How Inclusive Employers membership supported us to embed inclusion

3. Amplify your inclusion agenda

By choosing to prioritise inclusion Grant Thornton has hugely amplified its inclusion agenda, by expanding their I&D team and its reach:

“One of the earliest bits of advice we received from Inclusive Employers was to get our resource set up to deliver this properly. It’s taken a bit of time to get there, but it is where we have evolved to – we have more people involved and engaged.”

Jenn Barnett, Head of ESG and EDI

Her own role has developed from two days a week to full-time and the team has now expanded to having dedicated inclusion specialists and enabling secondees to work on each of the 5 strands of diversity.

Alongside additional resource, Grant Thornton’s inclusion and diversity progress includes:

• Treating inclusion and diversity as business critical and Fantastic buy-in and leadership  from the CEO and the Board.
• From 0-450 inclusion allies. Inclusive Employers supported the organisation to develop its allies programme and continue to support quarterly action learning webinars.
• Developed a reverse mentoring programme to support leadership education. This started small and has now greatly expanded, due to high levels of interest.
• Sponsorship to support ethnic minority colleagues to overcome internal and external barriers to progress.
• No. 3 on the Social Mobility Employer Index and within the top 10 employers for Working Families Index as well as a Gold Award from the Stonewall Index and a disability confident leader.
• Greater awareness about the work that needs to be done. The external pressures of the pandemic have galvanised the organisation to focus and accelerate its work on ethnicity and mental health.

4. Meet the business need

Jenn Barnett recognises that inclusion and diversity is in a completely different place to where it was ten years ago:

“… All of our clients are asking about it, about 90% of our bids ask us about it. It is imperative that we get it right. It is no longer just about the people and culture agenda, it is part of the business agenda, which is where we always wanted it to be.”

Advice for your inclusion journey

Grant Thornton has a strand-by-strand specific approach, to continue to address specific barriers and also focuses on intersectional, holistic and culturally inclusive practices that impact all diverse strands; for example work allocation, mentoring, people manager learning, talent acquisition, retention and development. An area they are really focusing on is culture. As Jenn says:

“If you create a culture where people feel like they belong and feel safe you can actually retain much more diverse talent through things like powerful and supported networks, employee resource groups and internal leadership support.” .  We are also trying to build our networks, employee resource groups and external support.”

She also recognises that inclusion and diversity:

“…can feel quite overwhelming, it’s complex and there is a lot to do.”

Her advice to other organisations on their inclusion journey includes:

“I feel very optimistic about that, we know we have got loads to do and it’s now foundational to everything that we do. It is about creating a culture where every single person feels that they belong. They feel safe to contribute, safe to challenge and if you can get people in a position where they feel safe to challenge you will get the best diversity of thought, productivity and it massively improves people’s mental health. Inclusion is all about being able to have different conversations in slightly different ways with different people, flexing style, understanding your impact, thinking about your own emotional intelligence.”

Thank you to Jenn for sharing your experience and insight with us.

To find out how we can work with you to embed inclusion into your culture and business agenda please get in touch. We look forward to hearing from you.

How to apply this learning to your Inclusive Employers membership

Our Director of Global Services, Matheus Carvalho, highlights key learning points from this case study that you can apply to your Inclusive Employers membership:

Work closely with your account manager

Work closely with your account manager to map out the different steps of your inclusion journey. Your account manager will be able to work out solutions and make recommendations that will allow you to see and experience tangible progress.

Measure your impact

As the saying goes “what gets measured, gets done”. Have success metrics to celebrate your achievements, successes and areas for development.

Integrate inclusion into your businesses objectives

Consider how your approach to inclusion can feel truly holistic and integrated into business objectives. For example, if you are delivering training to employees, consider how these are linked to personal and business goals, and how they move your inclusion objectives forward as opposed to being ‘one offs’. Your account manager can support you with this.

Maximise your resources for inclusion

Delivering on I&D is not one person’s job. Consider how you can make the business case for support across the business, and if your organisation is struggling for resources, consider how existing ones can be maximised so people are not doing it as ‘side job’ but it’s truly integrated into their roles.

Review your progress with our inclusion accreditation

The Inclusive Employers Standard is the perfect tool to help you measure progress and have the tools to create a pathway for the future. Has your organisation considered applying yet?

Next steps with Inclusive Employers

To find out how we can work with you to embed inclusion into your culture and business agenda please get in touch. We look forward to hearing from you.