It's an interesting, it's an interesting topic when you talk about technology and how that how that really overlays with what we do in our leadership of our organizations, and, of course, the ethics that and culture behind every organization that we work in.So I wanted to start with really an example from earlier in my career, and I worked, as Ellie said, in ethics and compliance, which from a business adviser perspective was not the easiest, role to be in in terms of getting organizations to actually invest and spend in spend on their ethics and compliance programs because, typically, it's not a money generating part of the business.

And in today's world where there's so much pressures on pressure on organizations to be competitive, to be ahead of the AI curve, to anticipate what's next, that actually things such as ethics and compliance or when we come to diversity, include agenda, those are things that really need a a number of aspects to help support and get the needle to move within an organization.

So if I just start with one story where, in that ethics and compliance world, I I worked with a number of organizations, probably about half of the FTSE one hundred, when they had encountered some form of public crisis, breach of misconduct and that that could be as as Ellie said financial crime, bribery, corruption, harassment, discrimination.

And when you look at these companies, often what we found was, did they have policies in place? Yes. Did they have the right training in place? Yes. And most of the time, they were failing despite having the correct technologies, policies, words in place on a wall, for example. But what I realized was that culture is not what we say. It's about what we allow. And so when we worked with organizations to put yes. We put technology in place, but we also did advisory with their board and their leadership teams, and it was about making sure they had several different aspects in place to support an ecosystem of culture. And I'll give one example. There was a a public organization, or private organization that supported the public sector, And they had a huge crisis, related to fraud within their organization, and it was widespread.

And it cost them millions, multimillions of pounds in fines from the serious fraud office. It suspended all of their government contracts. It was a landmark, lawsuit against their shareholders. So you can imagine at that point is when a company was serious and was forced to look at their entire program of culture. And one of the things that I was really pleased about with this organization is they put a head of business integrity in place, and that person really had the autonomy to be part of those board meetings, to be part of those meetings where they're setting targets, where they're talking about finances and commercials, and how that communication would be distributed down to the lower levels within their organization.

One of the other things that they did, and if they a lot of their cost a lot of their employees were not necessarily at a desk or in the office all the time. But one of the things they knew that they would always check is their payslip. So they would reassert their values on the payslips, but also give them a channel to reach out and speak up on that payslip as well. Have you seen anything suspicious? Do you have questions? And they put their contact number where they could just anonymously report any concerns or ask any questions. And then the third thing that that organization also did was around having ambassadors and champions within the company, again, to support and reinforce at several layers throughout their organization what the culture is, what the the right things to do is. And if there are any deviations from that or concerns, how could they have a discussion about that and and proceed?

So the reason why I bring that example in and and so for some of you, you may be thinking, well, I don't work in this world of dealing with fraud or or financial crime or or harassment, etcetera. But whatever we are trying to do within our organization when it comes to change, technology is not enough on its own. We have to look at the leadership that we have supporting that and the the ethics and behaviors around it. So if we come on to my next slide, here we go. There we go. So just to summarize that, that culture is behavior and not just the intention. So many of you will be part of or will be undergoing implementing some technology change within your organization. And if you're asking people to adopt that culture change and particularly with the wave of, of AI agents that are coming into various different tools that you might be using, how do we reinforce that to really support the overall business goals and the culture that we want?

So if I think about, and I'm gonna because we are in a women in tech conference, if we think about things like more gender diversity within the organization, many tools have, especially when it comes to HR tools, will have that technology within there to, first of all, give you real time reporting, but also give you indicators of where different genders are progressing within the organization, where the pockets, where there there isn't enough representation.

And so getting those early indicators with the data and with the technology is one part of the puzzle. But if you wanna look at all the parts of the puzzle, really, we're going to apologies. The formatting seems to have changed. There's a culture right in the middle there, but you look at leadership, supporting that, systems, and behavior. So it's that combination of all those three forces that help to change that culture. So I'll take the take that example of more diversity within the organization. You get the technology in place. You have all the fancy dashboards and, reports that come through to you. But unless you are reinforcing that throughout the organization from a leadership perspective, and I'll give you an example from a previous organization I worked in.

We knew that there needed to be more females in leadership, generally across across the organization. Yet we started to put some things in place, you know, monitoring how many females were coming through for, interview stage, and then also, of course, monitoring how many we actually got through to to taking leadership positions. But what we didn't do is look consistently across the organization when we looked at males, for example, who were applying. Males and females, how many of those, or how many of those individuals were supporting some of the initiatives, where it was, initiatives on gender diversity or inclusion? How many of those as managers that were already in place could say that they had supported, an individual from a diverse background into a promotion or a leadership position. So we had an example of one, one person in my team was going for a promotion, and the standard application around their performance, their results, etcetera, their tenure.

And I added an extra section onto the form to say what that person had done in terms of supporting culture within the organization. And that individual had done some part of the mentoring program. He had supported, various different initiatives and events, and so included that in the form. And actually spreading that to and sharing that to other managers within the organization, several others started including it on their forms, and it became something that was informally, at first, included in that practice for reviewing whether an individual, what whether what that individual was bringing to the organization from a culture perspective and supporting that broader goal of more diversity within the organization.

So from a leadership perspective, from a systems perspective, I've mentioned already around the different, the different reporting and data points that you can get from that. I'm happy to go into that in a little bit more detail because my other back, other piece of background apart from ethics and compliance was HR technology. And there are some fantastic tools out there that go into the data that you can not only get in real time and point in time re reporting, but actually predicting and doing that workforce planning so that you're building a workforce that is future ready. So if you're getting your organization to triple in size over the next five to ten years, how are you going to predict that you're going to be able to keep up with that recruitment and retention to match the type of workforce that you're looking for. And not only just from a gender perspective, but it could be from, an age perspective, the skills. We know that skills, have a short shelf life now, especially in tech. You're looking at a two year maximum on a shelf life for skills within tech.

And then thirdly, from a a a behaviors perspective, and that's where that example of that organization supporting public sector where they had ambassadors and champions around their organization to reinforce the expected behaviors and to role model those behaviors. And I think everyone on this call, I I think there's a lot of leaders that are on this call, and there are people who are, perhaps not in a people management position, but you are all leaders of some respect. We all have that responsibility and ability to be able to reinforce the behaviors that we expect, whether it's to a, culture and diversity, topic that I focused on today or whether it's relating to a particular tech project or business project that you're working on. And then finally, just to I think we've got a few minutes left, actually. So I think to conclude with with some of those aspects, it's really about looking at the organization that you're in now and particularly every organization that I've worked I've worked in. It's we've talked about culture. We've invested in, and certainly more and more, especially my job now, which is around technology, investment and transformation.

Organizations are doing those things, but we have to look at what is actually changing the day to day behavior. And, again, just to tie into those who are particularly on technology projects, there are so many projects that I hear right at the beginning where they talk about this entire business transformation. We want to adopt, not adapt. But, actually, when it comes down to getting into the project, their behaviors on a day to day, basis are not supporting those initial goals, and people revert back to what they know, what they see others doing, what they think is safe. So I come back to culture. It's driven. It isn't driven just by messaging, but it is around how we behave and who we have leading that change within your organization.

So just to conclude, I guess, to the to the the final points before we hopefully get chance to open it up to open it up to questions. Whether you're talking about broader organizational change or you're talking about specifically within a project that you're working on, it's about being explicit on the behavior that you're expecting and not just the the values. It's about aligning the systems with what's and what you say that matters, and then holding that consistency at leadership level. And that could come from each of you who are on the the call here today in your leadership roles or definitely embedding that governance across your your project or organization to get that leadership consistency. So I'm gonna pause there for a moment because I think we have have, a few moments to to ask some questions.

Yes. We absolutely do. Thank you for a wonderful, wonderful talk. I love what you mentioned around culture. It's not what you say, it's what you allow. And we have some great questions coming through. So everybody, also, please keep them coming. Victoria would love to ask, how do you deal with externalities, so wrongly reported people?

Yes. That is, and that that stems back to my earlier my my earlier, experience where I think we have to encourage a speak up culture regardless. That we we do need to encourage that. But I think making sure that organizations have that channel where they feel that when they raise a report, first of all, they're protected, and there's no fear of retaliation. But also that that person who has been reported can be reported in sorry, can be investigated in a confident well, not only confidential. Yeah. A confidential and protected way so that if it turns out that person was was wrongly reported, that shouldn't be something that gets wider spread, and it shouldn't come back on the person who reported it as well. It does that that question that Victoria raised, I do think does rely quite a lot on the the technology as well to have technology that protects, protects organizations in that because I have seen, despite intentions of people wanting to keep something confidential, things can slip out, and then that person's name could be tarnished.

So I think technology is a big answer for that particular one, and that's an area I was very familiar with previously. So good question, Victoria.

Great question, and thank you for sharing. Just on technology, you mentioned some HR technology that you specialize in also. And we're just curious what tools would you recommend for predicting that workforce planning?

Oh, that's a good one. So, I mean, I'm I'll I'll be probably slightly biased to Oracle technology because that's the one I've worked with the most, but there are some fantastic ones out there. Oracle's not the only one. It's just the one I probably know the most, where it's I think when you have the ability to and and Auckland in particular as well as some others, look at the workforce planning not well, over over a five, even a ten year period. Right? You could look really far out if you wanted to. And from a skill shortage perspective, especially when you look at, technologies where they are coming to end of life, and then you look at, new technologies where we need more we we need more, personnel to cover that.

And sometimes with these newer technologies, those personnel are often in the younger generations. We have to look at how are we, recruiting and perhaps and this is where I've seen some really good examples of companies getting in at grassroots to combining that social impact work with, getting in, you know, early young recruits into their organization or familiar with their organization, getting them on grad schemes or internships.

And then it is a bit of a you have to kind of spread the net far and wide through several different things to help support that workforce planning. And the other element with workforce planning as well, if organizations can look to invest in having that technology within their organization, it enables them to have better mobility within their organization as well. Not enough companies do internal mobility. And if you think one of the best ones I I saw that I worked with previously was Fujifilm when they obviously used to you know, some people on the call might not be familiar with when the cameras all cameras just had the reels of film. And Fujifilm was obviously a huge player in that and the processing of the film, but then moving to actually, they moved to medical devices and cosmetics. So re redeploying, reskilling their workforce to move into the other areas of the organization was a huge effort for them, and, and we should be doing it in all areas, all the areas of it.