EDI Case Study resource 2025

Key Findings – Be patient

A key theme of the conversations, felt most keenly by smaller organisations but experienced by all, was the feeling that limited progress was being made, particularly where staff turnover was low. In such situations, plans can be made around recruitment, pipeline, development, and representation but are hard to deploy practically due to limited diversity in the incumbent workforce and few or irregular vacancies.

Diversity can’t be rushed. In one example, a big push for EDI had led to a large number of very senior managers being recruited, predominantly from BAME backgrounds. The individuals were not equipped to do the jobs they were brought in to do and it caused a number of organisational problems for a number of years afterwards. In this scenario, recruiting the right characteristics was seen as more important than recruiting the right people for the jobs. Cultivating a talent pipeline, to build diversity over time would have been a better approach.

“The thing for me is ignore diversity – too many organisations focus on to more diverse bums on seats. This can lead to bad practice. If you focus on inclusion and culture, the ways that we work, the way it feels, the environment, the physical and emotional/psychological environment – diversity will come and will stay.”

One arm’s length body of a government department (<50 staff, budget £7m), faced just this issue. Flashback to three years ago and the entire executive team was male and with 20+ years tenure, many were approaching retirement. The next tier of management was also predominantly men, with long tenures. Any succession planning assumed rotation of this limited group. Diversity at all levels of the organisation was lacking – not least when factoring in the expected ethnicity profile of an employer based predominantly in London and Manchester. A new board, with refreshed focus on the issue, set out a clear ambition for the organisation to change, but with no recruitment, limited turnover and long tenure – it was hard to see how progress could be made.

Despite this, the team got started – reviewing the standard elements of job descriptions in preparation, refreshing the imagery on the website, thinking more carefully about panel composition when hosting events and getting staff involved in an open conversation around what could be different.

As part of succession planning, the CEO realised there were actually a number of up-and-coming women leaders in the business, and expanded the span of the executive team to create a more balanced senior team with greater diversity of thought, as well as more opportunities to step up.The board identified that while the staff struggled to reflect on their own diversity as a group– feeling that it was something they had limited control over, they were very open to thinking differently around diversity and inclusion in their work with the right steer. After fundamentally shifting the focus of a number of major projects as a result of this, the organisation was able to take diversity from being an afterthought to being a core design principle in work.

This journey took several years and progress felt (and according to the data was) incredibly slow, but then an opportunity – a new CEO, new executive team appointments and a much needed restructure due to retirements and a sudden turnover of 30% of the workforce. Thanks to the foundations already laid and the gradual improvements over time, the organisation was already well set to approach talent acquisition in the right way – the recruitment round that followed resulted in a complete balancing of gender in the organisation and executive team, and a significant increase in all dimensions of diversity.

The change in a nutshell:

  • 26% to 45% under 46 years old.
  • 28% turnover of a staff base of 43 (12 staff departed, then recruitment took headcount to 48)
  • BAME staff increased from 32% to 34%
  • Gender from 44% women to 50% women
  • Women on executive team from 0% 3 years ago, to 40% now


“If we had waited until the turnover happened, it would have been too late to enact lots of the things that made a difference including a shift in how we presented ourselves, our assets, our communication style, our recruitment approach and most importantly our mindset. The slow 3-5 years led up to enabling us to do the ‘big change’ when the opportunity arose.”