MANILA, PHILIPPINES — For the first hybrid adobo SheCreative session last July 28, “#WhatWomenBuild: Fearless Future — The New Culture of Work,” adobo Magazine gathered a lineup of women leaders to speak about the impact of women in the workplace and how to shape a more progressive future for culture and creativity in the office. One of the speakers for the session’s lineup was Merlee Jayme, the Chairmom & former CCO of dentsu international APAC.
Merlee is one of Southeast Asia’s most prominent creative leaders who was one of the only eight women in the 2019 top 100 Chief Creative Directors global list from The Drum; she led her team to win the country’s first Cannes Lions award with “Duct Tape” for women’s rights group Gabriela back in 2008. It comes as no surprise that, throughout her career, she has used her skill, leadership, and influence to advocate for women and diversity in the workplace.
“It felt good to talk about subjects that are close to my heart live,” Merlee told adobo Magazine regarding her “Defy and Diversify” talk for this SheCreative session where she discussed diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) as the present and future of the workplace.
Merlee opened her talk by focusing on the definition “the acceptance of differences” and pointing out that, while this largely means racial differences in the Western world, in the Philippine context it refers to age, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, and background among other things.
Diversity is more than just hiring women or other members of a minority group, she affirmed. For example, even though there are many women in the advertising industry, leadership roles are still dominated by men. “[Gender diversity doesn’t just mean] hiring women. It’s about pushing women to lead projects, to lead agencies, to lead divisions.”
“We are diverse when we accept LGBTQ [people] for who they are,” Merlee added as another example, citing an instance when they hired a trans woman which was followed by a discussion about which bathroom she should use. “We’re not ready […] We have to have these things in a conversation.”
“The Unlimited Love Language” is an initiative that she and her team worked on to emphasize that diversity also means putting in the effort to find the right ways to show and voice out your support for loved ones who are part of the LGBTQ+ community — because just meaning well isn’t enough to be a true ally.
When it comes to inclusion, Merlee posed that it needed to go beyond accepting and appreciating differences; inclusion must genuinely and fully involve people in underrepresented communities. As an example of times when there was a lack of inclusion, Merlee recounted what it’s like to be the “token Asian” or “token woman” in the room and feel invisible because no one was paying attention or reacting to what she was saying.
Inclusion requires understanding each other totally, she added, and that requires vulnerability and empathy from both sides. In order to capture this idea, Merlee launched a project in which she requested CEOs and leaders in the industry from Asia-Pacific make podcasts where they talked about their weaknesses, their imperfect sides, and the difficult times in their lives.
“‘I want every single employee to understand who you are and not in a pedestal, boss way,’” she recounted telling the CEOs. “So that was a way of [fostering] inclusion and including people.”
Finally, she explored what equity entails. “We always fight for equality,” she said, “[But equity] is beyond equality.”
Merlee explained that equity is not just giving people the same solutions or resources regardless of who they are. Rather, it is completely understanding the unique needs of a person or a group and using that information to adapt to their needs accordingly and personalize the benefits you give them.
She related this to the workplace setting by mentioning traditional routines around work calls during the work-from-home setup and how they differ for men and women. “The men probably just woke up, go into the meeting, and after that, have a cup of coffee,” Merlee said “[For the women,] you have to plan the next meal, you have to tutor your daughter for math. At some point, I saw a single woman teaching her younger autistic brother. These are several things we don’t see in Teams.”
Dentsu created a campaign showing what goes on outside women’s Zoom squares that often go unnoticed. Women filmed themselves doing the housework and childcare they have to juggle on top of working from home and talked about how they wished their load could be lightened.
But it didn’t stop there. Merlee shared another initiative “WeMen for Women” wherein various male leaders from dentsu share the load and work that need to be taken care of at home.
Another solution showing equity that Merlee talked about was the Gabbie chatbot that Dentsu Jayme Syfu created in partnership with Gabriela. The chatbot gave survivors of sexual harassment — something that disproportionately affects women and other minority groups — a safe space to open up about what happened and, if they choose to do so, report it. It takes away one of the things that make victims scared to report these incidents — the fear of judgment. The process makes the overwhelming process of reporting harassment as casual and easy as confiding in a friend.
“I think the future of the workplace is to really understand diversity, equity, and inclusion in our Philippine scenario in our Philippine setting. Truly understanding it and unpacking it with our HR being updated and equipped with the right expertise,” Merlee said to end her talk. “Only then will we women feel safe, protected, nurtured, and poised for success.”
“I think once the leaders are trained and made aware of DEI, mental wellness, and safety laws, they will do the right thing — be more proactive in designing workplaces to become inspiring, safe places conducive to better creative output,” she told adobo Magazine. “The ‘it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ attitude has to change. There is a lot of fixing that we need to do. We’re just not seeing and understanding the broken parts. We have to be relevant, open our hearts and minds to where the world is going for the sake of our employees.”
Every month, adobo Magazine gathers influential female speakers in a breakfast session to celebrate the power and innate talents of women, as well as their ability to create a positive impact on culture, creative industries, business, and communities — providing a platform for women to connect, educate, and support each other in their endeavors and achievements. We explore the power and possibilities of an all-women network as we gather the country’s most influential Filipinas who are instrumental in taking the first step toward creating a strong community of female leaders in Asia.
In case you missed this session, you can watch the video-on-demand here.
