Bringing challenge to the table in 2021

2020 was undoubtedly a year of turmoil for all businesses. The usual everyday challenges of running a business were exacerbated by Covid-19, the move to hybrid working and Brexit among other issues.

While these challenges were and continue to be, by nature, challenging, they provide a real opportunity to improve and grow as individuals and businesses. In fact, bringing challenge to the table should always be encouraged, as our CEO Elona highlighted in a recent interview.

Diversity is ingrained into the fabric of IRIS, in our leadership team and throughout the business. We firmly believe that building teams from different backgrounds ultimately leads to better decision making.

This ethos comes from the top-down. Following an upbringing in Albania, our CEO Elona went to an international school in Wales where she was surrounded by students with incredibly diverse cultures, traditions, and beliefs. There were so many different opinions and approaches to the way her school friends solved problems. She came away realising that the power of diversity produces the best results.

At IRIS we know that if you hire to your own cut, your team will be the same as you and the decisions you make will not be as informed as they could be. We don’t want to work with ‘yes’ people!

Bringing together multifaceted teams not only gives you learnings along the way but makes your world bigger, raises the bar and enables you to make the best decisions. We should all be curious, get a good level of understanding of our world, the expertise our colleagues bring to the table and surround ourselves with amazing people with different strengths.

We are a promoter of diversity at IRIS because diversity, in its truest form – not only talking about gender – creates an incredible working environment. Each of us is unique, regardless of race, religion, colour, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, disability or age. It is these differences that make us great.

In diversity there is beauty, there is strength and better outcomes.

Nick Gregory, CMO of IRIS Software Group