Page 62 - Peter Farrelly Issue

Heather Lavallee, Voya CEO with Ted Kennedy Jr. and Rod Martin, former Voya CEO
developed? Why is it important to do all the things you are describing and how does it help the company, in a broader sense?
Lavallee: Well, for me it's important for CEOs because they're going to drive incredible employee engagement. If I can share with you a bit of a story, when we decided to do this, we had a smaller group of leaders. We all agreed this was something very important. And we decided that if we're going to do it, we're going to do it right. So, we knew we were going to look at our market- ing, at our advertisement, our products or solutions, our technology, our not-for-profit partnerships. We wanted to fully embed it in the culture, so we knew it had to get full top-down support.
When we launched this disability inclusion initiative for our top 100 leaders in 2016, we got up and started shar- ing that people with disabilities represent the largest minority that anybody can join at any point in their lives. We talked about how 1 in 2 households are impacted by disability. We did this to just kind of raise awareness. And we broke up into different groups–It
became a watershed moment for our company because we had leaders who we had worked alongside for years, who began sharing their own personal stories surround- ing disability. And they said, I never knew I could share this at work.
Those leaders started sharing, “I have an adult sister with intellectual disabilities, and this is the struggle we're going through.” And another, “I have a son...” You name it, and we heard it. I started to get emails from people sharing their situation. The launch of Voya Cares (as it was later branded) opened up this unbeliev- able era of authenticity within our organization. Our employees showed up differently, our leaders showed up differently. It just created this sense of inclusion and acceptance. The best way I would describe it is our peo- ple felt they didn't need to hide anymore.
And I can talk about this from a leadership perspective. I think our efforts with disability inclusion have driven employee engagement in a massive way. When you start talking about inclusion with your customers and figure out new ways to lean in, it drives business opportunities.
62 ABILITY