As a pioneering force in the global travel industry, ARI – which has just launched a new corporate and consumer-facing ‘Joy On Your Way’ brand identity– is also a recognised leader in the field of diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I). That commitment is reflected today (8 March), International Women’s Day, which ARI and The Moodie Davitt Report are celebrating via an inspiring makeover of our website under the banner ‘A World of Difference’.
ARI General Counsel Gareth Byrne was named Executive Sponsor for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion early in 2021 as the Irish travel retailer stepped up its proactive approach. In this interview with The Moodie Davitt Report Associate Editor Colleen Morgan to honour International Women’s Day, he outlines the ARI ‘no hierarchy’ strategy, its achievements and challenges and the importance of maintaining a hands-on approach.
As Executive Sponsor, what role do you play in developing ARI’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion strategy?
In late 2020, we decided to appoint one ARI Executive Member to focus on and champion Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.
I took on this role in early 2021 and in many ways had a blank canvas from which to work. Whilst ARI had been making great strides in the DE&I space for some time, it had no defined strategy so my immediate focus was to develop such a strategy for the Group.
In advance of making any internal announcements, I met with various representatives across our company to get a sense of where ARI was at that moment in time in the DE&I space. With feedback and insights from many, I developed our Global DE&I Framework.
While important, I did not want our strategy to solely focus on the obvious elements of DE&I like gender, race etc. Inclusivity was also something I wanted us to focus on, but inclusivity in its broadest sense. Having worked in other global organisations previous to ARI, I already had a sense of what it is like to work in subsidiaries, or operations outside of ‘HQ’.
Even with the best of intentions, companies can make decisions without inclusivity at its core. With that in mind, it is important for me to ensure that, as we develop and build upon our DE&I strategy, we ensure to include our colleagues and operations across the ARI global estate.
How do you interact with your team members and encourage ideas to spread throughout the network?
I formed a Global DE&I Committee which includes a representative from each ARI location as a ‘DE&I Champion’. The committee meets on a quarterly basis to discuss ideas and trends.
It was also important to me that the global strategy evolves and isn’t developed by me independently of others, or indeed without including each of our operations. As a global organisation, each of our businesses are at a different stage of the DE&I journey and, in my view, a one-size fits all approach does not work when it comes to DE&I on a global organisational level.
Leading Global Diversity, Equity and Inclusion by Rohini Anand offers insights into driving DE&I, emphasising that decisions on DE&I strategy should not come from the ‘top-down’ or the ‘bottom-up’. An ideal strategy is a bit of both.
And the importance of a hands-on approach?
I think I am approachable, and I’d hope my colleagues feel that way about me. As ARI Group General Counsel, it’s extremely important that my team and I are approachable and it’s something we frequently talk about. It is crucial that a legal issue is raised or, better yet, ideas surfaced with my team as early as possible and we can help steer a path of opportunity (or indeed solve a problem).
I apply this equally to my leadership of DE&I at ARI. We have a wonderful culture at ARI where there is no hierarchy and we embrace ideas, collaboration and even a good challenging conversation. I regularly receive feedback from colleagues and often it is very constructive feedback which I relish as a way of getting insights into what colleagues are really thinking. It helps us to improve.
How do you encourage ARI staff members – at all levels – to speak out, to share their thoughts and opinions?
ARI has a great people culture. Without having to encourage people too much, my colleagues at ARI are fantastic at providing feedback and ideas when it comes to DE&I. Often, these ideas are very personal to a colleague and it’s in those circumstances when I really get an insight into some of our challenges.
Our DE&I vision and mission is for everyone to ‘Be yourself, whoever you are, wherever you are from. At ARI, you are welcome’.
We are doing great, but we can always do more. I often have to manage my own expectations or ideas. Part of this is because we are in the infancy of our DE&I journey and it’s extremely difficult to solve all our DE&I challenges in one big bang.
Our individual DE&I champions in each of our locations are also empowered to be leaders in their respective businesses and we get some great insights from the local champions too.
Tell us about the DE&I framework, its key objectives and how they can be achieved.
Our DE&I vision and mission is for everyone to ‘Be yourself, whoever you are, wherever you are from. At ARI, you are welcome’. We aim to ‘create, nurture, and sustain a global, inclusive culture, where differences drive innovative and exceptional retail experiences that breathe life, enjoyment and excitement into every airport’. Our colleagues have really embraced our vision.
Our Global DE&I Framework has four key objectives:
- To demonstrate leadership commitment and accountability
- Be inclusive
- Seek better gender balance
- Build a diverse talent pipeline.
“When setting out our DE&I Framework, rather than taking a ‘big bang’ approach myself and Siobhán Griffin (ARI Chief People Officer) decided that we should place our initial focus on our people. Over time, we are starting to drive DE&I into engaging with our partners, and of course our customers.
Each of these objectives have a number of goals each year and a team based in our office in Dublin seek to drive each of these goals on a global level. For instance, under our ‘Be inclusive’ objective, we developed a Cultural Intelligence toolkit aimed at providing supports to colleagues that travel to a particular location, ensuring they are informed on the local custom and culture.
How does ARI encourage leadership commitment and accountability in the DE&I space?
By appointing an Executive Sponsor, ARI’s Executive Team is showing its commitment to DE&I and holding ourselves accountable. We created a new strategy with a clearly defined vision and mission. As with all our strategies, it was developed to be delivered on.
However, that was only the beginning. During 2022, we began to develop a training programme for the ARI Executive team to ensure that we have a common understanding of our DE&I opportunities and challenges. This training programme will continue into 2023.
Together with Siobhán, I also regularly run ‘chat and connects’ giving colleagues another avenue and opportunity to provide feedback and to hold us accountable. The great thing I can say is that DE&I is spoken about a lot more since we launched our strategy/framework and our colleagues have become more aware and encouraged to speak up and share ideas.
Is it possible to prioritise inclusivity?
I think it’s necessary. The challenge is the education and development of people’s mindsets to focus on being more inclusive. I don’t believe many people actively intend to exclude others in situations or plans, particularly in ARI.
However, when we are developing a strategy, we need to ensure we are thinking globally and while we might not get this right every time, we’re certainly getting much better at it.
A great example of an inclusive global strategy was the development and roll-out of our Customer Value Proposition (CVP) which we launched in 2020. What was fantastic about this initiative was that it involved many colleagues from across the global estate.
Led by ARI Chief Commercial Officer & Deputy CEO Anthony Kenny and Head of Strategic Planning & CEO Business Manager Niamh Ahern, I really felt the team developed the CVP programme with inclusivity at its core. Colleagues from across ARI were encouraged to participate; it was not ‘centrally developed’ and simply rolled out across the business. Workstreams within the strategy are led by people across the global estate so we have a strategy that both reflects and supports our diverse business.
Let’s consider the importance of celebrating International Women’s Day and the role women play in travel retail. Is that role changing?
Women play a vital role in travel retail and it’s critical that this continues. Organisations need to appreciate this customer base and the best way of doing that is ensuring there is sufficient gender representation.
At ARI we have incredible women at all levels of our organisation that lead, mentor, shape and positively impact our business across our global estate.
I think the question that is being (or should be) asked is could the industry have more senior leaders or increased gender balance at senior management level. Yes, I believe it could (and should) and at ARI we continue to focus on striving to be a leader in that regard in travel retail.
What steps is ARI taking to support and champion women at all levels of its business?
ARI consistently champions women at all levels of our business. As part of our DE&I strategy, one of our four goals is to seek better gender balance. We use this objective as a north star in many respects.
When decisions are being made, for example, to identify colleagues at ARI to speak at conferences, meet potential partners and to be involved in various business pitches, we regularly have significant female representation. A lot of this evolves quite organically as we have incredible female leaders in our organisation, but we always ask the question ‘Are we ensuring sufficient representation?’
We also are very focussed on the talent of the future and Siobhán launched the ARI Global Mentoring Programme last year. We have just launched our 2023 programme.
Through this initiative we encourage everyone from within the organisation to get involved. As an Executive Team we are very focussed on building a diverse talent pipeline which will ultimately support a more gender balanced and diverse senior leadership team.
We also actively celebrate International Women’s Day and over the last few years we have run campaigns to promote women across all levels of our organisation. We ran the ‘She Who’ campaign [pictured below], where we were all invited to share stories about colleagues who we felt were helping us to ‘break the bias’ and build a more equitable workforce. We were delighted to have received so many stories and, in conjunction with our colleagues at daa, we turned the stories into a global IWD Feature book.
With the theme this year of #embracequity, women in our organisation have been invited to share their story and we are running various events in the lead up to and on the day itself. We’re all looking forward to the events and getting a chance to hear the stories from our colleagues.
While ARI has a way to go in some respects to meet its objectives on seeking better gender balance at more senior levels across its global operations as a whole, I should point out that some of our business units have managed to obtain gender balance on their senior leadership teams, and their boards.
When my team seek to recruit a law firm in a new jurisdiction to support a business initiative, our tender process includes a requirement for the law firm to demonstrate its support and approach to DE&I
Tell us about those changes.
I think the changes we have made recently – such as the introduction of a DE&I Strategy and our global mentorship programme – are examples of changes that will, in time, ensure that we improve our gender balance across ARI.
DE&I and gender balance is something that is referenced to and spoken about frequently at an ARI executive level. When we are recruiting, we often talk as a team on the gender balance of candidates, and we strive to ensure that both our candidates and panels are gender balanced.
It’s also important that I acknowledge that some parts of our estate have already achieved gender balance in senior roles. In some teams we have probably over-indexed the other way and have more female representation than males.
Balance is the word, but I do acknowledge that we need to continue to improve upon the balance at senior levels amongst some of our business units.
A focus of ours is to seek that our suppliers and partners operate in a similar mindset. While many do already, when we start to procure third parties to support our business we are beginning to introduce DE&I into the tender process.
As an example, when my team seek to recruit a law firm in a new jurisdiction to support a business initiative, our tender process includes a requirement for the law firm to demonstrate its support and approach to DE&I, including gender balance (and their DE&I response has an individual score as part of the tender process). I’m proud to say that the last three international law firms that we have onboarded have either been entirely female-led, or represented by a gender balanced team.
The next part of my plan is to introduce this to broader tendering processes for ARI.
And how important is the development and maintenance of a strong and diverse talent pipeline?
In an industry that perhaps has always had predominantly male leadership, it’s vital that companies in the industry focus on developing a strong and diverse talent pipeline.
Siobhán and her team have been very focused on this in recent years and we decided that it was extremely important that we also bring this into our DE&I Framework. If we nurture key female talent within our organisation, and mentor them to become future leaders, then this will organically result in opportunities for ARI to have better gender balance in our senior leadership teams.
While this takes time, we are already seeking the fruits of this investment. As I mentioned earlier, we have incredibly strong female leaders across our global operations and I have no doubt that many of these will move onto more senior positions at ARI.
Looking back across your years with ARI, what are the most significant changes that have been made within the DE&I context?
The biggest change for me is that DE&I is now a talking point. In my initial time with ARI, DE&I was rarely if ever mentioned. Now it’s a reference point for our Executive Team and right through our organisation.
I believe we have become a much more inclusive organisation too. We’re not perfect but I genuinely believe we think globally in our approach to new business initiatives and strategies.
Using our recent new brand launch [pictured below], the team, led by ARI Global Head of Marketing Laura Toner, was incredibly inclusive in its approach to ensure that the brand would resonate across our global operations, passengers and partners.
They engaged with me on various elements of the rebrand to ensure that they were approaching the rebrand in line with our DE&I strategy.
What more could ARI be doing?
I think we could be sharing ideas more across our global estate. Some of our business units have great insights and plans and have already introduced innovative local initiatives that other parts of our estate could learn from and leverage.
I want to focus this year on increasing the sharing of these ideas and initiatives. We have been very focussed on our people to date, and now I want to turn the dial a little and focus more on our customers.
Our new brand expression focuses on a feeling that transcends borders, cultures, genders, race. It centres on joy, a universal feeling that is inclusive and diverse, and I think it captures what we strive for as an organisation.
When we talk about making experiences with ARI joyful, embracing diversity, equity and inclusion is fundamental. 
