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:
- For the private equity firm–they realised that “we invest in portfolio companies that are more and more diverse – we can’t take investment decisions without ensuring we have those diverse perspectives at the table.”
- One IHPN member realised, it needed to shift mindset to think of the impact on the organisation rather than the individual when considering individual instances or issues.
- The Professional Cricketers’ Association had to tap into the importance of team and team cohesion and how that filters through into results on the pitch, to engage its audience in why this is so critical.
- A medium size law firm, identified a number of drivers that shaped their area of focus. Firstly, the war for talent. In a competitive recruitment market, they find candidates are interested in this. They have identified that at early talent stage, for example at graduate fairs, prospective applicants are particularly interested in this and will ask lots of questions. “There are other law firms that pay more. People join us for our culture, flexibility, and approach.” This has combined with their leadership focus on doing responsible business, and the increasing emphasis on these factors from their customers (e.g. government, public sector, NHS, housing). It has clearly paid off, since 2019 there’s been a 15% increase in the number of female partners. 1 in 5 of their staff have flexible working and this is across all staff, not just women with caring responsibilities. 22% of partners work flexibly too so this flows through all levels of the organisation.
“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.
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.
- Some organisations find it powerful to coalesce around a specific award or designation – e.g. working together to achieve BCorp status, ISO certification, become an Autism Inclusive Employer or to be featured on lists of best employers. In that case, you may find it best to find a framework or external route of adjudication that you can unite to work towards. Other organisations find issues land best via events, others are heavily staff and community led and driven. Organisations are incredibly diverse themselves and it is not the case that in all situations a decree from HR is going to be the best approach.
- For example, we spoke to some organisations that had introduced employee resource groups or networks but found no one wanted to participate – in that situation it’s probably worth considering if ERGs are the right way to approach the problem for your organisation. More on this here
- A number of organisations highlighted that where they don’t have the diversity internally, they can create a platform for others to support the conversation. For example one construction firm brought in a programme of speakers to their Women’s ERG. The Private Equity firm hosted Dame Kelly Holmes OBE during inclusion week to speak about her experience of coming out.
Making a business case that will resonate with your people
Different people are motivated by different things. Below are three examples for what might motivate your employees:
Remember though, your employees are diverse when it comes to their motivators too, so one approach likely won’t fit all.
- 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.
As with the actual actions you take, it’s important to use data. You can try different approaches to get your people on board and then measure engagement with initiatives following the different tactics to see which one generates the most buy-in and for which populations. You can then tailor your approach further for your audience.