Q&A: Head of People at Qodea Reflects On Latest DEI Google Partner Win

This year, we won two Google Cloud Partner of the Year awards for our work in the Public Sector and for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) at Google Next ’23 in San Francisco.

Reflecting on the win, and all the hard work our teams have put into becoming Google’s DEI Partner of the Year, we sat down with Head of People, Charlotte Batters to tell us about the journey, and what’s next for Qodea as a leader in this field.

We couldn’t be more proud to have been recognised for our work in these areas. Since establishing our DEI strategy in 2020, it has been a key focus for the company and through our dedicated DEI Board, and regular DEI Workshop sessions, we’ve been able to discuss and address important topics, to foster a culture of openness and inclusivity.

First of all, congratulations! What does winning the Google Cloud DEI Partner of the Year award mean to you?

DEI means a lot to everyone at Qodea and I’m so proud of the huge team effort that has gone into winning this award. Our passionate people are always willing to put in the work to make a difference – whether that’s opening up and starting those difficult conversations, challenging with compassion, or driving various initiatives around the business. The award is a glowing recognition of the effort of everyone involved!

What are the biggest challenges the industry faces when it comes to DEI, and how is Qodea helping to overcome them?

It’s no secret that the challenge with diversifying the industry is the level of outreach and engagement from early on. At Qodea, we want to help give people from all backgrounds the equal chance to access the industry. A lot of the time people see “technology” as big, daunting and confusing so we’ve created a free monthly “Intro to Google Cloud” session for anyone who wants to learn more about cloud, career options, and get hands on with some of the technology. You can read more about it on our website.

What initiatives are you most proud of?

I’m especially proud of our Kickstart programme, which aims to tackle the issues at entry level by hiring cohorts of associate level Cloud Engineers with diverse backgrounds. By bringing people from various backgrounds and industries together to retrain, we’ve been able to foster some amazing talents through the programme. So often cross-skills are overlooked, but as a very personable cloud consultancy, the people skills are as important to us as being skilled in technology.

How do you get the company on board and engaging with DEI initiatives?

As a B Corp, we chose to set up a number of employee-led internal boards to help us drive important topics such as Charity, Environment, and DEI. Because these teams have input in our company initiatives, policies and processes, we are able to make better informed decisions with our employees in mind. We also have Google Looker dashboards collating our DEI data to help the board gain better insights and prioritise improvements.

What is your biggest piece of advice for other companies getting started with DEI initiatives?

Speak to your people! Usually planning DEI initiative sits solely with a HR team, but working closely with our employee-led groups, we have access to a breadth of experiences that instantly make our initiatives more inclusive. 

A huge part of DEI is opening up opportunities for people to hear each other’s experiences so with this in mind, we host regular “tea breaks” to allow a safe and open space for employees to get together and discuss important topics. They’re open to anyone in the business who is interested in sharing or listening. We’ve had some really varied opinions shared, and the fact that people feel comfortable is testament to how secure and safe they feel here at Qodea.

How do you decide on DEI initiatives at Qodea?

B Corp does a fantastic job of setting a framework for what good looks like and because we’re always looking to improve our B Corp score, the framework is a great place to start for inspiration. We also include DEI questions in our regular employee engagement survey, feeding the data into our Looker Dashboard. We track engagement with the events that we put on, such as the tea breaks, and amend and manage feedback accordingly. We’re always looking for ways we can improve and new initiatives we can run, so keeping in touch with our people is essential – our DEI board does a fantastic job of it!