Colt Chief Executive Keri Gilder (pictured above) is focused on improving the telecoms industry’s diversity, skills and social impact in her latest role as Chair of TM Forum’s Diversity and Inclusion Council. Speaking as a keynote panellist at TM Forum’s Digital Transformation World Series in October, Gilder noted that for an organisation to embrace diversity and inclusion, the ideas had to be “led and be believed in from the top”. While diversity and inclusion are usually lumped together, Gilder stressed that companies should separate the two. “We include those in the same sentence all the time, but they are very different.” Gilder said companies faced the challenge of how to combine a hybrid remote/office workforce successfully to avoid a feeling of “presentee-ism”. “We include those in the same sentence all the time, but they are very different.” This was all-together different from building a workforce to embrace the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer communities or to celebrate differences in religion, but it was nevertheless important, she said. “We have to be thinking about things like this going forward. Maybe Covid-19 helped people realise how important inclusion is; when we take out gender, race, religion, LGBTQ .… that’s when innovation happens.” As part of its mission, TM Forum’s Diversity & Inclusion Council is developing a maturity model, which helps to guide businesses on improving their diversity practices and provides best practice and benchmark information. In addition, the council has released a research report entitled “Inspiring innovative teams through diversity and inclusion”, which takes a close look at the state of diversity and inclusion in the industry, and it has introduced a rising stars programme that recognises the importance of the industry’s next generation of industry leaders, their professional development and the impact and importance of mentoring.
Written by Elizabeth Coyne - Innovation Briefing Issue 4
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