Executive interview with eBay: why inclusion is a learning process

In many ways inclusion is at the heart of what eBay does. It’s an accessible platform that allows anybody from any starting point to launch a business. And it was that level playing field that first attracted Murray Lambell, eBay UK’s Managing Director, to the role. “My parents owned a business, they started it from scratch, and they made it work,” he says. “In the industry they were in they were always the underdog.”

eBay now supports hundreds of thousands of businesses and individuals who are making a living for themselves on a platform that has inclusivity ingrained in what it does. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s a moral obligation,” says Lambell. “It’s how we employ people, how we set a tone and agenda and how we work with our customers.” Lambell believes in constantly learning to be more inclusive as a business and creating a working environment in which inclusion brings productivity, “when you can bring your whole self to work you show up better with products and solutions to bring to customers.”

As a business leader Lambell believes the most successful aspect of his journey towards running an inclusive workplace is learning. “The role of the most senior teams is to listen, be flexible, and then help deploy the resources those groups need in order to build an environment in which diversity, equality and inclusion is embedded in the way an organisation operates.”

Empowering employees to drive change

The key element to that learning process at eBay has been employee empowerment and engagement. Over the last five years eBay’s employee networks have been growing and for an organisation which has just around 250 members of staff in the UK, its networks, or communities of inclusion as they are referred to at eBay are as many as ten. This level of engagement allows its employees to get under the surface of issues faced by staff and then bring those issues to senior management.

“It’s about keeping your ear to the ground,” says Lambell. “It’s bumpy, it’s clumsy and its uncomfortable and I think of it as a learning mission.”

Those communities of inclusion help senior management to learn and inform decisions, such as the Women at eBay group which helped drive changes in the way that women on maternity leave are supported on their return to work. “We can only learn from the groups that we enable,” adds Lambell.

Striving to create a truly inclusive workplace is a constant work in progress for many businesses, but by empowering employees to come together and inform senior leadership the journey to inclusion can be driven forward from within.

“There’s not some perfect end state,” adds Lambell. “But as we get through this, we get a bit better. And as we get better, we learn there’s more to do.”

Uncomfortable conversations lead to change – internally and externally

“When you’re in listening mode, it can be very uncomfortable,” says Lambell. “People expect a business leader to be forthright and clear in the direction you need to take and on this particular subject I don’t think that’s possible.” Lambell believe it’s a much more collaborative experience.

One example of this came when a group came forward with an issue around accessibility issues for disabled people using the eBay website. As a result, Lambell commissioned a specialist external organisation to look at those accessibility issues. After applying immediate changes, he then took that partnership to eBay in California and ran an event with over 500 employees to further improve the accessibility of the site, bringing global momentum to an issue raised by just one member of staff in the UK.

“My job in that instance was plugging the network so I could help the impact we have to be exponentially bigger.”

Murray’s advice to other businesses leaders is simple: “you’ve got be open to listening, plug the networks and make a lot of mistakes along the way. But when you make those mistakes, you’ve got to move on and get better.”