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Nokia's Bhaskar Gorti on how diversity and inclusion is more than simply the right thing to do

Nokia's CDO Bhaskar Gorti discusses the importance of diversity and inclusion at Nokia, and as a member of TM Forum's Board of Directors sets out his vision for digital leadership and looks ahead to what he would like the Forum to achieve.

Michelle Howard
07 Sep 2020
Nokia's Bhaskar Gorti on how diversity and inclusion is more than simply the right thing to do

Nokia's Bhaskar Gorti on how diversity and inclusion is more than simply the right thing to do

Bhaskar Gorti, President, Nokia Software, & CDO, Nokia
Nokia's Chief Digital Officer, Bhaskar Gorti discusses the importance of diversity and inclusion at Nokia, and as a member of TM Forum's Board of Directors sets out his vision for digital leadership and looks ahead to what he would like the Forum to achieve.
How does your vision for digital leadership align with TM Forum?
TM Forum and digital leaders are aligned on five things that you won’t see in ordinary leaders:

  1. They maintain a growth mindset focused on leveraging the best technology and innovation to drive forward.

  2. They embed analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence into all aspects of their business.

  3. They are customer and experience centric, leveraging a rich understanding of customer needs and aligning digital systems, processes and tools.

  4. They prioritize speed and agility and push extreme automation, recognizing the value of open ecosystems like Open APIs and ODA in order to accelerate innovation, open new vertical markets and bring added value to customers.

  5. They use cloud native infrastructure that serves customer and business demands in the moment.


What do you want TM Forum to achieve in the next two years?
First, we want to see TM Forum keep driving progress with open architectures and Open APIs in collaboration and industry partners. This is critical for CSPs to better serve their customer needs in the digital world that 5G is accelerating.
Second, to help CSPs connect to the ecosystems that will drive future business-to-business-to-X (B2B2X) business models. We must make it easier to integrate telecom, IT services capabilities and enterprise applications.
Finally, at a time when so much is changing, we believe human-centric design that involves the human perspective in all steps of the digital transformation process matters. We are increasing our contributions and engagement with TM Forum to help in this area.
What does diversity and inclusion mean at Nokia and how important is it to your culture?
Nokia is a large global organization with over 100,000 employees. We believe our business will be stronger if our team reflects the world we live in – that includes a balance of genders, cultures, regions, sexual orientations, races, points of view and skills. We’ve made big strides on gender in the last couple of years, with our appointments and decision to equalize pay. We continue to hire people of diverse backgrounds, educate our team on the impact of biases and promote a culture of respect. We are also challenging long-held beliefs in some of our teams, including one that brings Israelis and Palestinians together to develop software. Projects like these remind me of the power of human connections.
As an inspirational and diverse leader, what key learning would you like to share for others in the industry as to why they should embed equality and inclusion into overall business strategy?
More than simply the right thing to do, gender-balanced, inclusive workforces make a big difference to the bottom line and our ability to innovate. If we are diverse and our customers are diverse, we do a better job of serving them.
How have you and how will you continue to change perceptions in terms of attracting more diverse talent into certain roles?
Nokia is breaking the glass ceiling with a strong score in itsGender Equality Index (GEI) for 2020. In 2019, we made strong efforts to close an unexplained pay gap. We focus on education of our employees. Every people manager in Nokia is required to attend our Navigating Bias with Inclusion workshop. We showcase the success of our female leaders in Nokia Software and, over the past few years, we have developed mentorship programs to pave the way for more women in leadership.
We are a signee of the Inclusion and Diversity (I&D) pledge of the European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT), embracing every aspect of diversity and inclusion. Our offices are accessible for all. Our leadership is diverse and advocates for global anti-discrimination practices. Our employees represent around 166 nationalities doing work in over 118 countries. We were awarded with “Best Places to Work for LGBT+ Equality” in the 2019 Corporate Equality Index with a score of 100%.
On the subject of a fully diverse workforce - (i.e. beyond gender and on an intersectional basis ) what is Nokia  committin g to short term in 2020 and  long-term beyond 2021 to really make a difference in this space?
There is no magic solution to be truly representative in all aspects of diversity and inclusion. It’s a multi-year journey. We actively seek diversity of thought that can only come by working with people from different backgrounds, cultures, and personal experiences.
We invest in the workforce of the future through our work with the international NGO, Greenlight for Girls. Nokia Software partners with iDtech, offering hands-on experience and mentoring for under-represented girls in a yearly summer camp hosted on site.
We continue to be laser-focused on mentoring women with leadership potential and we provide flexible ways to balance work and life, including options for working from home. Many women combine career and family responsibilities. At Nokia, children and family life are not a barrier to career development.
Read our full series of interviews with digital transformation leaders from around the world, and learn more about their stories and experiences.