Rogers is out to build a truly inclusive culture

Last summer, months after becoming the first director of Indigenous collaboration at Rogers Communications Inc., Jennifer Campeau shared her remarkable personal and professional journey with thousands of her colleagues in one of the company’s Safe Talk & Listening sessions. The forum was created to give employees a safe space for sharing and to build allyship as part of Rogers’ commitment to building a truly inclusive culture.

Her journey began on the Yellow Quill First Nation, a two-hour drive northeast of Regina, and included 10 years as a residential school student, six years as a Saskatchewan MLA, and several years teaching at the post-secondary level before landing at Rogers.

“This role was everything I wanted and more,” says Campeau, who now leads a dedicated all-Indigenous collaboration team. “The purpose of our team is to bring a mindful Indigenous approach across the Rogers organization, and to maintain trusted partnerships with Indigenous communities, businesses and their representatives.”

The creation of an Indigenous collaboration business unit reflects Rogers Communications’ commitment to building a diverse and inclusive workforce, says Sharon Hinds, manager, All IN, Rogers Sports & Media. “Inclusion is part of who we are – it’s embedded in our values,” she says. “We’re committed to driving meaningful change for our team members, customers and communities.”

To that end, the company has a team dedicated to inclusion and diversity. It has introduced inclusive hiring training and created diverse hiring panels to help remove personal or racial bias and attract a range of diverse applicants.

Hinds says job postings for Rogers Sports & Media no longer ask for educational background or professional experience, and Rogers is rolling this out across the organization. “We’re looking for a diverse group of people who can bring unique perspectives and experience to the team.”

The company’s five employee resource groups are actively engaged in promoting inclusion and diversity, and building allyship within the organization and externally with Canadians.

The multicultural Rogers Mosaic group, which has chapters across the country, sponsors employee events celebrating Black History Month, Pride, Carnival, Ramadan, Diwali and the Lunar New Year, among many others.

The Indigenous Peoples Network held events last year to recognize Indigenous History Month, Indigenous Peoples’ Day, Orange Shirt Day and the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation. Campeau adds that the network launched an initiative to have land acknowledgement plaques placed in all corporate and retail locations, including Rogers Centre in Toronto, which will be rolled out across the country over the next several years.

To commemorate Orange Shirt Day, the Rogers-owned Blue Jays had the first pitch of the game thrown by a residential school survivor, and the Canadian national anthem was sung in three languages – English, French and Anishinaabemowin. On television, the Rogers channel TSC, Today’s Shopping Choice, sold Orange Shirts designed by two-spirited Ojibway artist Patrick Hunter. All proceeds from the 2021 shirt sales were divided between the Orange Shirt Society and the Residential School Survivor Society; 2021 Orange shirt sales through TSC brought the two-year campaign total to $250,000.

In 2020, Rogers team members formed a Black Leadership Council to advocate for Black team members. The company has also partnered with the Black Professionals in Tech Network and the Onyx Initiative.

All of these efforts are part of Rogers’ five-year strategy to accelerate inclusion and diversity and drive change for its employees, customers, audiences and Canadians.

Campeau says she is always looking for ways to create an im- pact for Indigenous communities. “This role at Rogers spoke to me, along with the company’s commitment to inclusion and diversity, and I’m excited to see the impact we can continue to make.”

This article appeared in the magazine announcing this year's Canada’s Best Diversity Employers winners, published March 8, 2022 in The Globe and Mail. This article was prepared with the financial support of the employer, which reviewed but did not write its contents.

Small actions have a big impact at Rogers

Sometimes, simple measures can yield big results when it comes to promoting sustainability and good environmental stewardship. Case in point: the Get Up and Get Green waste management initiative, which has been introduced throughout workplaces at Rogers Communications Inc.

When the company replaced individual waste baskets with centralized disposal bins for paper, organics and waste, recycling increased by 70 per cent in some workplaces and as much as 90 per cent in others.

“We look at everything we have control over to see where we can make an impact,” says Patrick Thomsen, senior director of planning and strategy, who leads the company’s 10-member sustainability team. “There’s a lot we’ve done and can continue to do to minimize energy use and reduce emissions at our corporate locations, our retail space and our data centres.”

Over the past several years, the company has been redesigning its corporate workplaces, which has also yielded big wins environmentally. Enclosed offices and personal cubicles have been eliminated in favour of shared, activity-based spaces. There are meeting rooms of various sizes, depending on the number of participants, booths for private telephone conversations and common work desks in open areas.

“We’ve reduced our footprint and our total space per person,” says Thomsen. “Reduced space per person becomes reduced emissions due to reduced energy.”

Transforming workplaces has also resulted in a remarkable amount of recycling. Abena Burrowes, manager of wireless order management, was part of the transition. “We recycled thousands of pounds of paper,” she says. “We got rid of all our filing cabinets and desks as part of our new ways of working.”

She and her colleagues scanned and digitized 8.8 million sheets of paper, which had been stored in filing cabinets. The cabinets were among $360,000 worth of office furniture and equipment that were donated to other organizations. By the time the project was complete, over 3,550 tons of materials were recycled, repurposed or donated.

Rogers has adopted a similar approach – recycle, repurpose or donate – when doing renovations at any of its several hundred retails locations scattered across the country. Thomsen says the company is constantly upgrading its stores to new standards.

“We’ve become very diligent about renovation waste,” he says. “We’ve achieved over 90 per cent in terms of waste that would have gone to landfills that we’re diverting through donations or recycling.”

The company is also encouraging consumers to return used phones when they are upgrading. Devices turned in are inspected and, providing they are still working and in pristine condition, can be re-packed and sold as certified pre-owned phones.

This led to another seemingly small initiative that has produced big results. Last September, Burrowes had an idea to create a program to collect cell phone charging cables that were turned in by customers. The cables were shipped to a central warehouse where they were tested and inspected. In the space of four months, 96.8 per cent of the 19,000 cables tested were in pristine condition and could be reused rather than ending up in a landfill.

To support communities where employees live and work, Rogers grants employees a paid day off to do volunteer work under its annual Give Together campaign and matches employee donations up to $1,000. In recent years, green initiatives have become increasingly popular. Last fall, Burrowes’ team spent a day uprooting invasive shrubs at a Scarborough, Ont., park. Other groups have taken part in shoreline clean-ups, tree planting events or collecting neighbourhood trash to help make a positive impact.

This article appeared in the magazine announcing this year's Canada's Greenest Employers winners, published April 20, 2022 in The Globe and Mail. This article was prepared with the financial support of the employer, which reviewed but did not write its contents.