EDI Case Study resource 2025

Key Findings – Work with, not against the organisation

Takeaways

  • Consider what your staff respond well to – are they driven by business goals? Being a friendly organisation? External recognition and tangible awards?

  • Do it in your own style – it shouldn’t feel forced or enforced. If you are a social organisation leverage that, if you have a well-read blog, use it.

  • Messenger is key. Peer-to-peer is powerful, generic and theoretical training rarely lands.

Donna Fraser OBE, a former athlete and now Director of People, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion for the Professional Cricketers’ Association (PCA), found that the way to make progress was to be led by what would work with the audience. She discovered that conversations and curiosity, listening to players, colleagues and peers had far more impact than traditional training, and she structured the ‘Learn Before Wicket’ (LBW) programme around this discovery.

  • The LBW programme, based on player feedback, is a series of prompted, open conversations around different topics that happens annually – it includes modules on inclusive language, unconscious bias, intersectionality, allyship, faith & religion, disability inclusion, LGBTQ+ inclusion and anti-discrimination.

  • This is not someone sitting at the front presenting content, but an open conversation prompted between peers, designed to support the building of team cohesion and performance.

  • One of the most powerful elements of this is that it is not delivered by the EDI team but by former and current cricket players – it is a peer-on-peer conversational approach, devolving accountability to the teams to generate their own ideas and solutions.

  • The next stage is to develop a ‘game’ around the conversation with the aim of building on the natural competitiveness of professional sportspeople to ultimately achieve more engagement.


Mirroring feedback from many of the other conversations, the PCA was open to trying, tweaking, learning, and trying again in the approach – rather than rolling out a fixed, rigid programme and sticking to it regardless of impact and engagement. The first few iterations of the approach changed things up a lot, as the team saw what landed, what didn’t, and was able respond to feedback from recipients and coaches about what was useful.

Many participants in the research mentioned the need to tap into what the organisation prioritises to help the ‘penny drop’ in terms of change. For example:

“When I started out I was more interested in do I get a company car, my daughter is more interested in the wellbeing offer and the EDI talent.”

  • Many organisations are already following regulations, frameworks or guidance – and in that situation it makes sense to weave an inclusive focus into the existing guidance rather than create something separate. The NHS fit and proper person’s test framework and the NHSE leadership competency framework do just this – weaving key aspects of culture, diversity, inclusion and building talent pipelines into those resources.

EMS Healthcare also highlighted the importance of reflecting the different perspectives of the workforce in any plans. “There’s no point me sitting here in the head office thinking of ideas for how to make a mobile nurse in Birmingham have a different experience of work. We have to understand our colleagues and our community.” This was also reflected by a large NHS Foundation Trust who had ensured that their steering group had representatives from all grades – otherwise they would be simply asking those women or individuals from ethnic minority backgrounds who had made it to senior leadership to assume what the barriers were for those who had not.

Linking to the theme of ‘do what works’, organisations need to find the confidence to approach EDI in their own way rather than seeing it as a fixed set of interventions that they need to roll out regardless of their own identity and culture.

Making a business case that will resonate with your people

  • Accomplishment – if your people are largely driven by wanting to achieve something, set a big goal that you can all work towards together like achieving a certification.

  • Fairness and friendliness – if your employees are more driven by doing the right thing, help them understand the ‘why’ behind all your DEI efforts and emphasise the difference made by any actions taken. For these organisations, maximizing focus on the culture of belonging will deliver the outcomes without enforcing targets or action plans.

  • Company or personal performance – finally, there are some people motivated by the impact of actions on the bottom line or organisational goal. Help them make the connection between DEI initiatives and their impact on company performance.