A place for everyone, whatever their talent

Whoever you are, you can be yourself at VodafoneZiggo. We say this because we believe that diverse and inclusive teams deliver the best performance and the happiest colleagues. In a diverse and inclusive team, everyone can be themselves, everyone feels at home and they seek connection with each other in a respectful way. In order to achieve this throughout VodafoneZiggo, we worked hard on our diversity, equality and inclusion agenda in 2021. 

DIVERSE GOALS

Diversity, equality and inclusion are the right way forward and are good for our company. 
Because a person who enjoys their work will also perform better. Talented colleagues choose to work for us because they know that they will be able to progress, regardless of their sex, background, orientation or occupational impairment. It’s only if we are a reflection of society that we can best serve our customers in that same society. 

Our special Team Diversity, Equity & Inclusion is working to achieve our goals by first achieving gender equality throughout our company as a whole and at the top. We also want to create equal opportunities for queer colleagues and people who are distanced from the labour market. Finally, we are working hard to promote interculturality. As far as we are concerned, we will only achieve our goals if we continue working hard to ensure visibility and acceptance, by giving opportunities to everyone and by fostering and nurturing people’s talents.  

Our ambitions and objectives

To be a first-choice employer for women by 2025

• 35% of top management to be female by 2025

• 30% of sub-top management to be female by 2025 (TW13+)

• 30% of the entire organisation to be female by 2025

• From 2022 onwards, all full-time positions for 32 to 40 hours per week must be made more accessible to women wishing to work less than 35 hours a week.

A higher position on the PSO ladder (social enterprise performance ladder)

• PSO Step 1 – 2022

• PSO Step 2 – 2023

• PSO Step 3 – 2025

DATA-DRIVEN EQUALITY

What do our colleagues themselves regard as important with regard to diversity and inclusion? We asked them about this for the first time in 2021 in the form of a survey that we intend to repeat every year. More than 1,500 colleagues answered 46 questions about sexual identity, gender, about how they identify in terms of their origin, whether they feel safe in the workplace and whether they can see that equality of opportunity exists within our company.

This is how we found out, for example, that 88% of our colleagues felt that they are able to be their authentic selves. That is a very nice score, but it also means that 12% of colleagues are not yet able to do this. This needs to be improved, both for them and with them. The survey also found that leadership in the area of diversity and inclusion is not always visible enough. We are now also in a better position to evaluate whether non-binary colleagues are already sufficiently represented. We can then use that data to determine what needs to change for the better One of the first changes to be introduced will be that colleagues and customers will be able to insert an x when filling in forms, instead of male or female.

Since last year, we have also had a dashboard for gender diversity. This allows all colleagues to view the gender distribution in different parts of our company – and thus to see where improvements can still be made. Our focus groups on interculturality and equality of opportunity for women also yielded valuable insights. Both the dashboard and the outcomes from the focus groups are important starting points for internal discussions about gender diversity and interculturality within our company. 

RECRUITMENT FOR DIVERSITY

In order to make sure that we are as objective as possible when selecting new employees, we always make use of online assessments. Based on the data, we can then look and see what a person is capable of and what they are capable of learning.This is a more effective way to give people a fair chance, regardless of their age, sex or background. In addition, our recruiters have been trained to recognise prejudices and to prevent prejudice within the recruitment process. In that regard, the pandemic also provided an opportunity to recruit more people with a disadvantage on the labour market, as they often thrive much better in a homeworking situation. This is one example of how recruitment can contribute towards greater diversity within VodafoneZiggo. 

INCLUSIVE INTERNAL SUPPORT

We believe in the power of internal networks, as people from the same target group recognise and strengthen each other. ‘Allies’ can also participate in these networks, as that will enable them to get to know the target group better and to spread the message of that network themselves. And anyone who is ready to stand up for themselves within a network and who is unable to do so with their own manager may then bring about positive change. Currently, we have an international network for Interculturality Connected, an Ability network, Go-Getters, for people with a disadvantage on the labour market, the LGBTIQ+ network, the Queers Connected Network, Women Connected for gender equality and the Culture Crew which focuses on our overall company culture.

In the past year, we have also started to train a set of trust advisors. These are colleagues who voluntarily make themselves available to offer a listening ear to people who do not wish to consult their confidential representative or manager in the first instance. 2021 was also the year when we devoted extra attention to providing support to employees who are distanced from the labour market. During the coronavirus pandemic, this was often a considerable challenge, because remote coaching doesn’t work equally well for everyone. 

GREATER AWARENESS

Change begins with consciousness raising. That is why we always internal awareness. One of the ways we have done this is by means of a special training course in Conscious Inclusion, to be followed by all line managers to enable them to avoid stereotyping, excluding or discriminating. And during our People Planet Progress (PPP) Festival, a lot of attention was devoted to inclusion, equality and diversity. During the first festival, our CEO, Jeroen Hoencamp, came out as heterosexual; a video of which was eagerly shared once again in the past year. During the previous festival, a video in which colleagues with an impairment told their own story was also shared widely.   

VISIBLY QUEER

Give attention to something and it will grow. Visibly positioning ourselves as an ally of queer colleagues and customers makes the message that everyone should be able to be themselves more acceptable. Unfortunately, this wasn’t always as easy to achieve in the second year of the coronavirus pandemic. We were still the principal sponsor of Pride Utrecht and once again entered into a partnership with Pride Amsterdam, but we were less visible as a result of the coronavirus measures. 

To compensate for this, we tried to increase our online visibility as much as possible. One of the things we did was to sponsor the Purple Friday Newspaper (Paarse Vrijdag Krant), which included a QR-code linking to a video of Corporate Queer explaining what the letters LGBTIQ+ stand for. We also worked with Corporate Queer to bring out an online masterclass for children about gender identity. And during Coming Out Day, we identified ourselves as an ally of queer people in the Netherlands. 

DIVERSE OUTLOOKS

Our ultimate ambition is that our diversity and inclusion policy is no longer needed. There is still a long way to go before that happens, however. The first step in that direction is to make the internal networks more autonomous. Soon, they will grow and thrive without any help from Team Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. Secondly, one of our other ambitions is to hire even more people who are distanced from the labour market. And of course we hope that we will soon be living in a world that is much more open once again, so that we can express our support for all talented individuals in a much more visible way.