Race and Culture Community at Sopra Steria

As a global company with over 40,000 employees working in nearly 30 different countries, we want to celebrate our rich racial and cultural diversity and support everyone to reach their potential.

We know that being inclusive and diverse is an important part of being a great place to work. Our Race and Culture community of Networks is a group of related networks who work together on areas of shared interest, while also being able to focus in on topics that are more relevant to a particular group. Together, these groups are dedicated to creating a more inclusive and ethnically diverse organisation.

Here are some of the things we do at Sopra Steria to support this:

• At the start of 2020, we became signatories of the Business in the Community Race at Work Charter and committed to taking action to make sure that ethnic minority employees are represented across our business
• In 2021, we launched our first Black and Ethnic Minority Mentoring programme. As a result, we have committed to providing mentoring support to any interested Black or Ethnic Minority colleague, either through a one-to-one mentoring relationship or through a mentoring circle. As part of this programme, we also participate in the Mission Include Cross-Company Mentoring programme with 20 colleagues taking part as either mentors or mentees
• We have a Race and Culture community of employee-led Networks, including a Black Employee Network, a Multi-Faith Network and an Ethnic and Cultural Diversity Network. These networks operate together to provide a safe and supportive environment for everyone across the business to connect, share and learn about the cultures, perspectives and issues of colleagues from different backgrounds
• We have an Exec sponsor for Race and Culture who works closely with all of our Race and Culture Networks to make sure their voice is heard and views represented
• We offer regular training for leaders and People Managers on inclusive leadership to highlight and alert them to issues, including understanding bias and privilege, inadvertent racism, microaggressions and conscious inclusion
• All leaders, managers and colleagues within Sopra Steria must commit to our Zero Tolerance Pledge, to work together to address bullying, and offensive and insensitive behaviour of any kind. This pledge includes mandatory training for all employees on equality, diversity and bullying and harassment

"I was honoured to be asked to be the first Chairperson for our Race, Religion and Belief Network and now, the Multi-Faith Network. I believe a key success factor for our Network will be to take this seriously, learn from each other whilst supporting initiatives and making sure we have fun doing the work."
​​​​​​​- Mohammed Azam Ahmed - Chair, Multi-faith Network