time we actually met.
Yeah. And maybe what I would finish with saying is because we're both remote work experienced, we've led with trust that we can have this honest conversation. And any leaders that are still tuning in and interested, take that sentiment away to have a meaningful conversation. One on ones with your team, with people. Be humble and just take that little seed of caring and kindness that remote work is changing the world and it's the way that we do it as leaders. It's the way we care. It's how we show up for ourselves. Self kindness first and then what we can give out to others that really make a difference every day in all the small little ways be being kind and care about each other is the best glue that people can have to make meaningful connections with each other.
I agree. We just met first time ever, by the way, we exchanged emails and LinkedIn messages before, and you got recommended to me. I got recommended to you by others who know each of us personally. But we never met and we instantly connected. By the way, that's also another topic for another discussion that, yeah no, for those who think that, no, you cannot really do meaningful connections online, you have to visit people in the office. Actually, you can. This is the example for that. So yeah being kind and careful is is super important. Thank you for coming here, Rowena. That was really inspiring.
Oh, thank you so much. And it's been a privilege. And I'm going to put a little wish out there because sometimes I find the karma comes back to me when I say it out loud. Fingers crossed in 2024, because Italy is not that far from Spain, we managed to meet up in person.
Yes.
Because I'd love, I love that human connection as well, and a lot of our mutual contacts and recommendations, Peter, I have been lucky enough to meet them in person. So hopefully we can meet in person too.
We actually missed each other for a couple of weeks only because you were in Tuscany in a month ago or so. And I just arrived when you actually left the region. Yeah, but next time we won't be missing each other. So we will meet definitely.
Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure and thank you for all the wonderful questions and honest conversation. I really enjoyed.
My pleasure. And the final question is actually where can people find you if they want some help with DEIs or just having a question with you?
If they reach out to me on LinkedIn, you'll find me Rowena Hennigan. I'm a LinkedIn top Voice in remote work and you'll find me, I mainly use LinkedIn and you'll also obviously find me at rowenahennigan.com or roremote.com but reach out via LinkedIn and say hi.
Perfect again, thank you and really appreciate your time for coming here.
You too. Thank you so much, Peter. Take care.
