Q&A: How thought leadership can help businesses blaze a trail on an inclusive future of work

At FT Longitude’s recent event on the future of work, Editorial Director at FT Longitude Piers Tomlinson was joined by Emma Codd, Deloitte Global Chief Diversity Equity and Inclusion Officer to discuss the relationship between DEI and thought leadership. Watch highlights of the discussion here.

Emma, the Deloitte Global Women at Work report has been going for five years now, and it’s been hugely influential in looking at the factors that impact women in the workplace. I wanted to ask you about some of the ambitions that you have for the campaign, and how those ambitions have changed since you started the campaign back in 2021?

I’m passionate about this report because I’m a woman in work, and also, because I have two daughters who are 15 years old and some stage in the near future will go into the workplace. I don’t want them going into the workplace when they may experience some of the things I see in this research, although it’s improving.

In 2019 I had just taken on my Deloitte Global role. I was thinking about what we could do that’s really impactful, not just for ourselves, but for the wider workplace. And I realised there was a real gap in global research.

Many of us are working in a workplace where the processes were designed 100 or 150 years ago and we’re now seeing things that need to change. I’m responsible for devising and rolling out Deloitte’s DEI strategy across over 150 countries and, as part of that, data is so important to me. Storytelling is really important too, but I need hard data.

And so we go out and poll 5000 people in workplaces across 10 countries, although that will go up to 7,500 next year (2025). We wanted to understand their workplace experiences, the everyday reality – not what organisations say they do, but what is actually experienced. To start with we focused on the workplace, but now we’ve evolved to look at factors such as women’ s health and domestic responsibilities too which are so important to have data on. It’s been four years now, and every year we’ve seen a greater and greater impact of this report.

One thing the Women at Work campaign does really well is to balance the topical issues with longer term structural challenges that women face in the workforce. How do you make sure that you’re addressing the most top of mind issues for women at the moment?

That’s a really good question. Pretty much as soon as the report is published , we start to think about the themes for the next year. It’s so important that we’re covering the things that really matter. But what we’ve also found is that so many of the questions that we started out with are still in there because the data is not improving.

In my day job I spend all of my time talking to people in underrepresented groups and a lot of women. I talk to my friends, I speak at a lot of events, and I’ll sit and listen – and I meet with Deloitte firm clients.

For example, this year, we’re asking a little bit more about menopause – this is a result of time I’ve spent with someone who is incredible at campaigning on menopause, and because we’ve realised, frankly, it is still not talked about enough in the workplace.

I also go to the UN General assembly every year, and I spend most of my time there in sessions on women’s equality with a totally open brain. I spend my whole time scribbling down things, and then the result is the new question set for the following year.

The final thing I’d say is that the responses from previous years also help shape things – for example, in 2024 we introduced questions on women’s safety. Why did we do that? Because the previous year, one of the top concerns that our respondents told us was their safety. And so we look at the responses from the year before, and we say, right, what would we like to know more about what these women are telling us? And therefore, what do we need to ask them? So it’s a constantly evolving process.

You talked a bit about how Women at Work has touched a number of different areas over the years that aren’t always talked about so much, such as women’s health. Are there any of those topics which are becoming easier to talk about in this kind of medium?

If you look at the survey data itself, we ask a question about how comfortable employees feel discussing mental health with their employer. That number is not great, but it’s getting better. In 2023 only 25% felt comfortable, while in 2024 that is now 33%. But although it’s going in the right direction, it’s still really terrible.

The women’s health data is really poor as well. You’ve got women suffering in silence, like I did. I suffered from endometriosis very badly. For many years, I’d never told anybody and just worked through the pain because it was too embarrassing to say the word period at work. That’s the reality, and we have to talk about it more. The more that we talk about menopause and women’s health the more you’ll start to see people becoming more comfortable.

And this brings me back to why the report data is so important. When I present to Deloitte firm clients, I present the whole report. So I will talk about these issues, and I will show them the data, which is really stark.

The final point I’d make is about ‘prefer not to answer’. Because it is deeply personal, and not everyone wants to talk about it. It’s your health, and you can choose not to. But my whole ethos is that where you want to, you should feel comfortable to.

I think we’re gradually seeing a lowering of the number of “prefer not to answer” responses and I really hope that we’ll continue to see that this year.

For the full recording of this session and more from our experts about the changing world of work in 2025 register here to watch the webinar.

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