Building bridges across cultures at Sage

Humera Jahan’s career path at Sage has led to her embracing project management – and the Embrace Colleague Success Network – which engages employees across all cultures, races and faiths.

Created by VERCIDA for Sage

My first job with Sage was in customer service. That was back in 2016 and since then, I have been on an interesting journey, career-wise and with a growing role in promoting conversations and inclusion across different cultures and ethnicities in the company.

I undertook various roles within the company, including working with payroll installations, before applying for an apprenticeship degree in computer science and software engineering at Sage, which I started in 2019. It has been a long four years, but I have almost finished – I’ve submitted my final project and I’ve got one more interview to go.

As well as doing my degree, I have landed a position as an associate project manager in finance. Project management really suits me. When you’re working in customer service, you don’t get to interact with a lot of people across the company and you are very focused on one task. But I’ve learned that I am an “end-to-end person”, someone who wants to be involved from start to finish, to go from one shiny thing to another. I discovered I was able to connect with more people when I moved into a learning and development role and this is definitely true of my role as a project manager.

I’m really enjoying this role, especially when it comes to interacting with people across the whole organisation. This ties in with my increased involvement with Sage’s Embrace Colleague Success Network. I will talk to anyone, I love trying to find out about other people and cultures. It just comes from genuine curiosity, so I was intrigued to learn more about Embrace.

When I started to get involved with Embrace, the network was mainly focused on things like ensuring pay equality. Obviously, this work is important, but I wanted to help bring some fun to the network, to plan events that would hopefully help people understand the different cultures of their colleagues. Hosting interesting events is a great way to bring awareness and tolerance to the company.

As a Muslim with an Indian-Pakistani background who grew up in the Netherlands, I’ve always had people ask me questions about things such as Ramadan and Eid. I’m always happy to talk about it and I think a lot of other people are too. It means people are interested in you. Last year for Ramadan, we put together a FAQ-style guide to Ramadan, which was a great way to make people aware about it and start conversations.

I’ve become more involved with Embrace in the past year, becoming a co-lead, and we have had so many great events – Diwali, Christmas, Black History Month, just to name a few. For Black HIstory Month, we had a keynote speaker who talked about how we can raise awareness and start having those important conversations. It was such a good session with people joining in to share their own stories.

My involvement with Embrace has made me aware of the importance of allyship. While I am not a Black person, I am proud to be an ally and to support colleagues from different ethnic groups and cultures. When I was helping with preparations for the Black British Business Awards, I was worried that I was taking someone else’s place, but when I attended the awards with my Black colleagues, that was when I realised the necessity of being an ally.

For 2024, we have plenty of exciting events and activities to look forward to. In the first quarter of the year, we have Race Equality Week, Chinese New Year and LGBTQ+ History Month, where I am very interested in bringing together different groups who might belong to multiple communities. Then, in March, we have Holi, Ramadan and Easter, which will keep us busy.

I’m in a really good place at Sage – I love my job because every day is different, which suits me perfectly, and my work as a co-lead for Embrace is so rewarding. My aim is to move into a leadership role and I’m on a great career path with Sage.