Hi Jane. Tell us a little about what your job entails.

My job is to elevate Belonging, aligned to our We Care philosophy at Dorchester Collection by designing and leading initiatives and programmes that ensure we continue to foster a sense of belonging and a culture of inclusion and throughout the collection. Our We Care philosophy embodies our values of Passion, Personality, Respect, Working Together and Creativity, which allows us to create a work environment where people really feel accepted and valued for who they are. When people feel safe to be their authentic selves, their creativity shines. It’s this creativity that creates legendary guest experiences, which is one of the reasons why diversity and belonging is so important to us.

How is Dorchester Collection doing in terms of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)?

Considering we started this journey over 11 years ago, I think we’re doing incredibly well. We’ve done a huge amount of work championing LGBTQIA+ rights across the collection, so we are incredibly proud to be a Stonewall [the LGBTQ+ rights charity] diversity champion. I’m bisexual, so a workplace that is inclusive of the LGBTQIA+ community is something that’s very, very important to me.

In terms of gender diversity, we have 50/50 gender representation at the executive levels. Throughout the rest of the company in terms of leadership roles, we have 42/58 women/men representation, which is pretty impressive. Gender and LGBTQIA+ are really great places to start when you’re starting out on your D&I journey.

When you’re creating inclusive workplaces you’re essentially trying to change people’s behaviours and deeply ingrained thought patterns. That takes time. And when you’re engaging people in what can often be very uncomfortable conversations, it’s important to take a slow approach so people have time to get comfortable with feeling uncomfortable and don’t disengage from the conversation altogether. Having this foundation in place makes it so much easier for us to start focusing on the other diversity dimensions, such as race, disability and neurodiversity, which is where our efforts will be directed over the coming year.

Diversity is obviously important in a workplace environment, but what difference do you think it makes for guests?

Our guests come from all over the world, so I think for them it’s really important to come into a hotel and see themselves reflected in the people who are serving them. If our people are diverse, they are much better able to provide our guests with legendary experiences because they know and understand the cultural context of the countries our guests are visiting us from. When we aren’t familiar with a culture and its traditions, it’s very easy to get the little things wrong, but those little things can have such a huge impact on a guest’s experience. But if we have people who don’t just understand those cultures, but have lived them, guests leave feeling that they’ve had a very personalised and bespoke experience.

Is there a moment in your life that that sparked your passion for this?

Yes, my brother Gary was born with a rare condition called Patau syndrome, which causes a lot of physical, intellectual and learning disabilities. I was three when Gary was born and I became a secondary carer for him. When he was little, he often experienced sensory overload and had meltdowns in public, which was particularly difficult because he’s nonspeaking.

I remember as I tried to comfort him people walking past and tutting “bad parenting” under their breath or telling me to stop fighting with him. I used to get quite upset by those assumptions. As you go through life, you realise it doesn’t come from a place of hate, but a lack of awareness or understanding, which I wanted to change.

I think that was the ‘moment’ that sparked my passion, but other defining moments throughout my life added to the flames. When I was 15, I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety, which is something I still, and probably always will, struggle with. In my early 20s I started blogging about women’s rights, which was around the time I realised I was bisexual, but I didn’t come out until years later. That was largely because I’m from an Irish Catholic family.

I think a common theme here is that throughout all these moments, there was a rude awakening that the world is unfairly designed to lift up some people but marginalise others. I wanted to change that and help create a world that me, my brother or anyone else who is considered ‘different’ could belong in. Society in general needs to be more empathetic and compassionate of others. I feel that the more opportunities we have to learn from and interact with people who live their lives differently to ours, the more empathetic and accepting we become.

What are the big challenges you still face?

With diversity and inclusion, the landscape is always changing, so there are always going to be new challenges. However, I think the biggest challenge is always going to be deconstructing bias. Bias is always a very tricky thing to talk about because there are very negative connotations associated with it and people think that being biased means you’re a bad person. But being biased just means you’re human. We are all biased to some extent – myself included – and it shows up in ways that we’re not aware of, affecting the decisions we make and how we treat people.

But it can be hard to engage people in conversations to help them become aware of their biases because they think it’s threatening their sense of self, which is that “I’m a good person”. People can get defensive and they disengage from those conversations, which isn’t helpful either. Bias is hard-wired into our brains from a young age. It’s not something that’s necessarily our fault and we can’t just switch it off either. But it’s important to become aware of it and learn the techniques that help us pause and ask ourselves, “Is bias playing into the decision I’m trying to make?” When bias is one of the biggest barriers to diversity and inclusion, that’s always going to be a challenge..

You’ve been in the role for a short time. How’s it going so far?

I think I’ve got my feet under the table! I’m still trying to get a 360-degree view of the organisation, but we did quite a lot for Black History Month in the corporate office. Educate, Communicate and Celebrate are the three pillars that help us create a diverse and inclusive workplace. For the educate component, we did a Black British history timeline in our canteen so people could learn about Black British history. We featured six books from Black British authors across different genres in our canteen to help start conversations about race, and also encouraged people to support local Black businesses. We also held a charity drive for the Norwood and Brixton foodbank. In the meantime, there has been a lot of planning and preparation to drive similar initiatives throughout the collection.

Do you think there are different challenges in different parts of the world for Dorchester Collection?

Definitely. Diversity and inclusion are a journey and, as with every individual and organisation, every country is going to be in a different place in that journey as well. The Black Lives Matter movement has really driven conversations around race and racism in the past couple of years. But in some parts of the world, society isn’t quite there yet, and women’s rights and the gender pay gap have only recently entered national discussion. And in other countries, people are still fighting for LGBTQIA+ rights to even be recognised. Even in countries where these groups are protected by equality legislation, those societies may still not be comfortable talking about polarising subjects like race and religion. For that reason, our approach to diversity and inclusion is going to be different for every country we operate in. There’s never going to be a one-size-fits-all solution because every country has its own unique culture, laws and challenges that need to be taken into consideration.

So, what’s next on your to-do list?

I’m currently working on developing a diversity, belonging and wellbeing strategy so we can start setting goals and measuring our progress against diversity, belonging and employee wellbeing. Through Your View we’re very good at collecting data, which gives us a great benchmark to help inform where should focus our efforts going forward.

We have a lot of diversity in in our hotels, which is wonderful, and I’d love to see our diverse workforce progressing into leadership roles or into the corporate office. So, boosting diversity is going to be a big initiative that will involve looking at our recruitment practices, Your Plan and potentially partnering with external organisations.

Education is also a key initiative internally. Next year, we plan to launch a new Belonging at DC initiative. This is a quarter by quarter, year-long initiative designed to move beyond general awareness of the different diversity dimensions (protected characteristics) and deeply explore the diverse identities that exist in our workplace so we may nurture an empathetic and compassionate workplace. It consists of four, quarterly campaigns that will focus on a single diversity dimension (Gender, Race/Ethnicity, LGBTQIA+, Disability). At the heart of each campaign are two spotlights which will drive our efforts for Educate, Communicate and Celebrate. The purpose of these spotlights is to facilitate further education, deeper understanding and thoughtful conversations around two key topics, issues or identities that fall under the umbrella of each campaign’s diversity dimension.

What do you like to do when you’re not at work?

I’m a real homebody. I’m very introverted by nature so on weekends you’ll find me holed up at home with my partner, Tom, looking after my plants or trying to win over the neighbours’ cats with treats. Besides that, I love to read, listen to music and binge-watch true crime shows on Netflix. I’m also very interested in astrology and the mystic, so I love my crystals and Tarot cards, which I use for yoga and journalling. I really love nature, so I always try and get out for a walk over the weekend. It’s a time to reflect and ground myself and, as anyone who’s an introvert will know, that alone time is really important to recharge.

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