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Engaging with inclusion: House of Lords case study

The Inclusive Employers Standard gives you a tool to assess how inclusive your organisation is, from top to bottom and cross department. We use the six pillars of inclusion: Engage; Equip; Empower; Embed; Evaluate and Evolve, to assess the breadth of employment activity across all strands of inclusion.

This case study highlights how the House of Lords, accredited Inclusive Employers Gold Standard, Engage their workforce on inclusion.

Pillar 1 – Engage

This pillar considers how organisations engage staff, at all levels, to ensure they have a good understanding and awareness of the organisation’s vision for diversity and inclusion.

It also looks at how they engage with staff so that the organisation has a good understanding of the employee experience from an inclusion perspective.

The questions in this pillar cover:

  • Diversity data collection methods;
  • The breadth of data collection;
  • Disclosure rates;
  • Inclusion communications;
  • Participation in external inclusion campaigns;
  • Methods for engaging with under-represented groups, and;
  • Employee staff surveys.

House of Lords: a strong record of communicating about inclusion to all staff

The House of Lords shares information on a range of inclusion and diversity topics, consistently throughout the year to all staff. They do this by:

  • They have a weekly email newsletter to all colleagues that includes information about upcoming campaigns and events. Inclusion activity features prominently within these newsletters and covers the launch of new initiatives, forthcoming events and celebrating successes;
  • They produce a monthly magazine which is both printed and released electronically to all staff and that includes a section on inclusion and diversity activities, as one of the four corporate priorities. As a corporate priority, any progress in relation to its inclusion plans is also included in the CEO’s quarterly reports to all staff;
  • Each staff network has its own newsletter and printed materials which are shared through the organisation’s communications channels;
  • Information about significant events, such as LGBT+ History Month or Ramadan is included on table talkers and other printed materials placed in communal areas, such as restaurants.  These include the I&D Team’s contact details and encourage colleagues to get in touch with suggestions for other events that they would like to see celebrated;
  • The House of Lords has an inclusion and diversity strategy and action plan entitled “Focus on Inclusion”, 2019 – 2021. They articulate the corporate vision for inclusion and diversity, going beyond the business case and making it relevant and real for colleagues at all levels of the organisation. The action plan outlines what success will look like at the end of 2021 and the shared and individual responsibilities to embed inclusion and diversity in everyday working. A review document “Two years on” was printed and shared at a launch event.  Both of these documents have been shared with all colleagues at the All Staff Meeting and are available by request or online.