EDI Case Study resource 2025

Key Findings – Specific actions that get done are more effective than big strategies that don’t

Takeaways

  • Specificity is key – what is the problem you are trying to solve and the actions that will have a direct impact on that?

  • Take a business focused ‘problem solving’ approach to increasing diversity and inclusion rather than seeing it a separate specialism.

  • Get on with it – set an achievable, priority goal and identify a set of actions that will make a difference (and measure if they do) – a lengthy EDI framework that takes years to develop and agree before any action takes place is not necessary.

“Start small – don’t overpromise – if you overpromise and underdeliver it seems like lip service – take your time and let it grow” – Medium size law firm

“Creating targets, or putting values on a wall are a great starting point only if they are followed up with action and practical options for leaders to take. If the follow up doesn’t happen, then it is worse than doing nothing at all!” – IHPN member.

One of our interviewees was a large global management consultancy with 5,000 employees globally. This includes around 2,000 in Europe, 1,500 in America, 1,500 in APAC and the Middle East.

The consultancy firm has shifted from a focus on equality and inclusion to one on culture and belonging. The company has a Director of Culture and Belonging who has a global remit, reporting into the CHRO and CPO. It was important to the leadership team that culture and belonging was not seen as a ‘just’ a function of HR.

Over the last 13 years at least, there has always been someone leading on EDI but the scope of the role has evolved and seniority has shifted, as the emphasis has increased. The consultancy has tried various formations, including seconding their own consultants and using external specialists, but has now developed a model that works well for them at the moment.

The challenge has been wanting someone to lead the work who has credibility at the most senior level, as well as strategic leadership skills, given the importance of the issue. Yet, this can often mean that the EDI progress stays at the strategic/theoretical level with plans and frameworks that fail to get translated into delivery. You need a rare combination of qualities – senior enough to challenge and think strategically but willing to get stuck in on implementing the solutions too.

The current Director of Culture and Belonging is able to do just that. She focuses on identifying business problems and opportunities, problem-solving them, learning from reality and implementing actual solutions to specific issues. Some specific examples included:

  • Identifying the challenge of people being reluctant to raise issues to HR. This was a combination of the individual being either concerned that there would be repercussions for the person they were reporting or being concerned that nothing would happen. They developed an ‘internal ombudsman’ programme where there are ambassadors across the business that you can reach out to confidentially with no repercussions. The role is signposting, listening and guiding on escalation if needed – often it is a listening service. The reports are anonymous, but the ambassadors are able to report back on themes of what they are hearing to support the business’ understanding.

  • Specific changes to the parental return policy – including designed to support new parents back into the workplace. This includes parents getting reintegration days for the first eight weeks back – working 80% of their hours on 100% pay, so one day per week to adjust and help find the balance. This was supported by an ‘à la carte’ approach to supporting new parents based on the awareness that everyone’s situation is different and their preferences reflecting that. There are significant cultural differences in a global business, for example some parents have significant family support, others live an ex-pat life with no support. Some individuals would appreciate an internal secondment to transition back to work, others would not want to lose out on the consultancy experience by doing so. By taking a flexible approach focused on supporting parents back into work, the company is able to offer the parents what they really need rather than a rigid list of benefits.


Delivery of the EDI strategy was a challenge also shared by a large NHS professional regulatory body (1000 employees, budget £100m). Faced with increasing external pressure after a series of challenging external reports, the organisation reflected on what was needed – and determined it wasn’t another strategy or another plan! They needed to do the things they’d already identified / committed to properly.

“We are ambitious for change, but are we actually applying our principles in recruitment in an incredibly challenging recruitment setting?” When it comes down to the hardest-to-recruit-for roles, the organisation considered whether it was recruiting individuals who did not portray an inclusive approach in the interview, just to get critical roles filled. In the same way, the team realised it wasn’t applying reasonable adjustments well enough – so they implemented a back-to-basics programme focused on one department to begin with. The plan initially included too many chunky things – no organisation can deliver 80 items off one action plan simultaneously – there needed to be a cross-directorate leadership group to track the actions and hold the organisation to account for delivery.

“Sometimes it feels easier to think of another 80 ideas than to follow through properly on the ideas we already have”

Evelina Women and Children’s Hospital in London, were seeking to understand why 71% of their staff were from the global majority at bands 2-4 but this reduced to 60% at the more senior bands 5-8. One aspect of this was to understand the interplay between flexibility and diversity. They did a deep dive to understand whether there was any racial bias in their flexible working approach. They combined data from the formal flexible working requests, ‘informal’ flexible working (captured via a survey), and focus groups (virtual and in person). The data very clearly showed that Asian staff were four times more likely to have a flexible working request refused in some services, and black staff were three times more likely to be refused in other services. After a significant push on building awareness and understanding, and challenging assumptions, the average chance of Asian staff having their flexible working request approved increased from 60% to 86% in under 9 months. Through the FlexEvelina programme, they have focused on building the awareness that everyone needs a degree of flexibility. They have been focusing on progression along the Timewise flexibility maturity curve (below) – from tolerating requests to welcoming them. There is still some way to go to build a culture of encouraging requests.

IHPN member, EMS Healthcare (100 staff, turnover £10-20m) is based in an area where there is limited ethnic diversity in the local area – so setting a specific target would not make sense for them. Instead they have focused on where they are recruiting from, and using data to understand that many of their staff were travelling from outside of the local area. They have now focused on engaging locally, building a community presence to create job opportunities for the local area, increasing the socio-economic diversity of the workforce. Since they focused on this 5-10% of colleagues in that location are able to walk to work. Furthermore, for their dispersed teams operating in very different locations, they have focused on ensuring each local team reflects the diversity of the community it serves – using HR for visibility. Focused on ‘average’ numbers across the organisation would not give a helpful picture and would disguise the opportunity to make progress here.

Key is also ensuring any plans you do have, include some flexibility to react to opportunities and shifting priorities. As the Mining Remediation Authority found “We made a three year plan but the world changed. We were committed to delivering our plan so we saw it through but we were learning and changing throughout and it would have been helpful to have more flexibility – this time we will set our four over-arching priorities for the period and then have a one year plan at a time to allow flexibility.”

Following through on the people issues was a key factor for one IHPN member (~200 staff, £20m) , who realised that the most important thing was to challenge unacceptable behaviours. The company noted how if you visibly allow bad behaviour, it can really set you back:

“One of the most difficult things is that just because someone is working the hardest and putting in the hours, if they are behaving inappropriately, that’s not ok. It’s not what you do, it’s how you do it.”

Ultimately, if the people get it, there is no need for reams of paperwork to explain the rationale and approach – if the people don’t get it, the paperwork won’t help them get there. 

Useful resource: A case study on flexibility for nursing at UCLH from Timewise.

Three ways to choose which actions to focus on first

  • The RICE framework – think about your project in terms of reach, impact, confidence and effort. There is also a formula to get a ‘score’ for each action to help you decide.

  • The Effort x Impact Matrix – evaluate projects based on how much effort they’d require and how much impact they could achieve. This helps you identify quick wins and major projects, as well as what would merely be a ‘fill-in’ or thankless task.

  • The MoSCoW Method – this method divides actions into ‘must haves’ (anything absolutely non-negotiable), ‘should haves’ (important initiatives that aren’t absolutely vital), ‘could haves’ (initiatives that would be nice to have, but would have negligible impact if not done), and ‘will not haves’ (actions that are not a priority right now).