Generali: Be Bold for Inclusion
Working in partnership with fellow consultants Schneider-Ross to create culture change and turn Unconscious Bias to Conscious Inclusion.
Generali needed to nurture diversity of thought and foster an inclusive culture in order to achieve its ambition of truly understanding and partnering with its customers. Key to any culture change, of course, is the behaviour of those at the top – leaders seeing their own biases and turning Unconscious Bias into ‘Conscious Inclusion’.
Approach
Partnering with fellow consultants Schneider-Ross meant that Generali could count on a programme that was both rooted in in-depth D&I analysis as well as informed by Steps’ decades of experience in creating behaviour change through drama.
As part of an extensive set of diagnostic activities, Steps conducted 1:1 discussions in order to craft dramas which would reflect the organisational reality and hold up a mirror to leadership globally.
In close collaboration with the client and Schneider-Ross a one-day live workshop was developed for the top 200 leaders within Generali, which was delivered in 8 locations across Europe including Italy, Germany, France and Austria, and also in Hong Kong. The design was tailored to each location in a “glocal” approach.
In addition to these live sessions Steps is currently creating video-based e-learning modules to enable large numbers of employees to access the learning across the global population of Generali.
See It and Own It
Using interactive bespoke scenarios, we held a mirror up to the current culture. Doing this alongside sharing of company D&I data gathered by Schneider-Ross engaged participants intellectually and viscerally in the need for change and their vital role in it
Change It and Live It
Either through one-to-one skills practice with our actor-facilitators, or through the use of forum techniques, delegates found the language they needed to be champions of D&I and “walk the talk”. Discussions led by Schneider-Ross focused on agreeing priorities and committing to next steps, in order to transform the good intentions of the day into tangible and long-lasting change.
Outcomes
Data gathered after the sessions shows that ninety per cent of the senior leaders who attended rated the overall experience excellent or good and the workshops have indeed stimulated leaders to make the sort of practical changes in behaviour that Generali wanted.
Responding to a follow-up survey, every member of the senior leadership said they were doing something differently. Half the respondents (56%) said they had challenged examples of unconscious bias since the workshop and 80% said that speaking up when they saw bias was the thing they felt most committed to doing in the future.
Other popular actions were about chairing meetings in a more inclusive way and reaching out to a more diverse set of people to get new perspectives. Another was about encouraging smart-working.
Whilst it is still early days, 79% of the senior leaders report that they already see this feeding through into enhanced employee engagement and satisfaction in their teams.
