Monday, Feb 13, 2023 • 27min
21. How to Manage Diversity and Inclusion in News Organisations, with Yasir Mirza
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Yasir Mirza, Head of Diversity & Inclusion at the Financial Times walks us through his career and experience embedding diversity and inclusion values across different organisations.
Having faced diversity and inclusion struggles during his childhood and early life, he stresses the importance of having a strong D&I department that makes people connect with the mission of an organisation and feel comfortable in the workplace. This is of special importance in the journalism industry, which brings together the opinions, ideas and stories from people with all kinds of backgrounds.
He encourages young professionals who are looking for a career path in D&I to have courage and conviction in order to do work that caters for everyone and not just a selected few.
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Yasir Mirza
Virginia Stagni
Pietr
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Yasir Mirza
00:00
So what we're trying to do is influence the organization, every single part of the organization, to factor in inclusive thinking and diverse thinking and everything that they do.
Share
Virginia Stagni
00:14
This is The Talent Show a new podcast series from
FT
Talent hub of innovation from the Financial Times
. It's hosted by under-thirties for the under-thirties around the world.Share
00:25
This second series is about all the aspects the
FT
organization is covering today, from editorial to development, from data to talent. I am Virginia Stagni, and this is a guide we designed to inspire you to be the one driving innovation and change. Welcome to the show.Share
00:49
New episodes of The Talent Show, and a new episode of the second series of The Talent Show that is focusing on what the
Financial Times
organization is all about.Share
00:58
And of course we've been covering about journalism, about news, about the different roles and how you can really develop your career in the world of journalism. But also, we are tapping into different departments, one of which is the one that cares about the human beings behind an organization, and what does it mean to work on the human capital side.
Share
01:22
And I have here in the studio with me Yasir, that is how our head of diversity inclusion at the
Financial Times.
Hi Yasir, how are you?Share
Yasir Mirza
01:30
Very good. Thank you for having me. I'm very well. Thanks.
Share
Virginia Stagni
01:33
It's great to have you here because
D&I
is one of these buzz words that we constantly hear about: every organization now needs to do diversity and inclusion
, needs or should or must, I don't know. I'll have you define what is the right verb and choice of word when it comes to diversity and inclusion
.Share
01:53
But let's start with you. And Yasir, you joined quite recently FT, right? When did you join it?
Share
Yasir Mirza
02:01
It's funny actually. It's been a year and a half, a year and five months. It feels like yesterday though.
Share
Virginia Stagni
02:06
So, but I mean like 18 months more or less into into our organization here, and I would really love to know more about your personal journey, if you would like to share it with us.
Share
02:16
What brought you to
diversity and inclusion
? How did you become close with this area of focus for any organization out there?Share
Yasir Mirza
02:26
It's a it's a great question. It's also a tough question because I guess the answer is it's been a very organic process. I think for me, such a privilege and very fortunate to be working in the space for
diversity and inclusion
. I call it a law of attraction, in that just naturally fell into the space based on my personal experience of growing up. I lived experiences. IShare
02:52
Also had a speech impairment, so I found it really I had a stammer, so I found it really hard to speak. So I think it's safe to say straddled and a lot of different, diverse identities, and that journey has been toughm enlightening and an opportunity for me to develop and grow and really be compassionate about including people into society based on my personal experiences of being excluded. Very much a law of attraction.
Share
Virginia Stagni
03:23
I think it's really interesting what you're saying about your of course, personal background. How do you separate this personal journey and any feelings you might have from your personal perspective on things to be a professional in this area?
Share
Yasir Mirza
03:42
It's about how do you, through your own personal experience, understand what it takes to connect unheard and diverse and marginalized voices to mainstream media, because they're really important voices that need to be heard. There's a really brilliant stories that need to be told and helping connect those diverse voices to mainstream media. And actually, it's to the benefit of mainstream media to connect those voices.
Share
04:12
Because whatever media organization you are, they really want to reflect the societies in which they publish and write about and talk about and have people talking about.
Share
04:22
So, for me that has been, I guess, the area that most passionate about. So, your question was, how does how does the had you separate the personal from the private? But how do you almost used that?
Share
04:33
For me it's about showing the diversity within diversity it's about understanding the nuances of how a storyteller tells a story and allowing them to tell a story in their own way versus teaching them the way to tell stories, which is very much subconsciously and also consciously riddled with biases in the way we tell stories, it's very much in a certain style, which is prevalent to the cultures in which we have here at the organization.
Share
05:08
So finding those ways to bring to connect voices in, showing the value of these voices, but also doing the development to get people writing in the style of the publications, or the output, is really key, I think.
Share
Virginia Stagni
05:22
What does a head of
diversity and inclusion
do for an organization? Can you walk us through your remit, as well as how your day looks like here?Share
Yasir Mirza
05:39
It's a big question, I guess. So for me it's doing two different things. One is to understand what it takes to create a level playing field for equality of opportunity. What are the initiatives and programs you want to do in order to achieve that? So, early careers program, talent development programs, specific outreach, specific partners to help promote your brand as an employer of choice for diversity.
Share
06:05
Listening to your employees on all of the challenges they face with exclusion, because it's everywhere, and it will always be everywhere. So I think it's about moving along the progress. And then what do you want to say to the outside world? So what's your story?
Share
06:20
So I think for me it's about providing that whole vision and arc for the organization, bringing in best practice, bringing some your own diagnostics and assessment. Listening to the organization, but most importantly guiding the organization and how everyone can play a part to be more inclusive. So in a way it's culture, what the organization looks like and what do we say to the outside world.
Share
Virginia Stagni
06:48
It's very good lens that we need to put sometimes on our glasses on how we are looking at things. And I think it's really it's really important. But what have you seen are maybe the best misconceptions - best or worst in that sense- misconceptions around the world of
D&I
, and what may be, you know, cos you've seen that are not really considering the should?Share
Yasir Mirza
07:10
It's a really great question. I think some good things have have come up with diversity inclusion over the last 2-3 years. Like, we've had a tragic murder of
George Floyd
which has unearthed really uncomfortable conversations around equity, particularly on race.Share
07:31
I think the opportunity that's come out of that is organizations take it very seriously and strategically. The challenge now is what role and organization plays in the wider societal conversation of equity, and I think that's still a very uncomfortable one.
Share
07:48
I think the biggest challenge I'm seeing today is it's a wider societal challenge is a lot of virtue signaling. We we talk a good game, we say equity is important, but actually what sits behind it? And I think some of the traps organizations fail into - and this is what it's really great to be working for the
FBI
because we do this - is we do this is we talk about the importance of diversity but actually don't back it up with any substantive work or plans or initiatives or effort.Share
08:22
Because for me, a lot of research out there,
Harvard Business Review
out there too, says creating the right culture of inclusion and harmony for everyone is the way in which you achieve sustainable diversity. Gocusing on just shiny gimmicks and little programs to make an organization look good externally will actually create a backlash. And I think for me that's probably some of the challenges organizations face today.Share
Virginia Stagni
08:49
I am a big fan of what you just said about, you need to have a talent, the diverse talent within the company, that's all in the nature of FT Talent at the end of the day, right? Why we created it is to really have to be a door opener for diverse talent from the most diverse background, younger people to come into our organization. But what is really key to me is showcasing a business case around diversity.
Share
09:19
Would you de-naturalize your role or what your team, for example, needs to do, if you think more commercially and strategically around
diversity and inclusion,
or is actually something that we all should be doing?Share
Yasir Mirza
09:33
So, what we're trying to do is influence the organization, every single part of the organization, to factor in inclusive thinking and diverse thinking and everything that they do, and provide them with the guidance to stay for that.
Share
09:48
I think there is such a brilliant opportunity now because the traditional model for media organizations, whether it's
The Guardian,
Channel 4
, BBC,
FT
, we've had this monolithic view of bringing talent from the early career, then build, and build, and build... and 15 years down the line they're going to be an editor.Share
10:09
I think the way the audiences in the world, just all types of audiences, the way it's saturated the way they think and view, the way they have ideas of value, and in E. S. G, is so different. So we've got to be appealing, we've got to capture, and most of that is being very agile.
Share
10:29
So I think for us to be relevant in the world is to be connected with the way the
Gen Z
modern-day consumer thinks behaves does is interested in. They are interested in sustainability, climate change, values, ethics, diversity, equity. So, if you as a business are not speaking to that and connected to that, then you're gonna miss out.Share
10:57
So for me, there's the missing out on potential talent and diverse readers, there's the missing out to your competitors who are going to be doing this, and doing this really well. So you miss out talent, they take the talent.
Share
11:11
And also you're missing out on editorially rich stories, and also creative and innovative thinking on how to survive as a business in the world of saturation. So, your earlier point about the need to the must-have and the value, the answer is you need to have all of those.
Share
Virginia Stagni
11:32
I think it's really interesting because this is all about the shifts of attitudes and how we are seeing the workplace, how we're seeing our career journey, and also maybe we don't see in a very Marxist way, whereas our expression of ourselves, but just a part of our journey on this earth. And I kind of enjoy that, but at the same time, I don't fully agree. And I would love to know what you think.
Share
12:00
Because you have such a cultural role for an organization. Do you feel you're identifying yourself a bit too much with your role?
Share
Yasir Mirza
12:12
I think I think for my role, the type of work I do, I am my role that is constantly evolving and constantly learning, constantly adapting.
Share
12:24
My personal experience lends well to the role of empathy, compassion, understanding leverage, having leverage with underrepresented groups, because people want to feel like you understand the issues and challenges. You've touched on a really, really complex subject.
Share
12:47
Where I'm seeing the way the world is today, so what for me, I'm a big believer of what's happening in the outside world impact from the inside world, we're living in a really precarious time, and we have huge cultural wars going on.
Share
13:03
I think there's a balance of challenging the status quo. So the order in which we have, pushing them, changing them, challenging them, harnessing lived experiences, but doing it in a way which isn't about me as the individual.
Share
13:24
There is 2.500 employees here, everyone's different. What we want to do is find a way that all voices are included, all voices feel like they feel part of this. My job is always to bridge the gap, is to have it for us, our work to be something for everyone.
Share
13:42
Now, that means taking the middle road. So you'll have extreme voices on the left, extreme voices on the right, probably may not feel connected to it, but I want to speak to the mainstream.
Share
13:52
It's so hard and that's for me, the constant evolution and learning and seeing, and seeing what others are doing, and also trying to adapt, because I think, you know, we're never gonna get this perfect, this is about moving along in the spectrum to be better.
Share
Virginia Stagni
14:06
What you just said really made me think and reflect quite a lot around working for a cultural product. What do I mean by that? A cultural product is a newspaper, is a piece of music, is a theater show. As a second meaning, right? There is a symbol that is what the cultural product is bringing to the table, and it's not just a laptop, a cup.
Share
14:35
And what you were saying about the different voices within the organization, well, it's what makes the organization beautiful. But at the same time, cultural products do have a tone of voice and to have a mission.
Share
14:48
How difficult, how do you think, how are we doing this, of bringing people that do believe in the mission in the co-mission of our cultural product first? And then secondly, we tick the box of - sorry expression, but you know what I mean - of a certain diverse background. How do we balance that?
Share
Yasir Mirza
15:07
We should be something for everyone because the way we do our business reporting has really good key principles that anyone should connect to, should be attracted to anyone.
Share
15:19
My honest view of this now, having done diversity for 18 years is: it's a scale. We want to develop unheard diverse voices, so they have a level playing field. But we want to engage with parts of the business who don't, or employees who don't fit the traditional categories, who feel diversity speaks to them, and say they're included, they can also be an ally, so doing the education piece and ally.
Share
15:49
But for me, you do too much one... Sorry, you do too much of initiatives to attract diverse talent, you're disengaged with this part of the business who then won't be the allies, who then will perpetuate some of the exclusions, and then we see the same old story that people will come in, but they will leave faster than they join.
Share
16:06
Then you don't do enough to represent diverse voices, you you're not listening to the needs of employees. So for me, it's about getting the balance right. You can't do too much and you can't do too little.
Share
Virginia Stagni
16:19
Thank you very much Yasir. I really appreciate what you just explained because I think it's really helpful when you think about maybe some audience out there, some of our listeners would love to join and build a career in your field. Do you have any tips for them, maybe?
Share
Yasir Mirza
16:36
And I think the tip is to really know and understand yourself and to know that the role is brilliant in that you work across so many parts of the business, but you have to be really, really - you have to have courage and conviction because you have to support those and you you have to support and raise, but you also have to manage up and be pragmatic.
Share
17:02
So, the tips are try to do work which caters for everyone and not just for select for you.
Share
Virginia Stagni
17:12
What did you study to build your career? What has been your journey? Because it might be actually very interesting, I mean, do you need to take a degree in people management or something to do your role or not really? What's your take?
Share
Yasir Mirza
17:26
It was certainly not my background because I fell into it by mistake. I did computer science at university, went into dotcom, got made redundant after the year, and just naturally organically came across positive action. I was a positive action training and then it led to my field of equity and equality and diversity.
Share
17:43
Today's world, there's a lot of courses management courses on
D&I
. So I would say take those opportunities. The biggest skill that you need is to be curious about life and people and be open-minded, and I think the rest will sort itself out.Share
Virginia Stagni
18:03
Thank you very much Yasir. There is one special part about our talent show is that we always welcome some of the challengers and younger career professionals that we all talk about into the show, and that's you know bringing the diverse voices - or their voices that we try to talk to - within our realm and our podcast studio.
Share
18:26
So we have Pietr and Letizia that are going to ask the questions to Yasir. So, Pietr why don't we start from here?
Share
Pietr
18:36
My name is Pietr and it is my great pleasure to be joining you here in person. I was one of the lucky participants of the 2021 edition of The Talent Challenge, and I'm currently a graduate research student in sociology at U. C. L.
Share
18:53
My professional background is mainly in financial services and healthcare, where in addition to my day-to-day responsibilities I also delivered and worked with my team and management on a
D&I
aspect. And hence it is a great joy to be be able to speak with you today on this very, very important topic.Share
19:11
So in the previous questions, well you refer to those of course who are at risk of being excluded and marginalized both in the society, but also at work in the workplace.
Share
19:22
So could you tell us a little bit how can we make sure that the
D&I
aspect are institutionalized, in a sense that how can we make sure that workforce the D&I
aspect of workforce planning are seen as integral design principle, rather than sort of an add-on or an afterthought as it is sometimes?Share
Yasir Mirza
19:44
It's a really great question. Firstly, thank you it's great to meet you and thanks for your question. God this is a tough question. So I think there's a number of ways to approach this.
Share
19:54
One is to work with key people across the organization to define what good looks like. So the question is what would a diverse and inclusive organization look like? So if we were to fast-track three years forward and you would want to rate the
FT
or if we were good or not, what is that? Because it's quite subjective.Share
20:19
And the way to do that in the way that it did that here is when I joined a year and a half ago is to look at what other similar organizations doing. So I had a, like a horizon-scan of what
The Guardian
, The New York Times
, Bloomberg
, Wall Street Journal
, few others were doing in the space for D&I
. I did a bit of an assessment of the great work that we've already been doing, so in a way, charting what's our next steps.Share
20:45
Listening to our already underrepresented and diverse voices here. So we have brilliant employee resource groups is a great resource. Listen to the types of challenges and opportunities that they face as employees of the
FT
.Share
21:01
Bringing people together and doing, like an ideation exercise to say, right, okay, here's what's happening in the outside world, here's where we rate at the moment now, these are some of our challenges and opportunities, let's collectively decide what would look like for us.
Share
21:21
Through that process, we then identified new goals, representation goals, so I call them goals, not targets, because goals are a way of measuring, it's doing diversity in the right way, it's not about, it's not a charitable altruistic quota filling exercise to say, right in three years we want to get to here, and then figuring out what do we do backwards on culture.
Share
21:46
Because what we can do is focus purely on recruitment and hiring and working with the right partners and holding the right campaigns externally, but people join and then leave faster than they're joining, then it doesn't really work.
Share
21:58
So there's a combination of, what do we do to create the right culture? What do we in terms of processes to bring people in? How do we identify top talent and diverse top talent and develop their journey in? And how do we also attract by, what do we say to the outside world?
Share
22:19
So I think that is the right way to do it. Having ways in which you can hold yourself to account having ways to measure success, but most importantly, engaging with the wide business to help play their part in collectively making us more diverse and inclusive.
Share
Pietr
22:39
Thank you.
Share
Virginia Stagni
22:40
Thank you very much. Letizia, your question!
Share
Letizia
22:43
Yes. Hi, hello, nice to meet you. I'm Letizia and I'm part of the FT Talent, so I'm working for the design part. And so today my question for you is, how has the working from home impacted
diversity and inclusion
initiatives?Share
Yasir Mirza
22:58
It's a really great question. Really good to meet you. Thank you very much for that question. I personally when I started it was a new way of doing things, because I had to get to know the organization in a different way. And I personally love the hybrid way because there are times when I just want to come in and talk and meet to meet with people to really gather thoughts, get a sense of feeling of a culture, and you can only do that when you're in an organization.
Share
23:27
But then there are times when I just wanted to go away and be my naturally introspective self, to really start to think, okay, so what does that mean for us? Able to do my own research, my own thinking, and just switch off from that engagement. So for me I felt like I had the best of both worlds.
Share
23:46
I think hybrid working is an absolute brilliant way of thinking diversely behaving diversity and being more diverse. Because if you think about it, we are engaging with colleagues in all different parts of the world, eventually in a call. We have tools in order for us to naturally be more inclusive.
Share
24:07
So we sat here in a room talking and I could be giving one person eye contact and not the others, or three people are talking the other person isn't able to talk. Whereas if you're there virtually there's ways in which you can contribute without being intimidating by just writing in the chat box, raising your hand function, or someone feeling, "Oh actually, you know, Virginia hasn't spoke." So inviting Virginia to speak.
Share
24:32
I think it provides - from a technical baseline point of view - some really little brilliant ways to bring voices in.
Share
24:38
I think in terms of hiring, if you're thinking of attracting talent outside of where we are based in the UK, for example,
London,
then you can have people join from all parts of the country and actually we have a brilliant way of being in the office 2 to 3 days a week. So you can basically maintain a lifestyle living somewhere else and actually coming in one or two days a week to do that, so that's obvious.Share
25:02
I think if you're from a neuro diverse background and if you have a disability in terms of physically coming into the work and access to work, I think that just opens up so much opportunity. And also for people who, from neurodiverse backgrounds who work in a different way, who think a little bit differently, who want to for example, have a bit more structure and be home-based, I think it allows us to do that.
Share
25:27
So I think the opportunities are brilliant, also moves away from presentism, and just being present, and the biases towards extroverted types of individuals in our industry and facilitates introverts being at their best. And I say that because the misconception people have about me is I'm such an extroverted person, actually quite introverted, and I have my moments when I go out, but I need to kind of go off. So I think hybrids worked really well for me in that regard.
Share
Virginia Stagni
25:57
Thank you so much guys, and thank you so much Yasir for everything you shared. I definitely have a lot of takeaways to think about here and I really hope for the listeners to, we're giving a few new keys and new lenses to read, your role, your words and how important and how key and strategic it is for any industry to really develop their own strategy, and their own way of thinking about
diversity and inclusion
, because it matters to the culture of the organization itself, and you don't want to be, as we said, to be de-naturalized from actually what's your reason of being as a company.Share
26:41
So I think that's what's really, really important, is a subtle, but important and you really made this very clear for us today.
Share
26:46
Thank you so much. Thank you guys for joining and thanks to all our listeners for tuning in today. Thank you Yasir again.
Share
Yasir Mirza
26:53
Thank you.
Share
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Yasir Mirza
Virginia Stagni
Pietr
Letizia