Co-Creating culture with colleagues creates new spaces for women and under-represented groups

At Cabot Credit Management and our parent company, Encore Capital Group, we’re on a journey to co-create our culture with our colleagues around the world.

One of the most important legs of this journey started in 2020 when we asked every person across every level of our company: What values are important to us, and what are the principles that define how we live and work?

As a result, 83% of our global colleagues helped to co-create our three values: We Care, We Find a Better Way, and We are Inclusive and Collaborative. These values bring together both the ideals colleagues think are personally important and the principles they believe are critical in the workplace.

This process underscored a critical point: culture can only be meaningful if it resonates with all people. An inclusive technique to ensure that every voice is captured and represented is to invite colleagues to join in the co-creation process. Doing so helps level the playing field and creates space for women and other traditionally underrepresented groups to be heard and prioritised — to have a say in who we are, and what we represent.

This representation is important to me personally. I’m an immigrant from Hong Kong. English was not my first language. My husband is Black and we have two biracial teenage daughters. Advancing women and other often-marginalised people in leadership, career growth, and diversity and inclusion are not just topics that resonate with me at work, but also at home.

For me, the co-creation of our values reaffirmed my belief that you have to be intentional about inclusion and equity, and you have to create space for people to thrive. Any time I’ve done this in my career as a Chief Human Resources Officer at global, largely public, companies over the past eight years, I’ve always been in awe of how many diverse colleagues want their voices heard and therefore join in the effort.

Since adopting our three values, they’ve become part of the foundation for many of our business decisions, including building our ESG strategy. In that sense, the co-creation process carries on, as the diverse voices that informed our values continue to help inform how we approach environmental, social and governance matters critical to the stakeholders we serve and the work that we do.

With our values in mind, we defined a set of ESG pillars that focus on our people, consumers and the world around us: We put consumers first. We support and value our people. We make a positive impact on the environment. We work together to strengthen our community. We operate responsibly.

These ESG pillars bring our values into an actionable, measurable framework that was not only informed by the voices of women and underrepresented groups but also positively impacts them in a variety of ways.

For example, putting consumers first means we have efforts like our Sensitive Support Team in the U.K. The team’s specialists are trained to work with consumers facing mental or physical illness and financial hardship. Supporting and valuing our people means we’re serious about opportunities for all, including our annual Gender Pay Gap report, which helps us identify and track opportunities to continue to elevate women. Making a positive impact on the environment means minimising our footprint and being responsible with our resources, which benefits everyone but is especially important to the marginalised communities most impacted by environmental hardship. Working together to strengthen our community means supporting our colleagues’ efforts to volunteer and improve the lives of our neighbours. Finally, operating responsibly means staying true to our Mission, Vision, and Values, and creating a workplace our colleagues can be proud of — one where their personal and professional values are not in conflict.

In the end, everything a company does is an extension of its culture. The culture is only as strong as its ability to reflect the diverse experiences of all of its people. If through co-creation companies can translate those diverse experiences into a clear, unifying purpose – and connect people’s work to that purpose – the collective actions will lead to better business outcomes. And success won’t just be for some; it will be for all.