I have completed this with the view of the below statement that this information will not be shared. Please let me know if you do wish to share something and I will provide a short biography that doesn\’t share all of the below.
In 2021 I was appointed as a DE&I Manager at JLR to grow and support a more diverse workforce ensuring a culture of belonging and inclusivity where everyone can be their authentic selves. The company had no DEI strategy and was starting at the very beginning of it’s DEI journey. I have been in this role for over 3 years and the company has transformed a lot within those 3 years, a lot of employees have returned to JLR since the transformation started and say the culture is unrecognisable in the best way.
I was born and raised in Walsall, often bullied for being brown in primary school, as it was attended by majority white children. Secondary school then being the polar opposite and white students were the minority. I was often mimicked for my strong black country accent and was never told to aspire or achieve more by anyone except my parents. Often white teachers told those from under-represented ethnicities to aim lower, to manage their expectation, made to feel that if top grades weren’t reached, we wouldn’t amount to anything. I have always been taught to be strong and independent, to work hard and that education was key, so I continued to work hard and went to University of Huddersfield to study International Business w/ Mandarin graduating with a first-class honour. I did an internship at IBM, my first view of the corporate world, my graduate scheme at National Grid before moving to JLR where I currently am. The mix of these industries has given me a unique opportunity to understand cross corporate industry and has given me a unique mix of procurement, DEI and strategy.
I am what I describe as a 1st and a half generation born British Indian woman as my father was born in the UK and my mother came to the UK when she was 11. I am a proud Indian woman and find learning more about my heritage fascinating as my mother’s family lived in Zambia before they came to the UK, joining a unique subset of African Indians who migrated from India and then when politics and laws changed in Africa they came to the UK. Whilst in procurement I found myself doing many people related activities such as delivering dementia awareness sessions across the business, trained by Alzheimer’s Society, employee engagement survey support, external network lead for Pride network, chairing the pride network and more. This piqued my interest and led me to apply for DEI as my full-time career. My move into DEI made me a manager before 30, which was a personal goal I’d always had.
I have monitored and reported on legal agreements and progression made on the European Human Rights Commission Section 23 Agreement including final reporting to end the agreement due to the amount of progress made. I support work for D&I areas in the annual report, collating the gender pay gap report and pioneering the release of JLR\’s first ever ethnicity pay gap report in 2022. I have worked on creating a new way to measure our inclusion index utilising great work from our D&I consultancy partner, with a view to understanding how inclusive underrepresented groups feel in comparison to those who aren\’t, working to close that gap.
I’ve built my corporate knowledge of how to progress and do well on my own, my parents never worked in corporate so navigating corporate politics, trying to get promotions, development plans, networking and how to talk about your achievements were all new to me. I believe that I’ve managed to improve these skills greatly and now use it to coach people from underrepresented ethnicities in how to develop this within themselves. How to get out of their own way and more importantly how to redefine traditionally taught values to help us progress without losing them. I value this part of my day the most, being able to provide the support I wish I had navigating the corporate world. I am part of a number of external groups that are not talked about widely in terms of LinkedIn PR but are so important. One is partnering up with a number of corporate business within the West Midlands region to try and create events to help develop some of the skills mentioned above. This is to try and combat that we don’t feel ethnicity representation has moved far enough in the corporate world especially in my home county where the census data shows it has the most representation. I also am a committee member for my local Gujarati community helping organise events to bring the community together in alignment with the Hindu calendar.
This question is quite broad and I’m sure there is more I could say but hopefully the above gives you an idea of my character and how/why I am who I am today.
Some more information about the work I have implemented:
Age – This has not been a primary focus yet at JLR
Disability – We have partnered with BDF (Business Disability Forum), created working groups to improve our reasonable adjustments processes both within recruitment and also in partnership with occupational health for our employees. We have started to create a specific disability strategy though this in the early stages and will likely have more impact in the future once launched.
Gender – We have implemented Gender specific targets to reach 30% females in senior leadership roles globally by 2026. This makes our target much more aggressive than other automotive companies showcasing how important this is to us. We celebrated International Women’s Day this year in collaboration with the automotive industry, inviting many other company’s senior females to discuss with us what we were going to do to increase this within the industry and not just at JLR. We also have been sending managers on a talent programme with the Pipeline which looks specifically at females in leadership roles.
LGBT – We have increased our position each year in Stonewall’s equality index, winning the silver award this year. Launched our transitioning at work guidance for both managers and employees, undergoing design on training for trans inclusion across the HR department. We have been the mainstage sponsor at Birmingham pride for 3 years running, with the first company for a CEO to ever attend each year and also attend London and Manchester. Jaguar have a longstanding 8 year partner with attitude magazine and continue to support every year ensuring that we are able to support the LGBT+ community.
Race – We signed the race at work charter with business in the community and often run listening groups to understand employees experience with regards to race. We had a consultant into JLR to specifically assess the black experience within the business, utilising a black owned consultancy firm to do this. We have ethnicity specific targets of 15% representation from Black, Asian or Mixed Ethnicity senior leaders by 2026 in the UK and have further plans to assess the representation across all grades to reach 30% by 2030. We run big events for Black History Month, Asian Pacific Heritage and South Asian Heritage Month to ensure that all of our employees are able to celebrate every part of themselves at JLR.
Religion & Faith – We have set up a Faith Network with one exec sponsor that encompasses the four religious networks we have at JLR, Christianity, Islamic, Hindu and Sikh networks. Working closely with them on our quiet rooms, that have the correct facilities required to accommodate for all types of prayer such as ablution facilities. We have ensure that our manufacturing workwear includes a workwear hijab to support meshing both company uniform and faith. We often celebrate a number of religious events, hosting Eid al-Fitr at Solihull. Setting up the One Fast Challenge where employees were buddied up with someone from the Islamic network, they fast for one day so that they are able to experience what their colleagues go through. We then hosted employees on the last evening to break their fast together and receive a certificate for completing the challenge.
