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EDI: from ticking boxes to strategic alignment
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, has become a divisive tick-box exercise in some organisations, rather than a driver to achieve strategic goals. So how can leaders get EDI back on track?
PEOPLE & CULTURE
Simon Fanshawe
Co-founder, Diversity by Design
Simon Fanshawe
Co-founder, Diversity by Design
Issue 75| December 2024
Here are some questions to get us going. First, is your diversity strategy effectively contributing to your ability to develop quality social housing and to maintaining people’s homes that you manage? Following on from that, does the strategy engage all your staff, or only those who are ‘passionate’ about it?
And possibly worse, are some of your staff actively being put off EDI because they feel they are walking on eggshells, being told they have to believe things they don’t, or are afraid to have a different opinion from some members of the staff networks?
All these are issues that have been raised with me as I venture around the four countries of the UK, in my role as a practical adviser on such matters. I have certainly encountered them across the housing sector. My guess was that these challenges are unfortunately pretty widespread.
So, with funding from the Ben Delo Foundation, we undertook some research to find out. Forty-five individuals took part in in-depth interviews, ranging from the Chair of BT to the convenor of the Ethnicity Advisory Group at a utilities company, to ensure a broad sweep of seniority and sectors.
In October we published it under the title "Flying Flags and Ticking Boxes - what went wrong with EDI and how leaders can fix it”.
Our hunch turned out to be right. The question is: how did this happen?
“Those active on EDI in their organisation grabbed the supermarket trolley. They then set off down the diversity aisle chucking in lanyards, religious festival calendars, staff identity networks, days of action, logos photoshopped to back endless causes, charters, posters, stickers and the rest!”
The right thing to do
Leaders originally pursued diversity because it seemed to be the ‘right thing to do’, as indeed it was. They wanted, and still do, to tackle discrimination and open up opportunity in their organisations.
Unfortunately, it has sometimes taken on a life of its own and has become a force they can't control. As one respondent remarked to me, those active on EDI in their staff grabbed the supermarket trolley. They then set off down the diversity aisle chucking in lanyards, religious festival calendars, staff identity networks, days of action, logos photoshopped to back endless causes, charters, posters, stickers and the rest!
Consequently diversity in too many organisations became a proforma set of activities, an insistence on certain sorts of language and a record playing the same mix-tape over and over. In that process, it often ceased specifically to focus on the ability of each organisation to achieve its particular goals, for many readers of this, the wider social or charitable purpose.
Aligning EDI with the wider agenda
What we discovered was that many leaders now want to align with work on diversity so that it does properly serve the goals of their organisation. They want politicians and commentators on the populist right and radical left to vacate the space. The same goes for those staff groups based on identity, some of whom may have been diverted into more partisan activism. So many leaders would like to see EDI taken off the political football pitch. As one chief executive put it to me: “EDI is about talent, not politics.”
Senior leaders recognise that there is a broad range of opinions within their companies. They want to steer matters in such a way that they don’t alienate staff from each other. For that reason, they are now harbouring anxieties about the value of what has become the automatic diversity initiative, namely to set up so-called ‘staff networks’ with membership organised, for instance, around who is black, or gay or female.
They acknowledge that people from these groups can face genuine discrimination. However, categorising individuals by sex, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, or any other labels, may only serve to perpetuate division and exclusion. These groups may become ‘grumble hubs’, focused on grievances or activism.
“Senior leaders recognise that there is a broad range of opinions within their companies. They want to steer matters in such a way that they don’t alienate staff from each other.”
What’s to be done?
Our report concludes that there are three main things an organisation should consider:
- Make the EDI strategy an approach to unlock talent, so as to achieve organisational goals, and bring real value.
- To best engage all staff in collective effort, leaders should recognise explicitly that there will be a huge range of views among staff and that the last thing they need is be compelled to agree with each other. Organisations cannot impose a single set of views on their staff. Instead leaders need to encourage the expression of views by staff that offer alternative perspectives, and that counter groupthink. Diversity of thought, regardless of groups or categories, is the real win for all businesses. Inclusion should never mean: “Think like this, speak like this and behave like this; otherwise we’ll exclude you!”
- Leaders need to support staff groups in becoming aligned with the goals of the organisation, rather than to politics and external issues.
Looking forward
We now want to do two things as a result of what we discovered through the report:
- Engage leaders in different sectors – including housing – in a wide ranging and open discussion about how to reset EDI in their organisations, to deliver their goals and get EDI ‘back to the knitting’ of tackling discrimination, and opening up opportunity for all
- Help us to further develop two interventions that we, at Diversity by Design, find really support such a reset. The first is how best to create a diversity framework that is specific to your organisation. The second is to create a ‘Disagreeing Well programme’ for managers, which equips them to manage difference effectively.
