Retain

When employees feel valued, respected, and included, they are more likely to stay with the organisation. To retain our talent, SoftwareOne is implementing a strategy focused on learning and development, and employee engagement. We are prioritising education programmes on DEIB for both our leadership team and our employees. Our company culture plays a crucial role in employee retention, which is why SoftwareOne highlights the efforts of our North American (NORAM) and Latin American (LATAM) teams and focuses on developing new programmes to foster volunteering and local employee group initiatives.

Learning and development

Learning and development play a vital role in the professional growth and success of our employees. Continuous learning fosters innovation, creativity, and adaptability by enabling employees to embrace change, tackle complex problems, and seize new opportunities.

At SoftwareOne, we are committed to our employees and their professional development, which is why we are evolving our Learning Portal for all employees worldwide. Not only will we host internally-developed learning content, but we will integrate world-class digital content libraries which will bring cutting edge learning resources to employees at all levels.

This new platform launches in 2023 and aims to help our employees grow their capabilities and enhance their career opportunities in the company. It will enable our Services and Marketplace functions to design and develop role-specific learning paths.

We want our employees to take full advantage of the learning opportunities we provide, and their understanding of the platform is key. We can see that employees tend to use more hours of training compared to managers, and usage between women and men is balanced.

Communities, corporate giving and employee engagement

Volunteer and donations platform

With the objective of enhancing our volunteer and donation efforts across regions, we are partnering with Benevity to provide an all-in-one platform. The platform, which will launch in 2023, will showcase over two million NPOs for which our employees can volunteer for existing events or even create their own. We also want to empower employees to give to the causes they care most about by matching their donations. Additionally, the platform will offer “missions”, which are small activities that encourage employees to take action on their well-being, the environment and society in general.

Employee groups

Employee resource groups (ERGs) are an excellent way of engaging employees and helping them feel more included in the workplace. They also help increase the visibility of underrepresented groups within the organisation.

SoftwareOne is in the process of creating ERG governance to provide guidelines for the existing ERGs, but also to promote the creation of new groups. We will support our employees to create purposeful groups with a clear vision and action plan, and give them the funding and resources needed to reach their goals.

Currently, Yammer communities form part of the ERG framework, and serve as a space where community members and allies can come together to support each other. Some of these communities include SoftwareOne Muslim & Allies Community, Veterans, Military Families & Allies NORAM, and NORAM LGBTQIA2S+ and Allies.

DEIB in the NORAM region

Mosaic

Mosaic is NORAM's volunteer diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) committee. Committee members contribute to NORAM's DEIB agenda by making recommendations to the Equity & Inclusion Programme Manager whilst DEIB regional ambassadors promote their initiatives within the organisation. As the committee consists of diverse employee groups throughout NORAM, they can quickly identify their own needs, recommend strategic actions, and lead implementation of DEIB initiatives. For 2023, Mosaic will focus their efforts on Black, Hispanic/Latine talent, women and the LGBTQ+ communities.

21-Day Challenge

During Pride Month 2022, Mosaic hosted a 21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge within NORAM. The goal of the challenge was to raise awareness, encourage compassion, and engage people in the quest for equity. The challenge focused on the LGBTQ2IA+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Two-Spirit, Intersex, Asexual and other identities) experience.

For each of the 21 days, participants were emailed details of a short assignments with materials including articles, videos, podcasts, and more. The goal of the assignments was to expose participants to multiple perspectives on LGBTQ2IA+ history, identity, and culture.

Through communication in our dedicated Yammer Group, the 85 participants were able to bond and build special communities via this learning opportunity. The equity challenge ended with the capstone event, “Our LGBTQ2IA+ Community”, which was an hour-long discussion, led by queer, trans and non-binary Latine DEI expert, Ash Ramirez.

DEIB in the LATAM region

Gender equality

LATAM created the “Let's talk about...” series and hosted two events focused on women. The first event was a multi-generational panel discussion where four women spoke about their take on the perception of women and how this has changed over the course of generations. The second event was an informal conversation between a woman ambassador and a woman government secretary about gender (in)equality and the changes that need to happen. 618 employees participated and there was overwhelming demand to make this an ongoing series in the future and to include multigenerational and transgender participation.

LGBTQ+

Leading up to Pride month, the LATAM region designed an awareness campaign where every month they focused on a letter from the LGBTQ+ community, whereby events, information and stories were shared to educate and generate awareness. The purpose is to create an inclusive culture for every employee which builds a sense of belonging, where everyone is welcome. LATAM is also preparing to offer a leadership training programme on the subject.