Diversity in Action - A Diversity and Inclusion audit at Akeneo
💖 The purpose of The Allyance is to help both companies and candidates: companies wanting to reach excellence in hiring and candidates wanting to find the perfect companies.
➡️ Let’s meet Estelle de Gombert, Head of HR at Akeneo, where The Allyance led a Diversity and Inclusion audit.
Estelle is 40 years old and grew up and studied in Reims, in the Champagne 🍾 region, North-East of Paris. She started with a law degree and went on to study Human Resources for her Master’s Degree. After she graduated, she joined the recruitment sector in Paris, mainly as a HR and VP manager. Progressively, she shifted to the professional training sector and became a consultant on waste management and remediation, and in general on environmental topics.
__ __ __🔗 DIVERSITY IN ACTION N°9 - Estelle de Gombert
__ __ __Tell us more about your role at Akeneo!
🎯 In 2013, my partner decided to create Akeneo, a software editor company based in Nantes. The same year, our baby girl was born. During my maternity leave, I did voluntary HR for Akeneo. When my leave was over and as soon as a position was available, I joined the HR team! I have now been Head of HR at Akeneo for more than 6 years. I am in charge of all generalist HR topics: benefits, contracts, relationships between people, but also HR projects such as D&I and professional equality.
Outside my job, I enjoy reading, going out, visiting cities and countries… Oh and, I ❤️ history! I cannot help but binge watch history shows on TV!
What does Diversity & Inclusion mean at Akeneo?
When we started, we recruited talents without even thinking about diversity, and we pay the price for it now: only 25% - 35% of our employees are women and most of them are white. As of today, I cannot say that we are 100% inclusive, but we had a wake-up call and we are out to change things!
We are now engaged in a profound reflection about diversity in its global sense. We know that we have to work on unconscious biases by educating the different professions within Akeneo.
✅ Though we never recruited based solely on degrees, we now accept more junior profiles. During the audit, the data revealed that we unconsciously hired senior white men for engineering positions. This situation was unfair and imbalanced. It did not reflect our efforts towards inclusiveness and so we decided to address it. We are also looking for alternatives to standard but outdated recruitment practices and we would like to expand our profiles’ panel so that every candidate can apply to our offers.
✅ Our goal is to offer a safe workplace for everyone. The way to achieve this is through training, information, education… before putting everything in place.
✅ The fact that we are an English-speaking company makes it easier to be inclusive. Also, some offices have all-gender toilets, for example. In general, I am happy to say that Akeneo is a company where everyone can open up about anything. It makes Akeneo a safe space for minorities to share their experiences. So yes, I think Akeneo’s corporate culture is already in the right direction to talk about D&I and act on it!
How would you convince someone to join Akeneo?
🔎 Akeneo is a company where newcomers always say they feel included and respected for who they are. We do our utmost to ensure everyone feels sustained and stays with us for as long as possible.
When you’re hired at Akeneo, you get to work on a product whose aim is to facilitate the lives of people and that does give meaning to your job. Besides, our company is growing and is international, which means new challenges arise often.
How did you hear about The Allyance?
Because we are aware of the challenges we face in terms of D&I, we wanted to do a professional equality audit. We talked to different actors in this sector and one of my colleagues who had worked with Caroline in the past recommended her, so we met and it became obvious that we had to work together!
How did you collaborate with The Allyance?
The audit at Akeneo started in early Summer 2021. Caroline chose a diverse set of employees to interview: newcomers, people in different locations…etc, in a random manner in order to better understand the make of Akeneo. In June, she interviewed the selected staff on site in Nantes as well as online, since we have offices in Boston, London, Sydney and Düsseldorf.
📌 In late August, Caroline delivered the audit (a 40-page-document). Our goal now is to present it to our Executive Committee and then to our employees, in other words to share it with the entire company. Obviously, we plan to use the audit’s results and recommendations to improve the way we function. This audit will guide us towards concrete solutions. It will also help us raise awareness within the company about unconscious biases through the creation of specific training sessions, for example.
While auditing Akeneo in Nantes, Carole met Ziggy (Akeneo’s mascot), their amazing office and Carole David.
Why did you decide to start a D&I audit?
We had set up a Q&A system for our employees to provide constant feedback. One day, a question popped up: “How are we with professional equality at Akeneo?”.
That is when it all started. The question was interesting and we wanted to dwell on it, mainly because it pointed out an area where we knew we could improve. We then met and discussed with several experts and realized that D&I meant more than just pay equality and had to be addressed in a much broader way.
As a woman I feel directly concerned, of course, by this issue. As a HR director, I know that D&I issues tend to be left aside, because everyone is so busy with the daily grind of life and work. I also know that this is wrong, both in terms of ethics and of corporate strategy.
Since the delivery of the audit, what have you changed at Akeneo?
Right now, we are in the process of analyzing the audit’s results and planning things based on the conclusions. Within the company, we would like to raise awareness about the daily employees' daily concerns, such as breastfeeding, neuropsychology…
Here are some of the steps we are planning to take thanks to the audit done by The Allyance. The audit contained many recommendations. Among them, here are some that we have decided to implement in the very near future:
Firstly, we are thinking about training on diversity so that everyone is on the same page. Moreover, such a training will also provide our teams with tools and solutions towards more diverse recruitment processes.
Secondly, training our recruiters more specifically feels essential to us. Our Talent Acquisition team may be aware of D&I topics, but they are not the sole actors of recruitment. They should be able to pass their knowledge onto Hiring Managers.
Thirdly, we are thinking about drafting a code of conduct that would state our commitments, what we encourage and what we refuse within Akeneo. Caroline is writing it at the moment. Right now, the project is carried by HR and Managers, but in the long term, I would like us to further staff so the topic is not taken lightly.
Why would you recommend The Allyance to other companies?
💎 Of course! After each conversation with Caroline, you realize you have either learnt or become aware of something new. And this is not only my personal opinion. This has been the experience of all the people that Caroline has interviewed according to the feedback they gave afterwards. They all felt safe talking to her and took pleasure in the conversations.
In addition, I really would like to point out Caroline’s solution-oriented mindset. Working with the Allyance is stimulating. We found the audit process both intellectually challenging and practical. It has been a smooth and helpful collaboration. I wholeheartedly recommend working with The Allyance.
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CONCLUSION
A few words from Caroline, The Allyance CEO:
“Without any doubts, the D&I audit I did for Akeneo will remain a project I am extremely proud of. Auditing a company is never easy: you need to listen, not to judge and to get a grasp of the company culture to suggest the right solutions.
At Akeneo, Estelle was instumental in making this audit a success. From the very beginning, she open, trusting and did not try to hide issues. I am luck to have met Estelle and proud that our collaboration goes beyond the audit. I am will support Akeneo efforts towards inclusiveness.
✔️ Want more?
If you are interested in knowing more about The Allyance’s methodology to audit D&I practices, feel free to get in touch with us.