Why confident diversity makes business sense for Confused.com
- publish258
- Apr 7, 2022
- 2 min read
Updated: Apr 7
Confident diversity leads to great ideas and great decisions, Louise o’Shea, chief executive of Confused.com, tells The Leaders Institute
It can be awkward to call out instances of bias at work. Many of us hesitate for fear of causing a scene or interrupting someone. Louise o’Shea, chief executive of the price comparer Confused.com, wants all of her 300 employees to feel they have permission to speak up. ‘Be the change you want to be,’ she tells them, ‘and stand up for the person who comes next.’ For her it’s these moments that make a reality of flexibility, representation and diversity. By this stage, she says, you would hope that company policies are just a matter of hygiene. ‘Nonsense still happens in business,’ she says. ‘Change takes longer that we would all like. It’s challenging to react when something happens. So it makes a big impact if we prepare everyone and make sure they’re ready.’ Visitors to Confused.com often say it’s surprising, how openly people are x, y or z. It’s just how life is, she says. ‘Our people are comfortable about bringing all of themselves to work.’ ‘Our approach to business is that it depends on two things: great ideas and great decisions. Those are all about diversity of thought, people coming together from all different walks of life, all different backgrounds, all different expertise, and being able to communicate with each other. That’s how you come up with different ideas and make the right decisions.’ She also wants everyone to have the confidence to take on new challenges, rather than stick with what they know. That’s the way she progressed: from finance to digital, before becoming finance director, then chief executive. She wants to stretch her employees in the same way. At Confused.com, she has created a school of tech and a school of data. ‘You might be in HR, you might be in marketing, you might be in commercial, but you are going to be impacted at some point in your career.’ It’s a culture that is working for Confused.com. After years of underperformance, it has managed to skake itself up, doubling revenues and tripling profits since o’Shea became chief executive in 2017. • Louise o’Shea was in conversation with Hilarie Owen, director of The Leaders Institute and author of ‘How Women Become Leaders’, 2019, Novaro Publishing.
