The OVO Belonging team was created in summer 2020, largely to address in a meaningful way the issues raised globally by the Black Lives Matter movement , but also more generally to accelerate the work that OVO needed to do across all diversity strands to become a truly inclusive place to work where everyone belongs.
As a team we are responsible for the end to end process of defining our Inclusion & Diversity / Belonging strategy, identifying key priorities, delivering impactful initiatives, developing internal and external partnerships, and of course measuring and reporting on our impact.
Of course we couldn’t do this without meaningful engagement from across the business, starting from the very top. That’s why our CEO and our Chief People Officer are our co-sponsors for Belonging, and they report on our progress directly to our Board.
From day 1, we didn’t waste any time and very soon started to deliver a rich programme of initiatives to make sure D&I/Belonging is a regular feature of our storytelling and of who OVO are.
Within the first 6 months of our existence, the team ensured OVO Belonging had a strong and visible presence in our overall narrative and became absolutely embedded in our core mission. We felt this was the only way to make sure Belonging was taken seriously.
We developed a robust strategy and governance, and agreed a set of SMART priorities and targets to hold ourselves (and OVO overall) accountable. We made all of this transparent and published it in our first OVO Belonging report back in 2021
And looking at the last 2 years, here are just some of the many initiatives we’re proud of:
– we completed in depth audits of our inclusivity from an age, ethnicity and disability lens (in partnership with Renegade Generations, Investing in Ethnicity and Business Disability Forum)
– we supported our Muslim colleagues through Ramadan producing a guide for line managers + comms campaign around fasting and how we can all show respect
– we delivered a Mental Health first aid and awareness campaign (including a Wellbeing festival, specific LGBT training and the launch of talk@ovo.com inbox to encourage people to come forward)
– we revamped all our policies to make sure they are truly inclusive (from our parental and adoption leave policy, to making our Bank holidays flexible to accommodate different beliefs)
– we designed and launched our Trans inclusion in the workplace (manager’s guide) and introduced trans healthcare (gender affirming surgery) as part of our core benefits
– we introduced our adjustment passport to make easier for people to share their adjustment needs and have a conversation with their managers
– we delivered live (in person or virtual) ally training to over 150 of our leaders
– we launched a cancer support and a long covid support group
– we introduced menopause cafes to help raise awareness and joined the #MenopauseMatters campaign
– we introduced pronouns, preferred name and name pronunciation on our people systems
– we delivered many lunch and learn sessions with hiring managers to talk about the importance of diversity (moving from “culture fit” to “culture add”)
– we worked with our People Analytics team to introduce D&I metrics in all our people dashboards
– we launched a Neurodiversity Toolkit to help our managers understand how to best support our neurodiverse colleagues, and we shared it externally too so that other companies can benefit from it
– we introduced Ethnicity Pay Gap reporting alongside our Gender Pay Gap reporting, and embedded it in our annual Belonging Report (see https://careers.ovo.com/belonging-at-ovo)
– we organised high profile events with external speakers to mark International Women’s day, Mental Health awareness week, LGBT+ Pride, Black History Month, and Disability History month. And approached all of this through an intersectional lens to really bring to life the complexities of what it means to be human, rather than looking at our identity in a siloed way
– we joined many external initiatives to learn from best practice and hold us accountable, including: Race at Work Charter, Powerful Women Pledge, Mental Health at Work Commitment, Disability Confident Employer, Menopause friendly employer, Neurodiversity in Business, Inclusive Companies, Faith & Belief Forum, Trans in the City, Investing in Ethnicity, Renegade Generation, and more.
One of the things we’re most proud of, is that all these initiatives have resulted in all teams at OVO taking D&I/Belonging a lot more seriously and regularly calling on our team (and our people)’s expertise to ensure any decision, product, process we introduce is genuinely going to work for everyone, not just some!
