Sky’s D&I boss: hire for culture add, not culture fit

Man­agers are often steered to recruit for a good cul­ture fit, on the basis that hir­ing peo­ple who hold the same val­ues as oth­ers in the organ­i­sa­tion leads to stronger teams and a pos­i­tive work­ing envi­ron­ment. 

But this isn’t always the right approach, accord­ing to Sky direc­tor of diver­si­ty and inclu­sion David Car­ri­g­an. He thinks that good organ­i­sa­tions should instead “seek cul­ture add, not a cul­ture fit”. 

“Organ­i­sa­tions work hard to under­stand the dynam­ics of indi­vid­u­als in teams, run­ning psy­cho­me­t­ric and per­son­al­i­ty tests and spend­ing a lot of time look­ing inward­ly. But what they don’t always do is look at what they don’t have,” Car­ri­g­an says.

“At Sky, we don’t talk about being a ‘Sky per­son’ because what does that mean? Always think of your­self as adding to a cul­ture or organ­i­sa­tion because that is the real ben­e­fit of diver­si­ty.”

Hir­ing for a cul­ture fit can lead to organ­i­sa­tions where every­one sim­ply has the same opin­ions. “There can be tremen­dous diver­si­ty in the room but their life expe­ri­ences might be sim­i­lar,” Car­ri­g­an observes. “Recruiters, man­agers and busi­ness lead­ers need to under­stand that a team is not a fam­i­ly, a team needs dif­fer­ent strengths.” 

But Car­ri­g­an claims that when com­pa­nies do hire on that basis, peo­ple who are from dif­fer­ent back­grounds to the major­i­ty might feel pres­sure to con­form to the norm. This can cre­ate prob­lems for busi­ness­es. “If a per­son can’t be authen­tic, they’re less like­ly to share their ideas,” he says. “That doesn’t work for a busi­ness which thrives on cre­ativ­i­ty and inno­va­tion. And dif­fer­ent opin­ions and some healthy ten­sion with­in teams are how you cre­ate.”

Sky’s diversity targets

Sky has set its own eth­nic diver­si­ty goals, aim­ing for 20% of its 31,000 employ­ees to be from a Black, Asian or minor­i­ty-eth­nic back­ground by 2025 and for at least 5% to be Black. These same tar­gets are repli­cat­ed across its lead­er­ship team.

Accord­ing to its 2021 report, 17% of Sky UK and Ireland’s employ­ees are from a Black, Asian or minor­i­ty-eth­nic back­ground and 3% are Black. 

“We know we’re not as rep­re­sen­ta­tive as we would like to be. That’s why we set these tar­gets,” Car­ri­g­an says. “We’re on track to hit the tar­get by 2025 but we can nev­er be com­pla­cent. It’s always going to be a work in progress.”

To achieve these rep­re­sen­ta­tion goals, Sky has pledged £30m of invest­ment in diver­si­ty and inclu­sion, adjust­ed its recruit­ment strate­gies and encour­aged indi­vid­ual teams to find ways to improve rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Large organ­i­sa­tions can focus too heav­i­ly on the macro, accord­ing to Car­ri­g­an. “Some­times you can solve inclu­sion issues with­in a team,” he says.

Recruiters are now encour­aged to “look at tal­ent in its widest pos­si­ble sense”. This means that trans­fer­able skills can be con­sid­ered just as valu­able as pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence, to encour­age hir­ing from out­side the media sec­tor. 

How to test talent for culture add

The com­pa­ny is also look­ing at new ways to assess tal­ent, beyond the tra­di­tion­al inter­view, and is explor­ing the use of AI in the recruit­ment process. Car­ri­g­an explains that the AI effec­tive­ly “holds a mir­ror up” to the hir­ing man­ag­er to check that peo­ple who have the right trans­fer­able skills aren’t over­looked.

Asked about the risk of racial bias in AI sys­tems, he says: “We’re very con­fi­dent that AI won’t cre­ate any bias but that’s because it’s not the only way we assess tal­ent – it’s part of the process.”

One of the chal­lenges fac­ing Sky is its low attri­tion rate in some of its most desir­able and well-paid posi­tions in front of the cam­eras on Sky Sports and Sky News. “If you want to work in news or sports, Sky’s at the top of the pile so peo­ple don’t often leave those roles,” Car­ri­g­an explains. “What we have to do is cre­ate the pipeline of tal­ent to get peo­ple ready for pro­mo­tion. It’s not just about what we do exter­nal­ly. It’s also about recog­nis­ing the tal­ent we already have.”

Improv­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tion among Sky’s com­mis­sion­ers has also been an impor­tant change. These indi­vid­u­als are respon­si­ble for decid­ing the con­tent that goes out on its chan­nels  – cur­rent­ly, all six of its genre heads are white. 

To address the lack of rep­re­sen­ta­tion in these roles, Sky set up its Assis­tant Com­mis­sion­er pro­gramme – a two-year, ful­ly paid role aimed at attract­ing cre­atives from “out­side the tra­di­tion­al com­mis­sion­ing pool”.

Car­ri­g­an says: “Com­mis­sion­ers have a huge amount of influ­ence over the con­tent we put out and we recog­nise that hav­ing diverse peo­ple with diverse per­spec­tives in those roles is crit­i­cal to our rep­re­sen­ta­tion.”

The media com­pa­ny is also putting pres­sure on its sup­ply chains to ensure that the com­pa­nies it works with match its diver­si­ty and inclu­sion goals. “We recog­nise that we have a huge amount of influ­ence. We’re beamed into people’s homes and we’re a huge buy­er of ser­vices,” Car­ri­g­an says. “We have a large num­ber of sup­ply rela­tion­ships and we want to make sure they’re all aligned to our busi­ness eth­i­cal­ly.”

Ulti­mate­ly, Car­ri­g­an thinks that sup­port­ing diver­si­ty and inclu­sion efforts is part of being a ”good cor­po­rate cit­i­zen”. Although he recog­nis­es that Sky still has work to do in this area, its work so far has laid good foun­da­tions.