Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging matter says Roxi Corp

With DHL Supply Chain being part of a Group with more than 600,000 people working in over 220 countries and territories around the world, diversity cannot be anything other than part of the comapny's DNA. The company, however, believes that it is important to embrace far more than diversity alone – DHL Supply Chain continuously seeks to be an equitable and inclusive business that also fosters a sense of belonging in its employees.

DHL Supply Chain's Global Head of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging (DEIB), Roxi Corp, shares her views on why these things matter.

Leveraging the power of diversity through leadership

Roxi explains the benefits of workplace diversity, and how companies can start building a diverse business.

"Bringing together people with a wide range of skills, experiences, cultures and viewpoints gives us depth, breadth and diversity. But leveraging the power of that diversity starts with leadership, rather than simply as an initiative that’s owned by HR. For real change to happen, every individual leader needs to buy into the value of belonging - both intellectually and emotionally. Only when the entire leadership population steps up to own these things will a company’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging (DEIB) practices thrive," says Roxi.

Roxi shares some examples of DEIB initiatives. "Over 86% of our 22,000+ strong global leadership population at DHL Supply Chain have completed the Bronze foundation level of its Inclusive Leadership development program aimed at ensuring leaders across the globe create an inclusive organization for all. Leaders are more aware of unconscious bias – something that is at the core of DHL Supply Chain's foundation stage. The second stage of the program is Silver and looks at the inclusive behavior that leaders need to demonstrate in order to create work environments where our employees can bring their true selves to work every day. Over 35% of our leadership population has completed this stage since its formal launch in September 2023."

"One of our targets is to have women in 30% of our senior leadership roles and we’re making good progress towards that, with year-on-year targets agreed for each geographic region. We are attracting and recruiting females in our operational environments as well as in STEM roles, helped by a targeted marketing campaign. We are particularly proud of the number of females (40%+) that we attract to our graduate programs, ensuring DHL Supply Chain remains a place where females can thrive," adds Roxi.

Raising awareness of the company's DEIB work

As a large international business, DHL Supply Chain has taken all necessary steps to make its 180,000 colleagues aware of the company's DEIB work.

Roxi explains: "We have visible buy-in from our top leadership; we have taskforces at both global and regional levels to keep momentum and engage employees; and we also have external support to help shape our agenda and to share with us best practice from other industries. We also survey the people in our organization to find out what diversity means to them and what we can do as a business to be more inclusive. We have been awarded Great Place to Work certification in 29 countries and 80%+ engagement scores from our annual Employee Opinion Survey."

"Employee sentiment is at the heart of our DEIB efforts and we analyze the employee feedback based on a number of diversity demographics to help evolve our DEIB approach. Typical examples of our response to that feedback are the ways in which we are supporting our older generation to continue to feel valued at DHL Supply Chain by leveraging their experience and
mentoring our younger colleagues. We have also been able to hone in on areas where the topic of Women in Leadership needs more support so are trialling region-specific interventions which will see our male colleagues co-owning and driving our Women in Logistics agenda. We have launched Empower Hour sessions that provide personal development for all colleagues - irrespective of role - and this was based on specific feedback we received from our individual contributors. Finally, we have successfully piloted and will launch DEIB training for our front line colleagues in 2024 to ensure that everyone understands they have a part to play in creating a culture of belonging for all," adds Roxi.

Connecting employees through Diversity Networks

Other DEIB initiatives that have been launched within DHL Supply Chain include Diversity Networks/Employee Resource Groups. Known as Alliances@DHL Group, these networks are now 23 strong across the globe and focus on abilities, gender, race/ethnicity, LGBTQ+, and military veterans.

"The amount of passion shown by these network members is truly powerful, and they provide a platform for employees to connect, share experiences and promote their diversity internally. By doing so they are educating, informing and connecting many other colleagues across the world," comments Roxi.

To celebrate diversity, DHL Supply Chain now focuses on several global campaigns each year, including not just International Women’s Day but also International Men’s Day, Generations Day, World Mental Health Day and Pride among others.

"The response is always amazing. Last year, we had nearly 35,000 views on our internal communication channels, 1.65 million views on our social media pages with over 41,500 likes, shares and comments – that is only the start and we plan to continue this into the future. In 2023, we launched our iBelong campaign across the DHL Group with the aim of encouraging employees to share their stories and tell us why they feel a sense of belonging at DHL. This was the most successful DEIB comms campaign to date with over 70,000 views," explains Roxi.

Aligning recruitment processes with DEIB ambitions

When asked how DHL Supply Chain ensures that recruitment processes are aligned with DEIB ambitions, Roxi says: "We are working to debias our recruitment process to address the perception of ‘favoritism and equal opportunities for promotion’. This has involved training for our hiring managers and our resourcing teams on inclusive hiring. We have also introduced new interview templates that encompass an objective rating scale and are working on implementing templates for our front line colleagues."

Roxi continues: "Having picked up on the theme of equal opportunities in vacancy management, we invested in external expertise to debias our end-to-end talent acquisition process across our top fifteen highest recruiting countries. We received some very helpful insights, and identified pockets of best practice as well as areas for improvement. We are exploring blind recruitment and building more robust frameworks to support objective selection decisions. Finally, we are seeking to capture and track the demographic data of all applicants through the talent acquisition process (where we are legally allowed to do so)."

Making progress on DHL Supply Chain's DEIB journey

Finally, Roxi shares the progress DHL Supply Chain is making on its DEIB journey.

"Step by step we are getting there, but these things take time and they aren’t always linear. You don’t just fast-forward to a sense of belonging. So we have to focus on diversity and really
embed that inclusive culture. At the end of the day it all comes back to our purpose at DHL: Connecting people, improving lives. Having a connection to an organization or group of people that makes you feel you can be yourself at work not only results in greater engagement and creativity in the workplace, it fulfills a psychological need. By working hard to make sure our own people are connected – whatever their superficial differences – we will be better placed to join the dots."