Sustainability allies: supporting equality through the #MyNameIs campaign

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The #MyNameIs campaign originated from Race Equality Matters to help encourage the correct pronunciation of peoples’ names, showing respect for the meaning, heritage and identity behind them. In supporting the campaign, we are one of many organisations joining together in support of equality and, in particular, respect for the different names we are each given or choose for ourselves.

In this ‘sustainability allies’ series we hear from some of the individuals who are helping to make a difference across our ESG priorities: from inclusion and wellbeing, corporate governance and people, to environment and responsible business. In this blog, Real Estate Partner Anjali Bancroft talks about the importance of the #MyNameIs campaign, how it’s been embedded into the firm and how we communicate with one another, and the positive impact it’s made.

To find out more about our ESG initiatives, take a look at our Sustainability report 2024.

Your name and position at Gowling WLG:

Anjali Bancroft, Partner in the Housing Development and Regeneration team at Gowling WLG.

What does your role at Gowling WLG entail?

I’m a partner in our Real Estate Group, focused predominantly on helping clients to successfully acquire and dispose of land for residential development. I work with a number of national house builders to negotiate robust and effective agreements to fulfil future housing needs, including options, collaborations and promotion agreements. I also advise on conditional purchase arrangements, for more “instant” acquisitions, and on disposals and other development transactions.

How did you get involved in this initiative?

Alongside my day job in the Housing Development and Regeneration team, I’m also a member of Gowling WLG’s ethnicity network, EmbRACE – one of six employee networks that exist in strategic partnership with the firm and its Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I) team to promote a culture of diversity and inclusion through ongoing understanding. We have an action plan that is aligned with the firm’s long-term ESG strategy, meet regularly to advance our progress and are always on the look out for new ways to support issues of diversity and ethnicity.

The #MyNameIs campaign is one such initiative – focused on encouraging the correct pronunciation of people’s names, showing respect for the meaning, heritage and identity behind them. I’d followed the growth of the campaign since its launch by Race Equality Matters and seen how others in the legal and professional services sector were starting to embrace it. For me, the campaign showed such a strong fit with our values as a firm and ‘Inclusion for All’ strategy that it seemed a natural choice for us to roll it out across the business.

From first presenting the opportunity to EmbRACE and then the firm’s Board in the Spring of 2023, to developing plans with our DE&I team and launching the campaign, took just a few months. It has involved working closely with our DE&I team to ensure that we engage key internal teams and stakeholders early on and develop a communication plan that would help people understand why we are doing this and how their support can really make a difference.

What are the aims of the #MyNameIs campaign and how is it being supported by the firm?

The campaign aims to raise awareness of the importance of pronouncing someone’s name correctly, and the impact it can have when you don’t. It encourages people to work out the phonetic spelling of their name and add this to places people may use to identify who you are – for example, your email signature. By getting people’s names right, it’s a way to ensure people feel like they are being treated with respect and that they belong.

From a personal perspective my own name has been misspelt and mispronounced in the past and it’s easy to see how this can happen, but through embracing the #MyNameIs campaign it can also be easily resolved. Simply adding the phonetic spelling of your name to communications such as your email signature, is  a quick and easy step we can all take to help make it easier for new contacts/colleagues to approach us. More of our clients are doing the same thing and it’s a great way of showing mutual respect for our individual sense of identity, heritage and culture. It also, importantly, helps us to build better relationships by sharing a bit about ourselves and making conversation flow easier.

Tell us more about the changes that have been introduced…

To support the launch of the campaign we created a range of content and resources to help people work out the phonetic spelling of their name and how to add it to their email signature and other communications. We wanted to make it a really easy to understand process and to also ensure that we lead by example to encourage people to embrace the campaign.

The DE&I team were central to putting all the content and resources together – including a mix of internal communications, intranet hub, promotional video and step-by-step guide on how to update individual email signatures. The campaign has involved engaging with teams across the firm and drawn on the support of our EmbRACE network and Inclusion Allies. Their role as advocates has been really important – helping increase awareness, direct people to the available resources and build the momentum of the campaign.

What have been some of the challenges and also positive outcomes from the campaign?

In earnest, launching the campaign has had very few challenges as it felt such a practical and natural step we could take as part of our work in relation to inclusion. The firm’s Board and business services teams were behind it from the start, so our only challenge lay in carving out the time and resources as quickly as we wanted in order to bring all the campaign elements together. Its been really rewarding to have played a part in making the campaign a reality here at Gowling WLG and shows how, as a firm, we are always open to embracing new ideas and ways of doing things for the benefit of our people and clients.

Is there any feedback so far that you can share?

While making this simple change to how we communicate is not mandatory we know it is important to people and valued. Internal feedback has highlighted this, as well as client feedback where we’ve had a number of people ask us more about the campaign and how they can replicate it.

How can people find out more about our focus on inclusion?

The diversity and inclusion of our workplace is hugely important to us and is reflected in one of our global core values — ‘we all bring something different’. Inclusion for All is our five-year strategy that aims to ensure that all of our people feel included and that they belong at Gowling WLG but, importantly, recognising that everyone has a part to play in making the firm truly diverse and inclusive. You can find out more about ‘Inclusion for All’ and our wider activities around DE&I on our website. We also share our progress on DE&I and other people-focused issues in our annual Sustainability Reports.