How to balance diversity dates with year-round inclusion
By Dr. Natasha Hirst on 14 February 2024
The DEI calendar is filled with potential dates to mark, from International Days to History Months and awareness weeks. There exists a delicate balance between celebrating diversity and addressing the underlying issues of discrimination and inequality.
Lesley Babb, head of diversity and inclusion at Ofgem, is committed to approaching this challenge in a purposeful way. Babb said, “having a diverse range of ideas and experiences in the energy sector is key to unlocking the complex problems it faces, including net zero. And this can only be done by challenging ourselves to go further with inclusion and equity so everyone has a fair experience.”
Babb adds that “events which raise awareness and promote understanding of under-represented groups are excellent opportunities to celebrate difference and diversity of experiences. Staff are empowered and encouraged to share their stories and discuss race, disability, gender, sexuality and religion to dispel myths and assumptions.” Ofgem also addresses social mobility by providing career opportunities for people from under-represented socio-economic backgrounds.
Celebrating diversity and raising awareness of inequality
Asad Dhunna, founder and CEO of award-winning consultancy The Unmistakables, says his team has mixed views about diversity days and months. He said, “on the one hand we acknowledge that they can be vehicles for change within large organisations, providing a moment for teams and communities to come together and to raise awareness in a gentle way. On the other hand, they can become a crutch and people can feel like it’s ‘job done’ with diversity and inclusion.”
It is a view shared by Donna Ali, Founder and Director of BE Xcellence, who is concerned that efforts to create diversity and inclusion don’t go deep enough to create cultural change, with initiatives often feeling like add-ons rather than a core part of everyday business. She explains that when “talking about inclusion, it says to me that you’re welcomed, we invite you, but it also means we can uninvite you. I talk about infusion rather than inclusion.” Her view is that the language we use to identify the causes and impact of discrimination, needs to change.
Whilst diversity dates had their place in raising awareness of inequalities, they also risk being tokenistic and entrenching divisions. Ali believes that the energy put towards race equality as a result of Black Lives Matter has dissipated, deprioritising the work which now needs reframing. Pointing to the way in which we all lose out from racism, Ali explains how it “has stolen from having better connections, having a deeper tapestry of friendship groups, and understanding a richer history of the world. If we bring everybody on the journey with us through collaboration and allyship, we get to a better place that speaks to collectiveness rather than division.” Her flagship magazine is a platform for building these connections.
Ali shares the story of her grandfather who came from Bangladesh and set up the first Indian restaurant in the then Tiger Bay area of Cardiff. “This changed the landscape in restaurants in Wales, thousands of employees, and however many millions to the Welsh economy. That is not an inclusion, that is an infused social entrepreneurial part of the landscape.”
In this sense, celebrating the ‘contributions’ of minoritised communities can underestimate how their inventions, ideas and influence have transformed aspects of our day to day lives.
How to avoid tokenism?
Few things have exposed insincere boasting of diversity credentials better than the Gender Pay Gap Bot. The Twitter/X-based bot automatically responds to organisations who post in celebration of International Women’s Day by sharing their gender pay gap data, often revealing deep inequalities.
That doesn’t mean that organisations shouldn’t celebrate and share their progress on diversity days but the trick to getting it right is “to take an inside-out approach” says Dhunna. This means “prioritising awareness and engagement internally by working with the right colleagues and employee resource groups before rushing to shout externally that you’re doing ‘something’ to mark a community.”
Metro Bank was the 2023 winner of the Inclusive Culture Initiative Awards, noted for their approach to embedding diversity and inclusion throughout the organisation. Carol Frost, Chief People Officer at Metro Bank said, “Inclusive organisations support employees, regardless of their background or circumstance, to thrive at work. At Metro Bank inclusion is a 365-day commitment that we strive to live and breathe every day with our colleagues and customers. Whether that’s through our calendar of webinars and training or hosting colleague-led celebrations for events such as Lunar New Year, Diwali or Eid. We hope that everyone at Metro Bank feels valued, respected and accepted both in their team and in the wider organisation, without feeling they have to conform.”
Building their strategy around the principles of Inclusive Culture, Equity for All, and Community and Connection they integrated DEI practices across Metro Bank, spanning training and recruitment, talent management, and communication strategies. Staff played an important role in shaping and communicating this work by sharing their lived experiences.
Monitoring success
Alongside internal strategies, Ofgem commissions research and uses external benchmarks such as Disability Confident and Carers Confident. Babb aims to set an example for others to follow explaining, “we work hard towards ambitious targets to be more diverse, particularly at senior levels, and fostering an inclusive culture and social mobility. We want the whole sector to follow suit. We helped launch and proudly support the Tackling Inclusion and Diversity In Energy (TIDE) taskforce to keep challenging barriers within the industry and promoting positive change.”
The Unmistakables recognises that navigating DEI is complex and encourages a science-led approach to monitoring success called ‘inside out inclusion®’. Dhunna explained, “we have witnessed a lot of focus on visible diversity and representation, however in the long run this alone does not create the behavioural change that’s needed in future-fit inclusive workforces.
Many aspects of equity and inclusion are invisible, which makes them challenging to measure. Understanding inclusion is pivotal to unlocking ED&I across all parts of an organisation. Ensuring a regular cadence of data capture, review and realignment is crucial, as is the ability to offer a psychologically safe space to push back on initiatives that aren’t working to place efforts and energy on the things that have the most impact longer term.”
Top tips
- Ensure that your initiatives around diversity and inclusion have a clear purpose and are firmly anchored in a strategy that supports business growth and relevance. Avoid initiative overwhelm, where efforts are spread too thinly resulting in minimal progress or impact
- Provide genuine opportunities for staff to shape your DEI priorities and link this to career advancement
- Foster inclusive leadership and opportunities for diverse representation at all levels in the organisation
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