Manuela Echilley is Diversity & Inclusion General Manager for the French multinational automotive company Renault. After 20 years spent in journalism, corporate and digital communication, her values and principles led her to this role. In this interview, Manuela talks about her position and point of views explaining why inclusion matters and how it should be supported.
What does a D&I manager do?
On a daily basis my role is to raise awareness about D&I topics: the objective is to make people understand that all the functions of the company are impacted, and that it affects all the organizational levels. How do I do it? I spend a lot of time talking with people. I attend direction committees explaining what D&I is, what does it means, what are the bias that we have and, most importantly, how to raise awareness about yourself and others.
My role is also about helping the HR division making its processes more inclusive, for instance recruitment, reemployment or internal mobility, and helping managers to act inclusively. The idea is not to do it by myself, because that would be simply impossible, but to identify change-makers within the company who could help me supporting this issue and, as a consequence, making the company go further and further.
Indeed, for supporting these processes you can rely on training, for example at Renault we have developed a serious game about D&I. But it’s not only a question of tool: it’s a question of having the right mindset.
The important thing to keep in mind is that every person should feel responsible.
In terms of D&I awareness there has been a huge progress in the last decade. By now, not only inclusion is seen as a meaningful culture to support but it also represents a business driver, as organizations know that diverse companies outperform non-diverse ones. Concerning this, D&I related roles within companies were not as relevant as today and reports show that the demand for D&I professionals increased in the last years. How do you see the future of D&I professionals?
Actually, I think that there is a link between D&I and how the business goes. I believe that when your company is inclusive, people feel well even if they are different from one another. Because at the end we are all different: men, women, other genders, sexual orientation, origins… if you can come to your work every day and be yourself in the company you feel better and work better. When persons are free, they feel more comfortable, more creative, and use all of their energies. If you need to think about how to “be” yourself, you’re already making too much effort. So, the first important aspect of inclusion is about the freedom of being oneself.
The other thing is that inclusion is good for business. When a team it’s diverse enough, everyone benefits from more creativity and innovation. It also creates a sense of belonging which is a strength for businesses.
And I would add another aspect: a company has customers, and by being inclusive you realize your customer’s expectations. Companies must meet customer needs.
In my opinion, these are the reasons why inclusion is so important, and people are realizing this more and more. I think this is why companies are increasing their policies. For example, with Groupe Renault we realized at the very beginning that we should implement a network of D&I leaders in each country where Renault is present. If this change mindset spreads, it’s a victory.
In the last decade we have been facing revolutionary cultural movements that are strongly impacting and shaping society, such as MeToo, Time’s Up, Black Lives Matter, Fridays for Future. To what extent do you think that these movements impact on D&I awareness and policies? Have you noticed any particular changes in your company?
Diversity and Inclusion does not belong to the private or the professional sphere: it is a mission every day, in everyone’s life. You don’t leave inclusion related issues at the door when you enter at work. So yes, these movements impacted people. When people come to work acknowledged about these cultural movements, they raise awareness and can’t accept certain inequalities anymore.
If you take for example the MeToo, it made many women realize that they have equal value that men. Also, the BLM had a strong impact in Formula 1, for example with Lewis Hamilton. So yes, we were impacted. Because D&I concerns both the private and the professional sphere of individuals, every movement impacts the professional sphere, and I think that it also helps us to dare more in our strategy.
Speaking about changes, it is certain that Covid-19 widened inequalities. As a D&I manager, do you think that the Covid-19 outbreak impacted your work?
Yes, it definitely did.
Since we are aware of this, we tried to make people the most comfortable we could in their professional daily life at home. It made us more and more aware in terms of work-life balance. We provided help among employees with internal support, for example for managers leading their teams with remote tools or with individual coaching sessions. We choose to rely on people such as coaches, medical staff, helpers. Certainly, we firstly thought about improving work-life balance, because during such a big crisis giving support it’s a key issue. The chance we had was that home office was already improved. So many people already had experience in remote working.
Then, since our plants had to close in the first weeks, we implemented solutions for helping persons out of work, with a huge solidarity from our countries as well. Since cars were not being produced in the temporarily closed plants, plants and tools have been used to help the crisis, for example producing ventilators.
In this sense, this has been a positive outcome of the crisis, with support and help for and from people. It was nice to see this culture of solidarity. People suffered, but other transformed this suffering in help in many ways. This crisis invites us to change our mindset about ways of working: we need to think about other people, everyone is included.
What advices do you have for companies that want to improve inclusion?
Firstly, I would say that you need support from the top management, because D&I should be included in the whole strategy. If it is considered as something aside, it won’t be taken into consideration. You need to have and engaged top management, at a corporate level and in other countries if you are an international company. Then, you need a pilot function at the lead of the topic, with ambassadors, persons in charge to take initiatives, clearly identified leaders. At Renault, we have sponsors and engagement from the top and in executive committees, and HR is our piloting function.
Something very important is to identify change makers in the company. You won’t be able to do it on your own. Who is a change maker? Someone with strong conviction, motivated, who wants to change mindset within her/his/their team, division, job. Having these key persons at all levels makes easier to develop trainings or detect cases of discrimination.
Another advice I have is to have clearness about D&I issues identified in all the company: D&I must belong to every level and profession within a company.
Lastly, I suggest making sure you have something to measure your progresses: you have to identify tools or ways of measuring your performance. It’s important to pay attention to KPIs, because they provide countable figures, but everything is about inclusion, so perception is the key. Figures are important, but you need to know how people feel about it.
A question for Manuela: what is like to be a woman and a D&I manager in a male predominant industry?
Being a woman could be difficult, but I don’t feel discriminated because I am a woman. Being a woman in the automotive industry means that you may need to work harder to let people know that you deserve to be respected. To me, it’s a question of behavior: if someone discriminates me because I am a woman I must react, because it’s not consistent with the values of the company. If you see injustices and react, you will feel better, help and give an example.
I feel respected at work, but I also feel that as a woman I have a mission to speak up and to react to things that are not acceptable, in order to make the company evolve. I have two children of 11 and 14: the youngest one is a girl and she would always tell me how proud of my job she is. To have children that recognize that is a great award from me.
Being a woman in the automotive means a lot to me, I feel like I’m on a mission. At Renault we have the 25% of women in the workforce: maybe I won’t be able to improve up to the 50, but I will certainly do my best.
Our deepest thanks to Manuela for these precious words: we do need inclusive leaders now more than ever.
Interview by:
Lisa Vannuccini
Educator and International HR professional
Find her on LinkedIn
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