Imagine you had the perfect job. What would that look like for you?
A big salary?
New and challenging problems to tackle every day?
The chance to meet and collaborate with talented people?
Promising career growth?
Would the core values of the company play into your vision?
Afterall, what would be the point of achieving career growth, or slogging away at your day-to-day challenges, only to realize it’s all in service to an organization that doesn’t match your belief in the importance of say… respect?
Now picture yourself in that perfect role within an environment where respect, inclusion, and diversity aren’t just buzzwords but living, breathing principles that permeate every aspect of the organization’s culture. Envision being a part of an organization that goes beyond mere words, actively demonstrating respect through the creation, evaluation, and implementation of new employee benefits or initiatives.
Unfortunately, evidence of lived values within an organization is not often something you can easily assess from the outside before you apply for that perfect role. Sure, a company’s values might be printed on the walls, or published on their career site, but we’re talking real in-action evidence.
Well today, we’re thrilled to provide you with an exclusive opportunity to peek behind the curtain and explore the inner workings of two of our Endorsed Employers who epitomize this ideal.
In this article, we will delve into the strategies employed by these exceptional employers to craft a persuasive business case for inclusive employee benefits. By doing so, they not only showcase their deep respect for their employees’ unique needs and perspectives but also embody the principles of diversity and inclusion in action. You’ll gain invaluable insights into their thought processes, decision-making, and the tangible outcomes they’ve achieved by embracing this approach.
EDL
Mining, resources, and energy | 251-500 employees
About EDL
As a leading global producer of sustainable distributed energy, EDL are dedicated to a world of new energy for our customers, stakeholders and communities. EDL is playing a key role in the world’s transition from traditional energy sources to decarbonized solutions. Their purpose is to provide better energy solutions for the benefit of our world and their vision is to be the leading global producer of sustainable distributed energy.
Do you want to see what EDL values? Check out their employer page!
How do EDL live their values when creating new employee benefits or initiatives?
Before deciding on a new employee benefit or business case, they get an understanding of what their employees want.
They have used two methods to collect this data:
- Global employee engagement survey. Their most recent survey was run late in 2021, and they have another to run again later this year.
- A series of focus groups across the business as part of the Employee Value Proposition project, where they asked questions about what employees enjoy about working at EDL; what makes them stay; what would make them leave; and what benefits they would like to see introduced.
They go through the feedback in detail and read each comment and response. They prioritize the actions and initiatives based on the highest response rate and identify common themes. They also recognize the importance of going back to those who have participated and let them know the outcome of the findings and what action will be taken.
They also told us that they review:
- Best practice
- What is getting attention in the media or on LinkedIn
- EDL workforce trends.
“For example, a few years ago we ran a report and found there was a certain percentage of employees coming close to retirement age, so we introduced a Transition to Retirement policy. Another example is, we were seeing an increase in fathers who wanted to be the primary caregiver of their babies, so their partners went back to work. We updated our parental leave policy so non-birth givers could take the same amount of parental leave as the birth-giver (also applies to adoption).”
EDL’s tips for writing the best business case to introduce a new initiative or policy
Once you have a better idea of what you want to introduce you need to know who you will present this to so you can pitch to the right audience.
When it comes to writing your business case, make sure you:
- Clearly outline what it is you want to introduce
- Clearly outline why you want to introduce it – use the data you have to back up your case
- Explain the return on investment and how the initiative will benefit the business. Will it increase diversity, reduce turnover, or increase engagement?
- Provide details on how the initiative could be implemented including resources, cost, and timeframe
- Finally, provide your recommendations
Accenture
IT, digital, and online media services | 5,001-10,000 employees
About Accenture
Accenture is a leading professional services company that embraces change to create 360-degree value for all. Bringing together leaders in strategy, industry experts, enterprise function practitioners, business intelligence professionals, cloud migration and management specialists, designers, data scientists, and many other skills, we work as one team to co-create each client’s unique path to change.
Do you want to see what Accenture values? Check out their employer page!
How do Accenture live their values when creating new employee benefits or initiatives?
Accenture defines ‘360° Value’ as delivering the financial business case and unique value a client may be seeking, along with striving to partner with its clients to achieve greater progress across these dimensions: Client, Talent, Inclusion & Diversity, Experience, Sustainability and Financial.
The company applies these same categories of value to how it operates its business.
“Our goal is to create 360° Value for all our stakeholders—our clients, people, shareholders, partners and communities,” said Julie Sweet, chair and CEO of Accenture. “This goal reflects our growth strategy, our purpose, our core values and our culture of shared success, and we measure our own success by how well we are achieving this goal.”
In Australia and New Zealand, this means that their executive leadership have a shared success scorecard on which inclusion and diversity (I&D) is tracked. Their leadership is required to set an I&D or sustainability priority and receive ratings in performance achievement against this.
They also have mandatory ethics and compliance training which includes inclusion and diversity, allyship, and ‘all against racism training’. They have made a global public commitment to have a 50/50 employee gender mix by 2025, and locally and internally they have goals relating to recruitment of Indigenous and First Nations people, Veterans, and People with a disability.
They also track the percentage of their people who sign-up as allies and those who are engaged and participate in our Employee Resource Groups (ERGs). Different ERGs also have individual targets. For example, Pride keeps track of the number and percentage of employees that have completed their LGBTQI+ ally training, with a specific target for leadership.
They also have cultural awareness training in Australia focused on Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander culture and are tracking completion of that.
Accenture’s tips for writing the best business case to introduce a new initiative or policy
When you are creating a business case for the introduction of a new employee benefit or initiative, Accenture recommend you KISS SMART:
Keep It Simple S…. as well as, Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
Keep it Simple and Specific, don’t over engineer it – perfection is the enemy of progress, include the relevant info, and address the main points, but don’t feel you have to have answered ALL the questions.
Make sure you include Metrics/Measurements to support the benefit or initiative – the WHY is almost more important than the what.
Make it Achievable – sometimes you need to start small and then later you can increase or grow the benefit – for example if introducing a new leave, make it unpaid, or start with only a few days of additional paid leave, and if successful then you can campaign to increase the benefit later. You can also include three graded options in your business case. By giving leadership options it can make it easier to get approval.
Make sure it is Relevant – this ties back to your measurements and the WHY – what are you hoping to achieve and how will this benefit or initiative drive change?
And keep Timing in mind – What else is going on in the business right now, how long will this take to implement and see outcomes. And worst-case scenario if it’s not approved, don’t scrap it completely. Put it on the backburner and revisit 6-12 months down the track when there may have been significant internal and external change.
