Turning the Tide Report- how we turned the dial
Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) has been one of the most discussed topics across industries in recent years. Though there has been an increase in efforts to understand and address the inequalities and inequities, the unforeseen events in 2020/21 – social upheaval, protests across the world – have put even greater emphasis on this topic and accelerated companies’ desire to improve.
As a leading group of talent businesses, we feel we have a critical role to play in turning the dial for the short term whilst working towards a better future. But where do you start? The first step in evolving our strategy was to change our company’s mindset surrounding DEI. DEI is not an initiative, it is an ongoing commitment towards change.
To change your mindset, you need to understand your workforce by: establishing your starting point to be able to measure and drive success; understanding how many different categories of diversity are monitored in your organisation; improving staff engagement across the various levels in the business; and capturing your global presence. That’s when you can define your strategy and start putting the practical pieces in place to make change happen. These might look like:
Creating a mission statement
Creating a committee with defined roles and responsibilities to drive the DEI agenda
Communicating your DEI strategy as organisational strategy
Ensuring you have plans in place for improving DEI
Ensuring your senior management team and board are part of the plan and strategy
Ensuring you have regular meetings across your employee resource groups to review, monitor and measure impact.
To look at our journey in detail – including everything from getting our house in order internally to supporting our clients’ individual strategies – check out our Turning the Tide report. We recognise that we will share many of their challenges and so undertake that journey in parallel, sharing our findings as we work together to turn the dial longer term. Come on that journey with us.