As a glob­al orga­ni­za­tion with more than 100,000 employ­ees, SAP has unique chal­lenges and resources when it comes to imple­ment­ing a diver­si­ty and inclu­sion strat­e­gy. Among oth­er achieve­ments, SAP has won Best Work­place awards around over­all diver­si­ty and inclu­sion efforts, includ­ing ini­tia­tives for women, LGBTQ+ indi­vid­u­als, and peo­ple with disabilities. 

ASUG had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to speak with Margót Good­son, VP and head of North Amer­i­ca Diver­si­ty and Inclu­sion at SAP, about her per­spec­tive on how SAP’s diver­si­ty and inclu­sion strat­e­gy has evolved. 

ASUG: What does your role entail?

Margót: It’s build­ing strat­e­gy and exe­cu­tion there­of for work­force diver­si­fi­ca­tion, sup­pli­er diver­si­fi­ca­tion, and ecosys­tem impact. My expres­sion is, ​“Mak­ing diver­si­ty and inclu­sion our DNA” at SAP, because it has to be foun­da­tion­al to every­thing we do. It’s not just who you hire or how you hire. It’s the full hire-to-retire cycle. It’s the full suc­ces­sion plan­ning and pro­mo­tion. It’s the inclu­sive hir­ing prac­tices. It’s cre­at­ing a cul­ture of belong­ing. Then once you have those things hap­pen­ing, where does it touch your cus­tomer? Where does it touch your partner? 

ASUG: This sounds like a robust diver­si­ty and inclu­sion strat­e­gy. In the 14 years you’ve been at SAP, how have you seen the strat­e­gy change?

Margót: When I first came to SAP, we were diverse, inher­ent­ly, because we’re a glob­al, multi­na­tion­al com­pa­ny. You saw mul­ti­eth­nic­i­ty, you saw all gen­ders, you saw LGBTQ+ indi­vid­u­als, so you saw it, but didn’t real­ly see a strat­e­gy around it ini­tial­ly. We had our Busi­ness Women’s Net­work, and then some oth­er groups — like Black Employ­ee Net­work, Latinos@SAP, and PRIDE@SAP — but that seemed to be just employ­ee, grassroots-led. 

Where I’ve seen the growth and evo­lu­tion come forth was about 10 years ago, where we began to make diver­si­ty and inclu­sion a depart­men­tal piece of HR. And it start­ed with the tal­ent piece. In 2013, our glob­al CEO at the time, Bill McDer­mott, said by 2017 he want­ed to see 25% women in man­age­ment, and want­ed to know what the lead­ers were going to do to try and make that hap­pen. We start­ed to have diver­si­ty coun­cils pop up. We had a finance diver­si­ty coun­cil which I led at that time. With that, we asked how we could be inten­tion­al and strate­gic to attract women to the field, in finance at least. And that was start­ing to hap­pen in oth­er depart­ments — how can we help the gen­der com­po­si­tion of our workforce? 

Ini­tial­ly, that’s where it remained: gen­der. Then we had a leader, Anka Wit­ten­berg, come on board and she began to talk about not just gen­der intel­li­gence, but cul­tur­al intel­li­gence. And cul­tur­al intel­li­gence includ­ed eth­nic­i­ty, LGBTQ+, and vet­er­ans. She also talked about gen­er­a­tional intel­li­gence. Her strat­e­gy was work­force relat­ed, but it was tar­get­ed. So, it went from being a periph­er­al phi­los­o­phy to becom­ing a full-on strat­e­gy. Now it’s evolved even fur­ther under Judith M. Williams, glob­al chief diver­si­ty offi­cer, and me to where it’s about strat­e­gy and it impacts our ecosys­tem, it impacts our behav­iors. Our lead­er­ship prin­ci­ples now incor­po­rate embrac­ing dif­fer­ences and build­ing bridges, not silos. It’s more of a cul­tur­al evolution. 

ASUG: How has the strat­e­gy changed in the three years you’ve been in this role?

Margót: I will say direct­ly how I’ve con­tributed to it over the past cou­ple of years is gain­ing vis­i­bil­i­ty of it. Par­tic­u­lar­ly in North Amer­i­ca, we’ve been get­ting a lot of addi­tion­al lead­er­ship sup­port around diver­si­fy­ing our method­olo­gies to diver­si­fy results. That it’s not just the ​“hire” piece, it’s inclu­sive of so many oth­er aspects. 

Anoth­er thing I’ve con­tributed to is people’s under­stand­ing that diver­si­ty and inclu­sion is not a nice, moral thing to do. It’s not a good thing to do — it’s a busi­ness imper­a­tive. I social­ize often around the inno­va­tion, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and finan­cial results that come from hav­ing diver­si­ty and inclu­sion. Peo­ple nev­er thought of it like that. 

There’s a shift in our SAP cul­ture: the shift in the lev­el of edu­ca­tion around diver­si­ty and inclu­sion as a busi­ness pri­or­i­ty, the abil­i­ty for peo­ple to engage and par­tic­i­pate in help­ing us to make that hap­pen. I’ve con­tributed to the hir­ing of a more diverse can­di­dates from both a gen­der and eth­nic­i­ty per­spec­tive, because of the part­ner­ships that I’ve built externally. 

We cur­rent­ly uti­lize our cloud ana­lyt­ics dash­board for mea­sure­ment pur­pos­es, and we’re still work­ing on expand­ing the data sets with­in our mea­sure­ment tools and to dri­ve account­abil­i­ty. We’re cur­rent­ly imple­ment­ing on a quar­ter­ly health check with our lead­ers to keep demo­graph­ics and oper­a­tional prac­tices front and cen­ter of their team con­ver­sa­tions. The more time I’m in this role, the more com­fort­able peo­ple have become with under­stand­ing the need for that — if you don’t mea­sure the nee­dle, you can’t move it. 

ASUG: You have a diver­si­ty and inclu­sion ambassador’s group, cor­rect? What does that look like and how has it changed over the last year?

Margót: Any­body in the com­pa­ny who wants to help with the diver­si­ty and inclu­sion strat­e­gy — but it’s not their full-time role — can vol­un­teer to be an ambas­sador. There’s no cri­te­ria to become an ambas­sador, just your will­ing­ness to par­tic­i­pate, and I give them the oppor­tu­ni­ty to do so. We want to be a Lev­el 4 Diver­si­ty com­pa­ny as defined by Bersin by Deloitte where every­one owns diver­si­ty and inclusion.

Between the June 4 town hall meet­ing we host­ed after the killing of George Floyd up to the begin­ning of August, our ambas­sador net­work dou­bled from 180 to about 400 mem­bers, and now we’re cur­rent­ly at 456. I am excit­ed and proud about that! 

ASUG: What would you say to a leader who rec­og­nizes their com­pa­ny has a lot of work to do, but it’s an over­whelm­ing task? They’re in, but what’s next?

Margót: Be inten­tion­al and be pre­scrip­tive. Tie diver­si­ty and inclu­sion to your over­all orga­ni­za­tion­al strat­e­gy. Take it bite-sized. What is your envi­ron­ment ready for? A lot of times gen­der is the first thing peo­ple are will­ing to talk about. It’s fair­ly easy to get peo­ple on board there. Maybe you already have an out exec­u­tive, then maybe LGBTQ+ is some­thing to start with. But talk about it from a busi­ness strat­e­gy per­spec­tive. Look at the busi­ness imper­a­tive with­out chal­leng­ing anybody’s moral imperative.

If you don’t have employ­ee net­work groups or employ­ee resource groups, start there to say, ​“We’re all about our employ­ees. We care about you. You’re our biggest asset.” I would say, if pos­si­ble, don’t put it in HR. Have it report to the COO or CEO, depend­ing on how large or small the com­pa­ny is, because it real­ly is a busi­ness strat­e­gy and there are so many parts of it that don’t touch HR. If it’s in HR, it’s not a bad thing, but make sure it’s also still part of the lead­er­ship team. 

We are in an ever-chang­ing busi­ness. Just like we diver­si­fy our prod­ucts and ser­vices, we must embrace pos­i­tive dis­rup­tion to our work­force by diver­si­fy­ing even more with our col­leagues and embed inclu­sion in our every­day life. It is not enough to be equal or equi­table. It’s the removal of sys­temic bar­ri­ers. How do we mea­sure it and see the account­abil­i­ty tied to it? 

That’s what I need every­one to under­stand: diver­si­ty is not a des­ti­na­tion — it’s a jour­ney. Everyone’s in a dif­fer­ent place on that con­tin­u­um. How can we con­tin­ue progressing?

Hear more from Margót Good­son about the SAP diver­si­ty and inclu­sion strat­e­gy in this on-demand ASUG Women Con­nect web­cast, Why Diver­si­ty, Equi­ty, and Inclu­sion Mat­ter. You can also con­tin­ue the con­ver­sa­tion and make con­nec­tions by join­ing our LinkedIn group.