Celebrating the Power of Inclusivity

Today, Friday 8th March is International Women’s Day (IWD), an annual event that promotes a world free of bias, stereotypes, and discrimination. One that is diverse, equitable, and inclusive, where difference is valued and celebrated. Remarkably, the first IWD gathering was in 1911 and supported by over a million people - an impressive feat when you consider the limitations of communications of the time and that women in the UK even had to wait until 1918 for the right to vote. 

Today, IWD is celebrated globally, reflecting upon the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women, as well as being a call to action for accelerating women's equality worldwide.

Celebrating diversity

As a global technology company, Konica Minolta’s teams across the world will be celebrating IWD but importantly this is not just about today, but the work we do every day, to create a more inclusive workplace. In the UK, we have used IWD as an opportunity to further highlight our ongoing actions to create a more gender equal organisation.

On Monday our gender equality network, Balance, took over our weekly ‘All Hands’ company-wide communication channel, highlighting our 2030 gender equality targets and the work we do to progress towards these. They also shared stories from women across the organisation, with particular focus on the importance of choice-based working and our early careers apprenticeship programme. Both have been instrumental in further diversifying our workforce (71% of our apprentice scheme members are female), with true choice-based working being a cornerstone of Konica Minolta’s employee value proposition and crucial to gender equality in the workplace.  

Levelling the playing field

International Women’s Day is a great way for our team to celebrate the remarkable contributions of our female employees. But importantly, it is part of Konica Minolta’s broader commitment to promote a culture of diversity, equity, and inclusion every day. As a business, we have clear and steadfast targets to achieve by 2030. Achieving gender equality will help drive diverse perspectives, skills, and ideas, leading ultimately to a more sustainable business and broadly contributing to a more equal society.

We have four key 2030 targets for addressing gender equality within the UK. The first is to reduce the Gender Pay Gap to zero. Secondly, to ensure that succession opportunities at all levels across the business are gender equal. The third target is to ensure 50% of new hires are women, and the fourth that 50% of the people in leadership positions are women.

Ensuring employment and development opportunities are available to all people and that there is a level playing field needs considerable commitment, requiring detailed planning which may challenge (often unrecognised) preconceptions and habits. For example, testing and de-biasing language in all our job adverts and recruitment campaigns is a critical step for us. Our job titles are deliberately gender-neutral and equal weighting is given to male and female language to ensure it doesn’t subtly show any bias or favouritism. Taking this a step further, we minimise ‘must have’ requirements from all roles and only focus on aspects that are essential. The platforms and channels we use to promote roles are frequently reviewed to test application rates and the impact they are having with attracting a diverse pool of candidates. We also ensure we advertise roles for as long as possible (a minimum of four weeks) to reach the widest and most diverse talent pool. We advertise the salary and review all imagery used to ensure inclusivity and clearly display an equal opportunity statement on adverts.

Nurturing talent

As a leading technology provider, we are acutely aware that not only do we want to find the best talent, but we also need to help people grow and reach their full career potential. This is true across all our teams and employees, and we have a few specific initiatives that are aimed at supporting our female employees as well as many other interest groups.

In 2023 we launched ShePlus mentoring, a programme that supports women across the organisation to build a strong and dynamic network. This is alongside our Gender Equality network, which encourages and supports progression and development. Our Women2Lead Executive programme, delivered through the IMD (International Institute for Management Development), empowers women leaders, and aims to drive crucial collaboration, innovation, and business growth for a sustainable impact. The objectives of the Women2Lead programme include increasing equality, providing a global leadership programme, strengthening leadership skills, increasing gender representation, and achieving more women leaders at all levels.

Having strong and positive female role models is a key part of inspiring the whole team (not just other women), demonstrating that everyone has the potential to be an excellent leader. This was highlighted recently when I had the privilege to meet and interview Janet Bowden Managing Director and founder  of highly successful Print Management provider and long-term Konica Minolta accredited partner Woodbank Office Solutions. Janet is truly an inspirational leader, a woman who has built from scratch a highly successful and well-respected business in what was (then anyway) a heavily male-dominated industry. Rather than copy the leadership style of other similar businesses, Janet forged her own path, staying true to herself and her principles, concentrating on building trusted customer and partner relationships, nurturing her team, and following her modest but powerful mantra of ‘Work in silence - let success be your noise’.   

Opportunities for all

With more than 150 years of success, Konica Minolta has always been about the people that drive the business forward, so ensuring we remain an employer of choice is vital. This means ensuring that there are no barriers for anyone regardless of their background, gender, race, creed, or sexual orientation. 

By offering greater support and encouragement, by ensuring our environment is as welcoming as possible, and by offering a truly choice-based working approach, whilst striving to improve even further through our gender equality targets, we believe we can enjoy the most inclusive of business environments, which benefits everyone and echoes the inspiring sentiments that International Women’s Day so brilliantly encapsulates but for Konica Minolta we do this every day!