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.
- As the Head of HR Operations at a large global management consultancy reflected: “We hire 50/50 gender wise, but we are not 50/50 by Partnership level. There is a huge attrition in consulting generally, but we can look at the data and identify specific issues – at our first drop off point about 5-6 years into the business, we have particular issues with losing certain groups, including women everywhere, and Asian Americans in the US. We have dug into this and identified specific solutions including the need for more role modelling – people like me in roles I can see myself working towards, and a focus on how we can ensure we are as family friendly as possible (in a naturally family-unfriendly business model).”
- As the Learning & Development Manager at a medium size Private Equity firm reflected – “We need to focus on ‘not just in but on.’ We have a 50/50 gender balance at graduate intake, so we start from a good base. We have needed to focus on the crucial points of promotion and progression and understand what might be preventing women from climbing that ladder. This has led to a mutual mentoring programme – neither classic or reverse mentoring but conversations that work both ways. We learned that if you pair someone too senior with someone too junior, it feels ‘too distant’ and [we] have had far more success with grades that are closer together – it is easier to relate to each other and more relevant.”
- A fascinating study by the civil service which included 100 hours of interviews and data from 300,000 respondents highlighted the challenges of progression within the civil service for individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds. The research highlighted that those from more privileged backgrounds knew the ‘rules’ to getting promoted, and had the right style and networking skills to progress. “The right accent and a ‘studied neutrality’ seem to win through at every stage of their career. Even at the lower end of the profession, progress is thwarted for those who don’t know the rules.” This also highlighted the value of shared interests and backgrounds in building rapport with seniors – factors which equally play a role when it comes to gender and cultural differences.
“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/