We asked Elaine Murphy, VP and Site Lead for Signify Health, to share with us some insights on her experiences and how she draws inspiration from the environment around her, role models she had during her careers, practices or approach she has taken in their organisation to create a more inclusive workplace, and what does the slogan “Embrace Equity” means to her.

Elaine Murphy is an accomplished Global Operations and Site Leader with +15 years’ experience leading cross-functional teams and supporting both start-ups and scale ups, including for a multinational Fortune 500 company.

Voltedge: What is your current role and how long you have held this position?

Elaine: I’m VP and Site Lead for Signify Health since March of last year and my responsibilities expanded this month to include Chief of Staff to the Chief Technology Officer.

Voltedge: Where do you draw inspiration from?

Elaine: For me, I’m naturally inspired by my friends and family. I choose to seek out inspiration from podcasts, books, travel and conversations with people from all walks of life. I deliberately aim to diversify viewpoints I’m exposed to, and get away from the bubble of business functions I’m ingrained in.

Voltedge: What does the slogan ‘Embrace Equity’ mean to you?

Elaine: Equity for me means deliberately going deeper than equality. I read a great quote that frames the difference well. It’s from Dr. Naheed Dosani, founder of Palliative Education and Care for the Homeless in Canada. He says “Equality is giving everyone a shoe. Equity is giving everyone a shoe that fits.”

So, you can give all your team members the same resources and expose them to the same opportunities, but we have to go deeper and recognise that each person has different circumstances. I believe a critical skill to improving equity in organisations is having empathy. As leaders, we have a responsibility to better enable all by truly listening to understand and then acting.

Voltedge: What practices or approach have you taken in your organisation to create a more inclusive workplace?

Elaine: At Signify Health, inclusivity is one of our core values. We believe that to successfully transform U.S. Healthcare, all voices must be heard and represented in our decision- making. Over 69% of our Signifiers identify as female and over half of our Director+ leaders are women. With such strong female representation, we have a dedicated focus on gender inclusion in our practices in Ireland beginning at the interview stage where we have been deliberate about interview panel make-up.
We have 5 Employee Resource Groups, or ERGs, that are inclusive of identities across gender, race, and sexual orientation and I am on the board for one of these ERGs and an active ally for the others.

In celebration of Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day, I am hosting events and getting involved in conversations each week in March where I’ll cover topics on emotional intelligence, women in business, and gender inclusion.

As a new scale up entity in Ireland, we had to develop policies to guide our team and we partnered with Voltedge to ensure our policies and practices promote inclusion.

We at Signify Health believe inclusion is everyone’s responsibility. To ensure all Signifiers have the knowledge and tools to create inclusive team environments, we have multiple learning paths on our learning platform dedicated to inclusive hiring, managing diverse teams, authentic allyship, inclusive leadership, psychological safety, and conscious inclusion.

Voltedge: What is your favourite quote and why?

Elaine: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent” by Eleanor Roosevelt.

Eleanor was an amazing all-rounder and while she is most frequently remembered as a former first lady, she was so much more: a humanitarian, an activist, a philanthropist, and a mother of six. She has some truly inspiring quotes that you can live by both personally and professionally.

This one resonates with me and I remind talent, particularly those at the earlier stages in their career, that there is nothing wrong with taking constructive feedback from others but we own and can shape our reactions to it and we should not overthink or be negatively influenced by the statements of others.