This case study attempts to use terminology that is acceptable to under-represented groups, but we appreciate that some of what is written may be problematic. For this we apologise. As with many others, we are on a learning journey and hope that you will bear with us as we move forward together.
Ed Rogers, Cybersecurity Engagement Specialist, Mobility Connected Vehicles
Tell us what it was like when you first started.
What made you want a career in automotive?
I'd never looked for a career in the automotive sector. And to be fair working for Ford, you could quite easily be forgiven for forgetting that we even made cars. I worked at Warley head office, when we still had the Warley building, there was no manufacturing done there at all. There were no engines. We had vehicles and things in the foyer and that was all that would remind you that we were an automotive company. I was in an IT function, so to some degree it was IT wherever you go. But I just fell into the role really, having moved to Essex with my partner and looking at different jobs, we thought that we would go and work in London because it was a nice commutable distance.
Who gave you career advice and who did you listen to?
My next-door neighbour, Dan, said Ford have just opened their graduate programme for the year and did I want to apply for that? I was doing a long commute at the time and wanted a change, but I’d graduated years ago, my thought was “are they really going to want me for that”? Luckily, they did. All they wanted was someone that has a degree, not someone who had just graduated. And I think that was the first thing that I had to get through my head; that a graduate programme doesn't necessarily mean the moment you graduate.
My neighbour was working for Ford as well, as an engineer at Dunton working in some of the test labs. So that was great, I was exposed to a wide variety of people within the company through his connections, and it also meant I could go and have a look at the test labs.
I found myself just going and exploring to see what other people did. And the nice thing about being on the graduate programme is that it afforded me that time. I wasn't constantly having to do stuff.
How old were you?
26
We did tours of the production lines in Dagenham also, so whilst at Warley you could easily be forgiven for forgetting that we made cars, those tours reminded us all on a regular basis that that is what we did. That was our main source of income, though I was working for the banking arm at the time. That was even more of an unusual position to be in. I was dealing with this locked office within a locked office because it was all governed by financial regulations.
What was your experience like to get into the automotive industry?
Fairly simple to be honest. I applied, went through all the application and selection processes, and was in. I got really interested in what Ford was doing and the movement it was making in terms of that mobility space away from traditional automotive where the focus was on four wheels and an engine. The newer projects that have come out have been fascinating to watch and see those developed because I joined right at the start of that journey, which I think was a great time to be there, what would have been early-2016.
What was your training like?
There was a lot of all the generic PowerPoint presentations, where the fire exits are, introductions to different functions, data protection, there were those sorts of bits and pieces. But there was also a lot on how Ford works as a corporation, our values and standards, our behaviours. There were lots of other role-specific courses as well. Six Sigma training for example and other project management courses, so I was afforded the opportunity to go off and do a lot of external training to develop me as a person and the skill sets that I would need to go forward. In my current cyber security role, I was put forward for my CISSP qualification which is a big cyber security course. I've always been given those opportunities by Ford.
Tell us about your first role and your career progression.
What was your first role and what lasting memories do you have of your experience?
The death by PowerPoint at first but then that's corporate life all over. I think that when you start somewhere, you're going to do those bits and then obviously I had the banking regulation pieces on top of that. That isn't really my learning style, the just ‘sit and watch’. I just got bored and I started seeing how fast I could click through the videos and get to the test at the end and, assuming I've passed the test, all good. Training has changed a lot since then!
A lot of it was also hands on; sitting with colleagues and learning about the applications that we were managing and understanding how they all interacted. And as soon as you are providing sort of a third- or fourth-line support to those applications it was normally something major, so you got to know the application very quickly.
Everything from how to install those applications from scratch, lots of stuff around operating system compatibility, lots of skills that I hadn’t touched since I was at university. Though my degree was in forensic computing, so I have a very analytical way of looking at problems and that worked brilliantly for the regulation space that I was in at the time.
I was lucky to have some very, very knowledgeable colleagues that had been with Ford for a long time and I found that throughout Ford. The people that I was working with had been in their career for 40+ years, they had been with Ford since they did their apprenticeship at 16. My colleagues were like a family. There was a real sense of family within the company.
How would you describe your experience of applying for and securing new roles? Who were your allies? Who supported your development into roles with more responsibility?
The graduate programme is sort of fixed to some degree. So, you normally work for 18 months in a role. I ended up staying a little bit longer to get some projects completed. Every graduate rotates twice. You get a job assigned to you at the start and that is based on what your CV looks like. Because of this, you will fit in nicely and then you get a list of all the graduate jobs, and you can apply for the ones that you're interested in, you rate them from one to ten. I knew that if I went and spoke to the managers of the new roles, I had a better chance of getting the job that I wanted at the start. Those managers supported me, and I made sure to have great working relationships with the more senior managers in teams I wanted to get involved with. I’d often ask to spend 30-minutes just chatting with them about what they were working on.
What was the impact on you when you got a new role?
I have got out of so many, not so much scrapes, that sounds like I got myself into trouble, but I was able to control situations because I knew the right people to go and speak to at times and that was part of what the graduate programme had taught me, to find out who the best person was to speak to.
That confidence to go in and speak to the director and say “we've got a problem” really helped. My life has always been a constant learning curve. Especially when you are only in a role for 18 months as a graduate. As part of the learning programme, you only just about have time to start to learn how things operate before you're looking at the process of moving on, but I've found that’s the case even in the wider part of Ford, it's only normally three years that you stay in some role, some deep technical specialists stay a lot longer. But if you want to progress through, you must move around a bit to increase your breadth of knowledge, especially if you want to get into management.
What kind of responses did you get from colleagues when you got promoted?
When I left my first graduate role, I moved from Ford Credit into the Motor Company. Technically it was leaving a company. It's a new contract. It's all the same building, but that really was a full-on leaving process. We went out as a team for a meal, I received leaving cards, the whole deal. I still refer to my first manager there as my boss. He brought me through a lot, and he gave me that whole introduction to allow me to move forward. Even now, when I've got a problem with something that I can't quite resolve, I will ping him as one of the people that I have on my little list of those to go to. He is still more than happy to help, as is everyone in my teams. They've always been very, very good at saying if you need anything that fits within our space then you come straight back and ask.
Tell us about your current role.
What’s the focus of your role?
I look after the cyber security for all the connected mobility applications within vehicles. The main security aspect is the connection; the fact that you can unlock your car with your phone, you can activate various features and you can do things like pre warming the seats…so that's kind of where my focus sits.
We also look at the wider mobility side as well. Lots of smaller ‘start-up’ style programmes like last mile delivery applications and how we would work in that sort of space. There were lots of bits that they did trials of that I was able to get involved with at the early stage, which has meant that they've all had this whole secure by design mentality through their whole process as well. It's been interesting to see how that all fits together and being involved from a design stage, almost to say “this is what I think should be in place”.
So, have you got any kind of tips for IMI members for what they can do or for their companies to be cyber secure?
I think there's some real basic things. Password hygiene is probably one of the top ones in there. Don't reuse your passwords.
I would advise having a password manager application of some description in place so that you're not expecting your teams to have to remember 101 different passwords for things, and by default their passwords will become more secure at that stage as well, because the program generates the passwords for them. They've only got remember the master password.
There's a lot I think to be said for advisory pieces, phishing campaigns and awareness campaigns are so useful, but also make sure that you have a reward mechanism in place as well. Having a reward mechanism will encourage people to take part. Otherwise, they think, “I won't bother even reporting it. I'm just going to delete it. Won't make any difference.”
Multi-Factor Authentication as well. If you you've not got that enabled, you might just as well not even bother putting a password on. MFA is pretty vital.
There's lots of talking now around what's called zero trust. The old concept was how a network was like a castle. So that once you've breached that front gate you were in, and you could go anywhere within the castle. The multi-layered ring approach, zero trust, you get through the front door, you can do some things, but then you must get through the next door, the next door, the next door. It’s how we've done physical security for years. For some reason it didn't apply to networks at first. But that’s how we look at vehicle security; everything is isolated, communications are verified and authenticated to provide that level of security in the car.
What do you enjoy most about it?
Speaking to so many teams. Because my role is sort of a consultancy type role, I get to communicate across loads of different teams. I get to join meetings that I would never have thought I'd be involved with talking about, say, some brand-new start-up that has a weird and wacky idea; I get to go and listen in on those conversations and find out what's going on. Then I can go and speak to a team that are dealing with combustion engines still because that still needs to be secured just as much as anything else.
I get to go and join the SMMT conferences and work and speak with them as well. I never thought I'd be sat on a government working group. But I do because my role provides me with that access to go and speak to them about how the smart charging infrastructure is going to work across the UK. So, there's been lots of fun things that I get to join in with. Of course, there’s the IMI and being involved with that part of industry as well. I think that's my favourite bit, the sheer number of people I can go off and speak to.
What do you enjoy least about it?
I think it's unfortunate that a lot of the real techy stuff is done in the US for Ford now, certainly from a security point of view. We obviously have coders and engineers in the UK that are doing the development side of it. I would love to get a little bit more hands on with some of the security at times, but my background just ended up being more strategy based and writing policy and things, so I don’t really miss out. I guess I get frustrated at times, that with a global team I have to wait until lunchtime before I can speak to some of my colleagues to get things done.
Please talk to us about Driving Pride?
So, to provide some context. Shortly after I joined Ford, I signed up to our LGBT network called Ford Globe, as it was at the time, now Ford Pride., Soon after there was a call for committee members, they needed more people to come in and help, so I did that. Whilst I’d always been out at work, I’d never been involved with a corporate network of any description. I'd always been at companies that were too small to really have any kind of thing. Ford was the first time I'd come to somewhere that had this big organisation. And it did events and it had lunch meets and all those sorts of things. I could meet other people that had similar interests. I ended up being one of the chairs of the network.
Then, around about 2018 I think it was, I was chatting with some of the colleagues at Jaguar Land Rover and they said they haven't had a pride network since they were part of Ford and they would really like to start one up again. But they didn't really know the process. Could we give them some advice on what to do? Was there anything we could share? We had a couple of conversations, shared loads of documents and through those conversations we agreed that they can’t be the only company that is struggling, especially in the automotive sector.
And so, I had the conversation with several other LGBT+ networks about forming a support group. They thought it was a lovely idea and said, let's try and do it then. Then COVID happened and it all just stopped. As we were coming back out of COVID again though I thought, no, this really is something that needs doing, especially now when everyone is spread to the winds. Nobody's centralised anywhere. Let's try and get these conversations going again.
I sent out some emails to some people, the Diversity Manager here at Ford helped me connect with some of her colleagues at other automotive groups. At the first call we had, I think, 11 companies. They all loved the idea and thought it was brilliant. The first conversation we really had was what we call ourselves. We went through all these options that you never even think of when you want to start a group; what's our logo going to be? What's our strap line? Then I looked and I realised I'm doing it with 11 different companies… I've got 11 different legal departments to try and convince that they need to be involved!
So, we borrowed the SMMT compliance statement wording that they read out of the start of all their meetings. We pulled it apart, made it a lot simpler because they go into a lot more detail. All we wanted to do was share best practise within the D, E & I space. It was never going to be corporate secrets and sales figures, so it was much simpler; though it still took a long time to get 11 lawyers to agree. But eventually we got over that hurdle and they said, yeah, that's fine. We can do this.
It became this fantastic group of people all with a similar objective, all at different stages of their diversity journey as well. So, you had Ford who celebrate the 30th anniversary of our LGBT network next year, and then you’ve got other companies like Heycar, for example, who are comparatively new to the market and in some ways, they were miles ahead of us, because they've got a good D, E & I policy and they've had them from the get-go, compare that to us who are getting towards 120 years old. We had to bring those policies in as they were required.
Everyone brings something to the table, from the biggest OEMs through to the smallest little dealer network that maybe only has five or six employees; we're able to support all different levels. And the smaller groups, they quite often have the most energy and the larger groups have the resource, which is a great way of working now. And we balance it out, and it’s working well. It’s this fantastic little group of organisations. Individuals as well are now part of it, they all want to come together and support each other and not constantly, if you excuse the pun, reinvent the wheel.
What more could they do?
As a network, we get approached for comment and support on a lot of things. So, we do policy reviews to make sure that all our policies are gender neutral in terms of language, for example.
We made sure that my civil partner, for example, is as eligible under our policies as a partner in a ‘traditional’ marriage would be. There's lots of things like that that that are quick wins for companies. When we have these conversations at Ford and across Driving Pride, management are always very, very supportive of everything we do.
I'm good friends with the IT director for Europe; in fact, he came to my wedding. Sometimes those senior managers just need a guiding hand, someone to highlight the concerns, because there is so much that they are also trying to look at. That’s where ERGs, and organisations like Driving Pride can help.
How do other automotive employers be involved in Driving Pride?
We're constantly looking to expand, especially targeting garages and sort of smaller dealers and companies that maybe only have those five or six employees and don't have the capacity to have an HR department that has a diversity, equity, and inclusion team. We want to become the friendly network for those smaller companies, that's how we sort of see ourselves. Basically, the answer is going to the website drivingpride.org and have a look.
So, if you want to sign up individually, you can do that. That function is publicly available on the site. If you want to join us at a corporate level, we ask that you e-mail info@drivingpride.org and say “look, we'd like to have a conversation”. We've got a presentation deck that we go through with the companies, and they normally take that away to speak to their management chain. When they are ready to join there’s a form essentially then gets sent to you that you fill in and it gets reviewed at the next board meeting.
Is there anything you would like your colleagues or customers to do differently when you’re working with them?
I think if we look at it from a D, E & I point of view, as a gay man there is not much that I would ask them to change. Maybe don't assume that I have a girlfriend. Just either ask how your partner is, or say, do you have a girlfriend or boyfriend?
I would always rather somebody asked me the question than feel awkward about it, and that can be even more applicable within the trans community, I think. I've spoken to several trans colleagues who all suggest that if you ask with a genuine desire to learn, not because you think you can get an embarrassing answer from somebody, then that is so much better.
And be prepared to make mistakes. Nobody's going to get upset at you if you do make a genuine mistake. If I've told you the answer five times and you're still getting it wrong, that's when I'm going to go, ‘actually, you're doing this deliberately now.’ It is ok to make a mistake and, if you've got a network like Driving Pride, e-mail them, contact them, ask us those embarrassing questions, ask it as anonymously as you wish, and if we get several of them through, we'll put a session on to tell you all about it, because why wouldn't we want people to learn?
I think one of the key things’ is don't assume. Don’t assume that somebody's going to have what you believe to be a stereotypical relationship. Don’t assume they have been on the same journey as you. And when it comes to, especially with the trans and nonbinary community, don't try and assume their gender or their pronouns, just ask. It's so much easier.
Why pro-nouns are important.
We've got them in all our e-mail signatures, our pronouns, everyone's encouraged to put them in there to make life easier. A lot of meetings will start, especially when they are D, E & I led meetings, “My name's Ed. My pronouns are he, him” It’s slowly just becoming part of how we do business in general.
I'd never considered using pro-nouns in the past because it's never been an impact to me, but I've spoken to my trans colleagues, and it is so validating to hear other people give that information that it makes them feel so much better.
Why is progression important to you?
Are we now just progressing for the sake of progress? There's nothing to change anymore, do we just do these things? Can we just stop and think that we're at level playing field? We've got equal marriage; we've got equal rights; we've protected the characteristic; we don't need to do that anymore
I think the problem is, in some instances we are going backwards. You look at some of the media stories coming out of the US, and even to be fair, the debate that was in Parliament recently on the definition of sex and you realise that there is still so much work to be done, that there is still progress to be made.
And then when you add the trans community into that as well, there is work still to be done even within the LGBT+ community because we're terrible at times within our own space of being transphobic.
There are still so many hurdles for trans people to jump over when they're going through their transitioning process, getting gender recognition certificates, getting their GP’s on board, convincing people that it's essentially not a phase still, which I thought we'd got over ages ago, but we are still having to have those conversations.
And then how do you support them in a corporate environment as well? How do you go through the updating of HR systems? We had a struggle at Ford because, again, our systems are often very old. In some instances, they are binary based systems. They don't have the option to add anything to them. You can only have male or female because that's all they were ever programmed with. And there is nobody that even knows how to code them anymore, but they are still underpinning some systems at times.
So, it's how do you get over those sorts of bits? How do you get two ID cards issued for somebody, or they are nonbinary and want to present as male one day and female the next, those things are still huge considerations, especially for a lot of older companies. Newer companies may be less so because they can build that in almost from the get-go. We're having those conversations almost daily with Driving Pride members, how we get those things done and how do we support our colleagues without having to ask them all to declare that they want to change their gender, for example, because we don’t need everyone to know that.
Are there any words of advice for some of the older companies out there who are maybe just starting this journey now, where do they go? Who can they speak to?
Driving pride will be more than happy to chat to them, and we've got some fantastic colleagues with Racing Pride who do a lot of training and workshops as well. So, we tend to sign post companies to them.
Speak to your people and if you've already been approached by somebody that is looking to continue their transition journey, I think the worst thing you can do is go, ‘Oh, we have no idea, what on earth do we do. Put the brakes on everything.’ That not going to help anybody.
Most people aren't going to expect you to be able to implement this thing overnight. They are on a journey themselves. They know this is going to take time, but if they've plucked up the courage to come and speak to you and they have had a private conversation with you, keep it private. I think that’s the first important thing, unless it is a risk to their health or their safety, keep the conversation private. They have told you because they trust you. If they want you to now go and support them, they will tell you that they would now like you to help them. And then find out what they want from that journey, because they may not want a whole new e-mail address. They might not want everybody to start putting their pronouns in their signatures.
They might want to keep quiet, and remember this can be a slow process, but also, I think, realise that if they have got to that stage of telling you, they have probably been looking at this for months, if not years. This isn't something they decided that morning to come and talk to you about. They've been looking at this for a long, long time and it's probably taken an awful lot of courage for them to come and speak to you about that. So, I think valuing that and understanding that this is a journey and that you are part of it.
More importantly, you’re just one little step on that journey. They have probably got far bigger things to be worried about in terms of their families and their friendships. Work should be the easiest part of this for them because it should just be a case of “Yep, we are here. We'll support you in anything that you need. Let us know how we can help you”
We created a Transitioning at Work Guide. We've got a generic one that everyone can read. We've got one for management that helps them with their part of the journey. We've got one for the actual transitioning individual, and we've got an extra bit that talks to HR about some of the process steps they must go through like updating systems.
We want to support everyone, but what it says at the start is this is not a step-by-step process, there are commonalities, but every journey is different. They might change their name first. It could be the last thing they do. They might start presenting in a different way right from the start, or that might follow much later.
So, there are defined steps that you will go through and obviously there are systems that would need updating. It is understanding that everyone's journey is different over a different time frame. And then you've got whether someone is transitioning male to female or female to male as they are going to have a different set of steps. Some people are going to want to go through medical procedures, others may just start to use different pronouns.
At one end there's not much to have to change, at the other you might have to start providing medical leave. And allow them to take it as medical leave, but if you've got one of these policies that says if you've had so many days off in a month you will have to speak to HR, don’t make them go through that! The last thing that person wants when they're just about to check off for a medical appointment and will be out for six months, is some meeting with HR to say that they might not have a job when they get back because they have had too many days off sick.
From a work perspective, who are your role models?
Phil Adcock at Ford. So, Phil's the guy that came to my wedding. He has been someone that I've looked up to for a long, long time. I love his management style. I love the way he engages with people. He will always come over and speak to people when we're in the office together. He will walk around and say hello to everybody. He knows everybody within his organisation, maybe not necessarily by name all the time, but he certainly knows who they are and roughly what they're involved with.
I'm a reservist as well, so I've got lots of military leaders that I've looked up to in their leadership styles as well. Not just senior officers: we refer to leaders across all ranks. I think every manager that I've had, I've always been very respectful of how they have dealt with me, and I've learned a lot from everybody that I've worked for and worked with.
We've got some fantastic contractors that have worked for Ford for 20 odd years and their work ethic and their ability to understand a problem is phenomenal. And they never complained when I went and asked them the most ridiculous, mundane questions as well, as they were concerned about a command line for a piece of Cisco networking kit. What's the code that I need to get this list back. They were always more than happy to help. Again, it's better to ask questions and learn bit. So, I've always respected that willingness for them to come to me and learn, but also the ability for them to give back that time and make sure that I was learning I think is so important, that development time.
Lived Experiences
