Being in the right place at the right time
Patsy Doerr, Thomson Reuters Global Head of Corporate Responsibility, Sustainability and Inclusion spoke to October 2016 Fellow Katie Fish about creating purposeful change at Thomson Reuters, taking impact seriously and what inspires her.
Patsy Doerr joined data, media and technology company Thomson Reuters five years ago. Today she heads up the 45,000-employee firm’s CSR, sustainability and inclusion function. She has more than 20 years’ experience in talent, learning, organisational development, diversity and inclusion, employee recognition and customer engagement.
An evolving function
When I joined Thomson Reuters five years ago, I was asked to build out the diversity and inclusion role. There were pockets of activity in various parts of world and different parts of the business, but there was no coordinated function. Three years ago, they also asked me to take on CSR and sustainability, and so now, I cover all three aspects (diversity, sustainability and CSR).
My function is interesting and not the same as most — and that is for one primary reason — because we are internally focused around employee engagement on these issues, and externally focused on trying to drive thought-leadership as well. Thomson Reuters is in an ideal place to do this because of the news arm of our organisation, as well as the fact that we are a data analytics firm. We have data to support all these efforts and can curate and package them in a meaningful way.
Every organisation goes through an evolution, so we have been building this from scratch for the last five and a half years. I do not think that three years ago, or even last year, we would have been bold enough to put a target around gender for example, but now we feel we can, because we have moved the agenda forward. In fact, very specifically we recently announced a goal of 40% women in leadership in the organisation by 2020. We are currently at 32%. So that is a big undertaking in 2.5 years for a 45,000-person firm, but we are going to make it happen. We believe diversity is a business imperative.
Our CSR effort has two different aspects; one is philanthropy in the sense of giving back to NGOs and the communities that we work with. The other is around community investment, as well as employee engagement. Everyone gets two days to use for volunteering a year. This year we have a goal of 150,000 volunteer hours. We are already up to 122,000 hours — so we are not too far off, which is great.
On a sustainability front, what we are doing is twofold. Internally we are really trying to reduce our carbon footprint and we have some very aggressive goals on that front. Externally we have our sustainability site, which is our primary channel, although not our only one, to go out there and really tell stories about the importance of sustainability. A great example of how we work with customers on this important topic is our latest Greenhouse Gas Emissions report, authored with key clients.
Drivers of responsibility
Talent is a big driver for us. If we look at the type of people we are trying to bring into the organisation and particularly millennials, we all know that half of workforce is now millennials and they deeply care about these issues.
It is also about customers, our clients are expecting the same. In fact, one of the trends I have seen over the past couple of years is that in RFPs[1] that come to us now they are asking questions about diversity, which is a huge change. This is where you really start to see the rubber hitting the road in terms of the bottom line impact and this helps bring on board our salespeople and our business development teams.
The final piece is the investor community. With the rise of impact investing, it is imperative in my view that companies need to do this type of work seriously and ensure that they are telling their story about it. It is primarily my role at Thomson Reuters to go out and tell our story.
I also think, without getting political, that in today’s complicated political environment in every part of the world, the role of the corporation is that much more important. We really have to stand up for these issues, and I feel that it is an opportunity that we need to take advantage of now.
Challenges to the agenda
If we think about diversity, if you are trying to hit a goal of 40% women in leadership the challenge is not only bringing in the talent pipeline, it is also attrition at the higher levels. In order to achieve our goal, we are not going to fire people and put a woman in place. We cannot do that. So you really have to follow that talent pipeline from start to finish and look at attrition rates and make sure surgically that you address those issues at every stage of the employee lifecycle.
One other area that can be challenging is middle management. People often call it the ‘frozen middle’. In our organisation, we are talking about 10,000 people. It is a challenge for us to educate them, get them on board, and in practice make sure that they are practising these things with their employees and allowing their employees to get involved in activities like this.
The role of incentives
We are furthest along on the diversity front in terms of incentives. We have built this into the performance management process with something called the ‘people goal’. This is primarily about contribution to diversity and inclusion and we are trying to get even more granular about what that means. Therefore, we are being very specific about what those activities and actions should be. We are actually trying to expand that people goal to include other aspects of contribution to sustainability and CSR.
On the volunteer front, we definitely track the days used and provide dashboards around how well the organisation is doing in all of these areas. We then provide dashboards to the business units to say here is how well you are doing versus business unit X, and so you actually create this competition, which is a positive competition and is meant to incentivise. I believe measurement yields results so if you see what you are doing then you will ultimately focus on it.
Finally, I would add that we do an employee engagement survey annually, as many organisations do, and we have a smaller version, a poll for a smaller population which we do twice a year. In those surveys there are specific questions on sustainability, diversity and CSR, these questions explain this is who we are and this is what we expect of you. We have more work to do, but we are getting there.
The relationship between impact and profit
My view is that this is continuing to evolve. I think companies are becoming much more aware of why this is important — in terms of talent, customers, and investors. Having said that, I think the research is also getting much better. Data shows that if you focus on project X, there is going to be Y impact on the bottom line and we can see that direct correlation around stock prices and around customer loyalty, things of that nature really affect the business. The more we can produce that data, the more companies are going to come on board.
At Thomson Reuters, we are in a unique position because we as a company are focusing on it because we do believe it has an impact on the bottom line, and because we are providing that data to other companies. Recently for example, we launched a Diversity and Inclusion index. This is a critical tool for analysts and investors and is a measurement point for how to invest smartly, aligning investment choices with values.
Personal inspiration
I consider myself a change-agent. If you had talked to me six or seven years ago, I never would have expected that this would be my job. I took it on initially for two reasons. Number one, I have always felt very strongly about women in leadership, I am on several boards that support that, I am president of the alumni association of my all female high school and just spoke at a graduation event about this issue. Number two, I am passionate about these topics and getting more and more passionate every day the more important they become. I did not know a lot about sustainability three years ago, but I know how to hire smart people and to learn about it. I find it fascinating the fact that all of these topics are evolving every day. So being the kind of person who is challenged by change and innovation this is exactly the sector to be in — I am in the right place at the right time.
[1] Request for proposals
