GCN Magazine: How to create a truly inclusive corporate policy with room for diversity?

Since 2020, Simone Davina has been combining the position of General Counsel of Siemens Energy UK, Ireland & NL with a seat on the Managing Board of the Holding in the Netherlands and the operating company in England. Joost Linnemann has been CEO since 2018 of Kennedy Van der Laan, the law firm where he started working in 1993 and became a partner in 2000. The two directors have known each other for years and regularly exchange ideas on various themes relating to society. The topics of inclusion and diversity, both on a business and a personal level, are high on their respective agendas.

Linnemann: “People who were born in the wrong neighbourhood or do not have the right surname are one step behind in the Netherlands. In my opinion, this reality is not in keeping with the kind of country we want to be or the type of firm I want to lead. You cannot tell a person’s social background from the outside, which makes this an overlooked aspect of diversity. It is therefore harder, but not less necessary, to do something about this. As a society, we are simply wasting an enormous potential if we exclude people for improper reasons.” Davina, who is a driving force at Siemens Energy in the field of inclusion and diversity, points out the importance of change at the top. “I have always been genuinely interested in individuals”, she says. “I do not like a clique culture at all. Why is the top of the corporate sector and the legal profession still such a clique? This persistent cliquish corporate culture stands in the way of inclusion and diversity. Kennedy Van der Laan is different in this respect. In your organization, efforts to aim for equality and respect for the individual are much greater than in many other law firms. This appeals to me, especially because you do not do it just for show. Our organizations are very similar in this respect.”

Linnemann: “Having a good culture is not all. You also need to have the right processes and systems in place if you want to be really inclusive and diverse, especially when it comes to methods of recruitment and selection. No matter how welcoming your culture is, if you literally do not see people because they are not invited, things will still not change. We are working very hard on this.” He also stresses the importance of good coaching. “Once we have managed to bring candidates in, the next challenge is to keep them thriving and committed. Our firm can still do better when it comes to handling social and cultural differences in a good way.”

“When we at Siemens started wondering a few years ago what we had to do to create a more inclusive culture, the main condition that emerged was: more flexibility”, Davina says. The “employee led flexibility”, with Davina as one of the initiators, gave Siemens employees more influence on the substance of their jobs. “By listening carefully, paying attention to individual wishes and needs, and allowing people room to give substance to these, we have created an organization in which differences between people are more visible and there is more room for personal characteristics and skills. By giving people the chance to decide for themselves when they work, where they work and what they do, we have become more successful as an organization.” Linnemann: “If you want to realize inclusion and diversity, your guiding principles should be a genuine interest and kindness. This interest wipes out prejudice and gives insight into who a person really is, and what they may contribute to the organization.” Davina concludes with the following comment: “Organizations still focus too much on figures and share prices, and too little on themes that are regarded as ‘soft’, like inclusion and diversity. However, if we want to be able to cope with the current global problems, we will have to shift our focus, and in this process we will badly need nonconformists.”

Source: E. Parie (Coebergh), General Counsel NL Magazine 2020-2021, p. 22-23. https://www.generalcounsel.nl/