EDI Case Study resource 2025

Key Findings – Fixing the broken rung: supporting diversity in and on

“It’s not helpful to bring people in with a diverse mindset if you don’t harness the diversity – if the people who think differently don’t speak up in meeting[s] or aren’t asked. If you don’t use the diversity, you haven’t changed anything”

The broken rung is a metaphor that describes the barrier that women face in being promoted to managerial positions at a lower rate than men. The organisations we spoke to also identified specific grades in their businesses where there was an outpouring of women, or employees of certain ethnicities. While a lot of effort has historically been put into increasing the pipeline through more inclusive recruitment practices – that energy is wasted if the business is unable to retain the talent.


“So, my sense from quite early on was that there was a secret code as to how to get on. There were these folk that worked in the Treasury, had done certain things… they knew about ‘the velvet drainpipe’, as you hear it described. The way up and through. And they’d clearly done it, and they had a language to speak about it.” — Quote from Civil Service Report

Four actions you can take to support people from all backgrounds

  • Make the implicit explicit: Seek to understand the ‘rules’ to career progression in your organisation and communicate them to all your employees.

  • Remove bias: challenge yourself to see which rules may be based on unconscious biases and do what you can to change them

  • Establish clear career pathways based on skills and experience, with additional support for anyone who needs it or seeks it

  • Create development opportunities so more people can gain the skills required to progress.


Inspiration: https://www.bain.com/insights/how-clear-career-paths-strengthen-retention-and-diversity/