18. Everyday Experiences with Emma Codd

“You would assume that because someone is in a virtual workplace that [non-inclusive behaviours] wouldn’t happen. Well forget it. Over 50% of the women that we spoke to said yes: in the past year they had experienced non-inclusive behaviours, and that was worse for women of colour and worse for LGBTQ+ women.” In Episode 18 of the ‘Why Care?’ podcast, I am joined by Emma Codd, Global Inclusion Leader at Deloitte, to discuss organisational culture change policies, the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on women in the workplace, the stigma around mental health at work, and the importance of inclusive leadership. Emma started her career as a researcher for a corporate investigation and risk consultancy. She joined Deloitte in 1997 with the intention of only staying for a few years. Nearly 25 years later she is still there, loving her contribution as their head of global DEI strategy. To start our discussion, I ask Emma to reflect on the changes she has seen in both gender equality and the approach to it over the span of her career. She shares that she has noticed that the most important thing is the everyday culture of organisations, because ultimately a poor culture is what makes employees leave. The culture change programmes Deloitte undertake have the unique challenge of spanning over 160 countries, so the internal research and reporting on workplace culture has to be detailed and considered. It is thanks to this detailed internal research that Deloitte could monitor the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on its workforce. Emma found the effects it had on women to be staggering, with a 35% drop in wellbeing amongst female employees compared to pre-pandemic. Emma then shares the reasons for this and how this happened during remote/hybrid working. She explains that despite the pandemic “levelling us” and many people experiencing mental health problems, a stigma towards mental health still exists in the workplace that needs to be addressed. We close the conversation talking about Emma’s impactful Deloitte video campaigns and how the key to their success was intersectional storytelling that was presented in short, easy to understand and to digest ways. Links: For more from Emma Codd find her on Twitter at @emmajcodd and LinkedIn at Emma Codd For more from Deloitte visit https://www2.deloitte.com/uk/ Deloitte Video Campaigns: “Can You See Me?” “Stand Up, Speak Up” Deloitte Reports: Millennial and Gen Z Survey Women @ Work To hear Why Care? episodes first, sign up to our newsletter here, and you can find more from us at Avenir via our LinkTree here.