Ellie Hayward
Hello, my name is Ellie and I’m the Project Manager at RazorSecure. I work closely with all departments within RazorSecure, and spend most of my days interacting with developers as their Scrum master, and communicating with customers. I am responsible for ensuring that projects run smoothly and that communication is open and effective.
In the spirit of continuously learning and improving our own internal processes, we review an ‘EDI moment’ every week. I encourage the team to participate in all meetings with the view of a deaf person, and to give feedback on what processes were (or weren’t) done in other places to encourage this. We then reflect on our experiences and put actions in place to combat these.
A common challenge that we have encountered in external meetings or conferences has been when people interject or speak very quickly. A lot of us have experienced this during COVID due to working online, and hybrid meetings can sometimes make this worse. It can be hard for everyone in large environments, meetings or conferences to avoid interjection, but the ‘hands up’ system (listed as an action in our previous EDI blog) can be used to help reduce disruptions. The person who wishes to speak will raise their hand (physically in view of the camera, or some platforms support virtual hands up), and the current speaker can hand off to the next person at the end of their flow. This requires discipline from all members of the group, and may require a facilitator when first implementing this, or in a large conference, for example. It is also important to remind people to speak slowly, clearly and concisely and to take pauses. This is very important if people are lip reading or using closed captions. However, our practical experience shows that one solution is not enough, and a layered approach works much better instead.
For example, closed captions are a very useful tool, but it is important to realise they are not perfect yet. From our experiences using them, closed captions sometimes repeat a sentence, get words wrong, or completely miss whole sections of speech. This is particularly challenging when using technical terms or abbreviations, and there may be a struggle to understand some regional accents. Also, not all virtual meeting platforms support CC, and can sometimes class some people or words as ‘inaudible’ due to low volume levels or bandwidth issues. Therefore, in our meetings, we have taken the action to pause and speak slowly for the closed captions to catch up, and also to say any abbreviations out loud (e.g. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, also known as EDI) so that we do not assume people know the abbreviations and to avoid confusion. Also, if we do not understand something someone has said, or the CCs are wrong, put your hand up and ask for a repeat, or clarification. Last but not least, closed captions only appear on screen as they are said, and as you can only see the last section of conversation, and if lots of people are speaking quickly, they can be gone before you can even read them!
Why is this so important?
During the pandemic, lots of studies have been completed about how the stress of life, and the challenges of remote working, has impacted our brains and ability to concentrate, process and focus. The studies have found that we are unable to process as much information as before; that stress is increasing forgetfulness and disruption to thought process. This is impacting everyone in a unique way, and so methods such as creating an agenda and sending out meetings minutes after the meeting (explained in our 10 top tips blog) allows people to digest and interpret the information in their own time, reducing the pressure and stress on the individual during the meetings, as well as ensuring that actions or thoughts do not go missed. Now more than ever, as the railway gets more complex and digital, and people are having to learn new skills quicker, there is a compelling reason to take this onboard in order to keep the railways safe, secure and reliable.
Our call for action, in order to achieve an inclusive working environment and a safer, more secure railway is to drive forward deaf awareness through raise awareness, put in place measures, challenge yourself and your current methods, and identify what can be done additionally to ensure you have a robust and resilient sustainable solution that works for everyone, without interruption.
What is our recipe for deployment and implementation?
We use the 5 main scrum principles for our software development and I want to mirror this in our projects. The scrum principles allow us to model the way forward, and this is what we are using to make deaf awareness happen in practice. We hope that through our actions, others will be inspired and encouraged to challenge their own practices and even improve them.
Openness
We are very open about what we do, and aim to get feedback wherever possible. This ensures that we are allowing our process to be open to new thoughts and ideas, and open to critique from other sources that may have more information than us.
Respect
Implementing our deaf aware practices is all about respecting everyone that you work with, regardless of their personal situation. If all meetings were more aware and even implemented one action towards inclusivity, then hopefully we would all create a more friendly and a better environment for all.
Commitment
We are committed to EDI and improvement. Even though none of us are hard of hearing, we do not want to have a reactive approach to EDI. We want to be pushing boundaries and awareness early, rather than wait for this issue to arise before we address it. We are also committed to EDI in the rest of the company and have instilled changes in all of our internal and external processes, to better represent the minorities in our own company and the community.
Focus
At the moment, we are focusing on project meetings and interactions on one project, but we hope to roll this out to multiple projects and broaden our horizons. The whole team is focused on this outcome, and collaborates with their own EDI moments each week.
Courage
It takes courage to do something new, to make a change and do something we have never attempted before. It also takes courage for those who are less represented to stand up and ask for their needs to be accommodated, so we are trying to make that process easier. We encourage open and honest communication within our team, and encourage everyone to voice their opinions so everyone feels heard and valued.
I hope you found this blog interesting, and maybe this will even encourage you to challenge the processes you currently use or view your next meeting with deaf awareness in mind.
We are in contact with the deaf community and in the railway industry, to understand their opinions and feedback, and their improvements as to what could really make a difference for them. In our next blog, we will pass on some of the challenges and lessons we have heard, and be honest about what has and hasn't been done in our own practices. Just as you can never say the railway is safe enough, you can never just tick the box on EDI. It’s always about continuous improvement.
