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Mona Bitar

Hello, everyone. I’m Mona Bitar, EY’s Vice Chair in the UK and Ireland, and a member of the EY UK Diversity, Equity and Inclusiveness Council. You’re listening to Strong When We Belong, a podcast series created and produced by EY in the UK. At EY, we believe that a strong sense of belonging can lead to better collaboration, retention and business performance.

This series is dedicated to sharing uplifting conversations and personal stories about belonging in the context of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. You’ll often hear this shortened and referenced throughout as DE&I. Each episode features a conversation led either by myself or one of the other members of EY’s DE&I Council, including Shaun Scantlebury, Joanne Conway and Fatima Tresh. We really hope that these conversations inspire individuals and organisations to think differently and drive positive action and change.

Hello, everyone, I’m absolutely delighted to be hosting this episode today on the topic of race, and with me I have Chris O’Shea, who’s the CEO of Centrica. Chris, before we get going, let me ask you to say a few words about yourself, because no doubt you’ll do it much better than I will.

Chris O’Shea

Mona, thanks very much. And thanks very much for having me on the podcast with you. My name’s Chris O’Shea. As you say, I’m the Chief Executive of Centrica, a UK-based integrated energy company. I’ve been here about five years, I’ve been the CEO for a bit over three, I was CFO before that and, prior to that, many, many years ago, I worked for Ernst & Young actually.

I spent some time with Ernst & Young in Aberdeen as a tax advisor, and then left and worked for a number of other companies before eventually ending up at Centrica. And this is a topic that’s really close to our heart. Diversity and Inclusion is something that I’m quite passionate about, because I think if you don’t have the right diversity, how can you possibly hope to have the best workforce? If you don’t have an inclusive environment, then how can we hope to have our people perform at their best? So, I’m delighted to be on with you.

Bitar

And like I said, Chris, it’s really lovely to have you here, not least because I think it’s really important that we get senior leaders. And today, I want to deep-dive on the topic of race, and actually in particular around Black senior executives. And the reason I’m delighted to have you is because I think the role of leadership is really important in doing that.

And I guess, if I kick us off, if I think about the last decade, not even years, the last decades, we’ve had multiple reports and recommendations addressing racial inequality. I think between 1981 and 2017, there were 589 recommendations that were proposed. And yet it feels like we haven’t really moved the dial on senior Black executives. And what I really want to understand is why do you think that is?

O’Shea

I think that’s a great question, and the reality is I don’t know, I’m personally quite puzzled by it. It’s not because of a lack of talent, so it must be something that we’re doing wrong. I think what we have to do to fix this, is we have to try something different. If we keep doing what we’ve always done, we’ll just get what we’ve always got.

I think that what we have to do, if you think about talent, I think about it as a pipeline, and you’ve got an entry point to the pipeline, you’ve got an exit point, and I think there are two things.

Having spoken to Black colleagues about this, and I can remember going as far back as when I worked in the US in 2000, speaking to a colleague about this and asking them how they felt about Diversity and Inclusion, this was a black colleague in the States, and it was really interesting because what he said was, when he was growing up, he said there weren’t that many role models.

He said there were sports stars, there were movie stars and there were singers, and then there were others. But really, he said he was crap at sports, he really wasn’t an actor, and he couldn’t sing to save himself, so really hard to see where are the role models, and I found that quite profound. So, I think what we need to do, and I think this is maybe why we’ve not really moved the needle, we need to make sure that we have role models at senior levels that represent the society we’re in. And in this case, we need to have senior Black executives, so that young Black people can look and say, I can aspire to that, I can see somebody who looks like me, does a job like that.

So, we need to have role models, and we don’t have enough of them. But what we also have to do is we have to make sure that the entry point to the pipeline is working better. So, we need to reach out to young Black kids in school and make them realise that being in business, being a senior executive, this is a route that’s open to them. Because if we only have the role models and we don’t have the entry point to the pipeline, we’ll never get anywhere. And if we only have the entry point to the pipeline and we don’t have the role models, then people will probably get lost throughout the process.

So, we’ve really got to focus not just on the goals, but we’ve got to focus on the actions. We’ve got to realise that there is no one thing that we can do, there are hundreds and thousands of things that we must do, but they’re not one and done. We’ve got to keep doing them, we’ve got to check that they’re being done, and we’ve got really keep on it.

If we do that, then we’ve also got to be realistic, this will take a number of years. So, we won’t fix this next year or the year after, but we should have progress and milestones, so that we can make sure that we’re moving in the right direction.

Bitar

So, Chris, I think that’s right, and I think a number of things that you said there really resonate with me. I think we often say you can’t be what you can’t see, so the question of role models is really important. But it also requires I think what I would call intentionality in that pipeline.

And you, as a CEO, and maybe this is a bit of a mean question, do you feel you have enough oversight on the pipeline, particularly in the mid-levels, maybe not at the very senior levels? But if we don’t get that kind of mid-level coming up, then we won’t get the senior executives. Do you feel, as a leader, that you’re getting enough oversight of that?

O’Shea

So I would say yes and no, because I think that I have enough data, I have enough information. We have a great Head of Diversity and Inclusion, and she makes sure not only me, as the CEO, but the leadership team, so the people that run all of our businesses, all of our functions, once a quarter, Debbie comes to talk to us and puts out the data.

And she shows us where the diversity is, where it was three months ago, where it is now. She shows us how we split promotions, how we split new recruits, how we look at departures, and that’s split by any number of different characteristics, so race…we don’t have enough yet on sexual orientation but race and gender, those two that we can see.

So, I do have that information, but it’s not really moving the dial. So, I think I’ve got enough oversight, I’m not sure that I’m doing enough with that, because if I was doing enough with that, we would see more progress than we’re seeing just now.

Bitar

And given that there is no silver bullet, and given that we’re not seeing the progress, what would you… My hypothesis is that it has to be leader-led, and that means having to make intentional decisions.

I was talking to another client of mine who’s made huge progress on the gender issue, and one of the things they really talk to me about is the intentionality of all the senior leadership team. So, the question I asked her, and I’ll ask you again, is what are you asking leaders to do differently from that perspective?

O’Shea

We’re quite clear now, from the start of this year, we must have diverse shortlists for roles, whether they’re internal or external and we mean racial diversity there. I was quite clear, when I became the CFO of this company, and also a previous company, I insisted there was no such thing as an all-male shortlist.

And it’s quite interesting, because when you’re doing external hires, sometimes you’ll have a head-hunter that’ll come back and say here’s the longlist, we can’t find a suitable woman. That’s fine, we’ll just find a suitable head-hunter. And they ask for time, and they go back, and all of a sudden, there’s at least one suitable woman on there.

And we have made really good progress, I think, in gender diversity. I think we need to take the same approach for ethnicity. So, what I’m asking is for every top 150 in the group, whenever there’s an appointment in that position, whether it’s internal or external, there must be a diverse shortlist for that role.

And that doesn’t mean that we therefore move the needle, that doesn’t mean people are thereafter appointed, however I do think that there is the right intention. And we have stated goals in Centrica, we’ve been very public about the diversity we want in our workforce. And by having the stated public goals, by having internal commitments made by the leadership team, and then by monitoring the information and making sure that we have diverse shortlists, I’m confident that we’ll move the needle. But this is why, as I said earlier on, it won’t be fixed tomorrow. I think of this as a continuous improvement project. It’s not a big capital project where you make one big decision, and everything comes through. It’s continuous improvement. You need to be looking at it constantly.

So, we have to empower our talent teams to make sure that if they see people trying to make appointments in a way that is not aligned to our policies of having diverse shortlists, they feel empowered to speak up.

And so, it’s about creating that environment where everybody’s got a voice, and then having the monitoring, and then frankly if people don’t make progress, there are consequences. And if people do make progress, there are consequences. The consequences are not just that you take a big stick and hit people when they don’t do what they should, but you recognise the positive change. But there are consequences if people don’t make the changes they need to make.

Bitar

Again, given that this will take a number of years, and given that this is actually, I think, in part a cultural transformation for all of the business really to drive racial equity, one of the things I’m conscious of, and this actually came to me late in life, Chris. I’m a Muslim Palestinian woman and people often mistake me as being Norwegian or something, which is quite interesting, but actually late in life I realised that I had to become more visible around being a Palestinian Muslim woman, because the point of role model is quite important.

And so, my question is do you think, with the Black executives that we’ve got in our organisation we should ask more of them, in terms of what they do, in terms of role modelling? Or is that unfair? Because I often reflect on that.

O’Shea

I think that’s a really good question. I think it’s easy to say we should ask more of them, but that would suggest that our senior Black executives are all mono-cultural and they’re all one type. And within that we’ll have introverts, we’ll have extroverts, we’ll have people from the UK, people from outside the UK, people with very different cultural backgrounds. We’ll have people that love public speaking, we’ll have people that hate it.

So, I don’t think there’s one-size-fits-all. I think we should try and support them to be more visible, but we shouldn’t require them to be more visible. And hopefully, if we can say, look, here’s the support… I mean, look, I used to hate public speaking, I used to feel physically quite unwell, I used to get terrible stomach cramps. Now, if you give me a microphone and a speak, you can’t get me off the stage.

And so, people can change, but it takes a little bit of time. So, I don’t think it can be a requirement, I think it has to be encouragement, I think it has to be coaching. And I think also saying to people, look, if you’re able to do this, this could be the impact, then we’ll get more people. I think giving them the confidence to do it I think is really important.

Bitar

Two more questions from me related to that a little bit, Chris. Do you think we should, as businesses, work more closely together, with you and other colleague CEOs of yours, given that you’re not the only one facing into this challenge by any stretch of the imagination, are we working enough together as a business community?

O’Shea

So, I think we should work together more. The reason I smile is that obviously a hackneyed phrase you hear is the war for talent, and it’s very hard to get businesses to work together when you’re talking about talent, because ultimately, we all tend to nick each other’s talent. But I do think we could do better and work better together to enlarge the talent pool, and I think that’s where cooperation could really be a positive.

So, whether it’s outreach to schools, for example, to just show people what’s possible, I think we could do that better doing that together. There’s no point in three energy companies going to the one school, so we could coordinate that a bit better.

And I think in terms of how we share an idea, sharing what works in terms of creating an inclusive workspace as well I think would be very important. But I think ultimately collaborating on talent as they get more senior, nah, we’ll probably all be rivals on that.

Bitar

Undoubtedly. Chris, I know we talked about there are lots and lots of little things, but if I was to press you on the top three or four things that corporates need to do differently, what would you say they were?

O’Shea

I think already we are very open with our data; I know we are at Centrica, I think most companies are. I think what we need to do differently is we need to take a whole pipeline approach to this, so we need to look and say it’s across from the entry-level jobs in our organisation to my role as Chief Executive to the roles on the board. We have to take a holistic approach to that. That would be number one.

I think number two, we have to set realistic timelines but with stretching goals. So, we have to say look, if you don’t know where you want to go, how will you ever know whether you’re making progress? We have to not do something that we know we can reach today. I think this is an issue that we have to have goals that actually we don’t know how to achieve. Because with the right people, we’ll find ways to do it. So that would be the second thing.

I think the third thing is that senior executives, including people like myself, Chief Executives, we need to actively manage this and intervene and call it out. Call out where we’re not making good progress and show where we are making good progress. I think this can’t be delegated to others.

And then the fourth thing, and this is specific to Black talent, well it extends beyond, to all ethnic minorities, we have to realise the difference between being non-racist and being anti-racist. And we’ve had some events in Centrica which have frankly shocked me, because if you’re not racists, race doesn’t really occur to you and you don’t think like a racist, but when you hear stories from colleagues…

I had one story from a colleague who’s an engineer who basically went to fix somebody’s boiler and we got a phone call saying we’d like you to send a white engineer, please. And the thing that shocked me, well, two things, one was that there are people in this world that are like that, the second thing is our engineer was surprised when I asked for the details of the customer so I could call them and say we didn’t want their custom anymore.

He was genuinely surprised at that, and that really brought home to me the difference between being not racist and being anti-racist. I don’t want anyone as a customer of our company who is not willing to take any of our fantastic engineers irrespective of their race, their creed, their colour, their religion and their gender.

So, I think the first three are really about managing the talent pipeline, the fourth thing is about showing our colleagues that we will not tolerate any discrimination of any form. I think that’s really important. I think when you do that as a chief executive or a senior executive, the benefit of that is amplified more than we can probably ever know.

Bitar

I think that’s spot-on, Chris, because I think that’s what really builds trust in the organisation. Because they’ll trust that the leadership will stand by them on these things. And we know that trust is probably the cornerstone of getting cultural change in any given situation.

Chris, I’ve really enjoyed talking to you. One of the things we do on this podcast series is we ask people to finish the sentence, I belong when… And I’ll go with this, I enjoy it, I try and give a different answer, but for me really, I belong when I can be entirely myself at work and there’s no differentiation between home and work. So, if you can complete the sentence, I belong when…

O’Shea

It’s much the same as you. I have to say I belong when I’m able to be myself, my authentic self, and I feel both valued and welcome. And I’m lucky that, as Chief Executive, I get to set the tone. So, I dress very casually, and that’s because I feel more comfortable than I do in a suit. So, I wear jeans and a hoody. And I like the fact that we have people now in Centrica, over the last three, three and a bit, years since I’ve been CEO.

My son asked me yesterday, he said, do you not have to wear a suit to work, Dad? And I said no, and he said, what about everyone else that wears suits? I said, they don’t either. And he said, does nobody wear a suit? I said, people wear a suit who want to wear a suit. People who want to wear a T-shirt, wear a T-shirt.

And I feel very lucky, being able to have that impact. It’s a really, really small thing, but I think when people are able to be their authentic selves and feel that they’re welcome, it certainly makes me feel I belong, and hopefully it makes them feel like they belong as well.

Bitar

That’s lovely, Chris. And you’re a man after my own heart, because I’m always very, very casual, although today I am wearing a shirt, but normally I am very, very casual. Chris, I’ve really enjoyed talking to you today. Thank you very much and look forward to catching up with you in the near future.

O’Shea

Thanks very much.

Bitar

Thank you for listening to this episode of Strong When We Belong. We look forward to sharing more stories in the coming weeks. In the meantime, you can subscribe to the series on Spotify and find it on EY.com. You can join the conversation on social media too, using the hashtag #strongwhenwebelong. Tell us, how do you feel and where do you feel when you belong?

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