With our next Women in Transformation event coming up fast, we sat down with one of our guest speakers, Ken Kittoe, to discuss his career shaping DEI strategy at companies such as Venn Group and AXA XL, and hear his thoughts on how businesses can use data to drive meaningful change.

Tell us about your background and how you've come to join AXA and take on the DEI role you're in currently. 

I studied law at university and after that, I decided to go into recruitment. I worked for an agency for seven years and progressed my career there, gaining experience and skills which I still use to this day.

Around the time of George Floyd’s murder, I remember speaking to colleagues and thinking, “The company hasn't said anything, what's happening, what's their stance, what's going on?” I emailed HR to ask in a general way what their position was on equality in the workplace. Following that, the CEO called me and while we were talking she said, “As a white woman, I don't know how it feels to live as a black man, so let's have the conversation and discuss what actions we can take to make things better here.”

She wanted me to gauge engagement with this topic and see what we could do. That quickly snowballed and after a year it became a full-time role. I did that for a year and a half, working on systemic change, individual training, team training, but also leadership training. Before we knew it, our teams were organically beginning to diversify as people began to see the value of it and what we were trying to achieve.

I'm ambitious, I wanted to keep progressing and go somewhere bigger. AXA was a company that really wanted to have an impact and to change. They were honest with me. They said, “We're not perfect, we've got things we want to achieve, but this is where you'll come into it. This is where you'll fit into the strategy.”

AXA UK is where I really learned the importance of data in this space, and how, if you use the data in an effective way, you can use it to influence others. By the end of my time there, we were seeing increases in people's feelings of belonging and representation; we also noticed a decrease in people feeling isolated because of their characteristics, etc.

After that I moved to AXA XL. My work since then has been about leading the DEI strategy, looking at what we want to achieve next year, and how we can track progress against different metrics.

What changes and transformations have you implemented using data?

Step one is getting people feeling psychologically safe enough to trust you. That means running storytelling campaigns across the organisation, getting people bought into what we want to achieve, getting people to understand where the data is going, what it's going to be used for, who has access to it.

Then comes the actual act of disclosing their data. That requires establishing whether there are systems that allow us to do that, and whether we track it and measure it against previous years. Then, once you have the data the big question is what you can do with it.

That might involve development programs for certain groups or looking at the way in which we recruit and understanding whether we’re getting enough applicants from different types of people. Are they going through the process and getting roles, or are they falling down somewhere?

Has there been any hesitancy around people supplying that data? 

There always is. People ask, “Where's it going to go? Why do I need to do that? I’ve worked here for 20 years, why do I need to let you know who I am?” There are various ways you can overcome that.

It’s really important to get people at all levels of the business speaking about why it's important to them, while also not alienating anyone by being very minority focused. What happens then is that you lose the majority, so you've got to make sure that the stories you're telling are representative of various backgrounds. That's something we're working on doing here next year.

You’ve mentioned data processes and how to implement those, specifically networks and communities. What’s the importance of considering these areas together? 

Your Business Resource Groups can help you with the storytelling. They are the colleagues that people are seeing, day in, day out. They're the ones who are actively engaged. They're passionate, but at the same time, they're a familiar face for a lot of people.

If I speak about some of our BRG members here, they're not all senior. Some are mid-level, some are entry level, but they know a lot of people within the business, and people resonate with them just because they like them as a person. Them being involved influences others, because they think, “Oh, I actually know that person, and they're telling me that this is their lived experience.” That's something that goes a long way with people.

If you marry that up with data and process, you get a happy medium. You get the storytelling, which they can do, and then we can use that enthusiasm to create processes or strategies which are going to impact people.

Are networks a way to encourage understanding and dialogue?

Everyone has different things about them that make them uniquely who they are. Diversity isn’t just protected characteristics. It can be being a parent, it could be being neurodiverse, being dyslexic, or it could even be having a regional accent.

If, for whatever reason, people have to hide these things, they're not going to be as happy as they could be in a role, and they won’t perform to the best of their ability. Where networks can really help is by showcasing different people and different stories, making them relatable, and showing the different sides of what DEI can be.

What will people attending Women in Transformation come away with?

There will be some storytelling, but mainly it's about how you can implement these things in your organisation, and how you can have an impact and make change from day one. If you want to do the right thing, but you're not actually doing anything, that's okay. I'm going to talk to you about what you can do. If you want to turn your allyship into active allyship, that’s something we're going to talk about.

Wrapping up

Ken’s extensive experience using data to help shape DEI strategy makes him well-placed to describe what businesses need to do to drive their own DEI strategies, and we can’t wait to hear what he has to say.

 If you want to find out more about the series and what our events have looked like in the past, you can do so by clicking here.