"When it comes to DEI, authenticity is key.": Sonia Gilchrist, VCCP
Known as the challenger network for challenger clients, VCCP produces impactful work that pushes culture forward. Sonia Gilchrist, Head of DEI at VCCP, speaks on the vital components to improving DEI: company culture, consistent engagement, and authenticity.
How do you make space and support your employees in marginalized communities, beyond hiring?
At VCCP, DEI has never just been about hiring and filling quotas. Whilst recruitment remains incredibly important, without an inclusive company culture driven by constant engagement with your teams, your talent simply won’t stay with you. That’s why, in 2020, I set up The DEI Collective; a group of passionate individuals on a mission to supercharge our efforts in embedding DE&I into every aspect of the fundamental culture of the VCCP Partnership.
We believe that DE&I is about creating a strong culture of inclusion and a place where everyone can thrive and be their authentic self. We want the agency to live and breathe DE&I in everything we do and ensure that our DE&I principles are baked into all of our talent management initiatives. That’s why the DEI Collective co-author recruitment principles with HR and collaborate with BRIM to be part of their sponsorship scheme, ensuring Black talent within the organisation is championed in order to drive equity. We want everyone at VCCP to see that DE&I (or different, exciting and interesting as we call it internally) isn’t something to be afraid of.
In what ways does your team ensure that diverse, intersectional perspectives and ideas are included in the creative process?
The DEI Collective contains representatives from every department across the agency - that includes strategy, creative, production and media, in order to ensure that every part of the VCCP partnership is represented.
We work particularly closely with Girl&Bear, our production agency, to make sure that all production has DE&I at its heart. That includes everything from checking that all of the production suppliers we work with are prioritising DE&I through to fair representation in shortlisted shooting talent (replicating our recruitment principles), to who and how we cast and the make-up of production crews.
We also have dedicated Learning & Development programmes led by our brilliant Head of L&D, Lynsey Monroe, which ensures DEI is considered when developing plans for all departments and individuals. In the last year alone, we have trained 500 VCCPers in Unconscious Bias, as well as sessions on Deaf Awareness, Neuro-inclusion, Inclusive Design and much more.
The DEI Collective are also at hand to provide their own personal perspectives on the work or put teams in contact with specialist consultants where relevant.
Calendar holidays and honorary months put a momentary spotlight on marginalized communities, creating a wave of temporary support and celebration. While this is a positive step, the industry agrees that authenticity comes through consistent engagement. What can brands do to maintain continuous connection with groups?
Brands really need to be ‘walking the walk’ before going out into the world with campaigns that talk to specific DEI initiatives. There are so many examples of brands doing this and getting it wrong - when it comes to DEI, authenticity is key...
Brands should be asking themselves the following types of questions on an ongoing basis:
- What have you done or are you doing in the DE&I space to support each community, both within your organisation and outside of it?
- How can you continue to support these groups outside of specific events, building an always-on community and becoming an expert in that space?
- What commitments can you make to those groups that demonstrate an ongoing investment?
- How can you find ways to build and maintain relationships with those groups over time? Could you create an outreach program to particularly vulnerable groups? A customer panel? An ongoing research fund with focus on specific communities?
For consistent engagement to succeed, It’s imperative that DEI initiatives are supported through the whole business - so many of these initiatives fail because they are left to marginalised groups to drive the agenda in their ‘spare’ time with lack of support from senior management (source: Forbes). That also means a lack of budget which doesn’t allow for an ‘always on’ approach to DEI.
Which brands do you see as true agents of change, across the full spectrum of DEI, including social issues? How do they inspire you?
Everyone’s on a constant journey when it comes to DEI but, for me, the brand who really act like true agents of change is Ben & Jerry’s. I think if you asked most people about B&J and the type of company they are, a lot of people would be aware of some of their social initiatives. But when you dig a little deeper, you realise their passion and dedication to DEI has been in existence since way before DEI were being discussed in the boardroom. For example, they were already engaged with social activism back in 1989, becoming the first employer in the state of Vermont to offer health insurance to all employees and their partners, including those in same sex couples. They have a long history of supporting communities of colour - working closely with specialist groups to support and raise awareness of core issues. They also have the backing of leadership not just in budget allocations but also through a dedicated in-house activist team (people with NGO or policy backgrounds) who partner with their marketing teams. This dedication means DEI and social issues don’t fall through the gaps. (Sources: Forbes, Harvard Business Review, Indio9Digital)