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Do you need more support for your inclusive culture to thrive?
At Inclusive Employers, we are committed to helping businesses build and nurture inclusive cultures. One of our success stories is our collaboration with Leidos, a global leader in technology, science, and engineering. In 2020, Leidos added ‘Inclusion’ as a core value to their business, but the journey to make this value a reality required more than a declaration.
Leidos UK began by benchmarking their progress with our Inclusive Employers Standard and achieved Bronze status in 2022. With guidance from their Account Manager at Inclusive Employers, they set out to address gaps in employee data and enhance inclusion efforts across the board. The result? A series of incredible initiatives:
- A neurodiversity awareness campaign that included workshops, peer support groups, and internal blogs to foster understanding.
- Increased employee participation in demographic data collection, allowing Leidos to make informed, data-driven decisions.
- A shift toward a more open and transparent workplace culture, where employees feel empowered to share their stories.
Leidos’ recent progression to Silver in 2024 is a testament to their hard work, supported every step of the way by Inclusive Employers.
“Having Inclusive Employers there to workshop some of the trickiest questions and check our responses was so beneficial. This wouldn’t have happened the way it did without Inclusive Employers; we feel very lucky to have you!” Fiona Keady, UK Inclusion and Diversity Lead at Leidos
Read the full story below to discover how inclusion can transform your workplace.
The challenge
In January 2020 Leidos global added ‘inclusion’ to its corporate values, visibly committing to inclusion across the business and kickstarting focus on inclusion across the global business. Understanding what true inclusion meant, however, was still limited. “People thought they knew what it meant, but the reality was different.”
Leidos wanted to make progress, so Fiona was tasked with learning more about what support was on offer.
“We decided by December 2021 to apply for the Inclusive Employer Standard. We felt like that was a good way to get a benchmark of where we were and then to use the feedback to show us where to go next. So we applied for that December 2021 and then we got the results of that in March 22. We achieved bronze at that first attempt. We were really delighted; we’d only really been going for a year. We achieved that bronze standard and then through chatting with Inclusive Employers, decided it made sense to embark on full membership. We needed more support and more regular contact and a way to access high quality resources more regularly.”
“There’s not like an inclusion checklist, you know, do these 10 things and you’re sorted, it is it’s constantly evolving. Having that support and reassurance that we’re going in the right direction is so important”
The solution
With the detailed report from the Inclusive Employers Standard submission and support from their Inclusive Employers Membership, Leidos began to make changes. They started with data. At the time, their workplace demographic data had significant gaps, meaning they couldn’t make data-led decisions or measure progress. Employees weren’t engaged with data collection efforts “there was a lot of suspicion, I think. Why does my employer need to know this information? This is so personal.” With support from their Inclusive Employers account manager they took steps to educate their employees on why data collection is so vital and, crucially, began to see disclosure rates increasing. “we’ve done a lot of work in with support from your side. We’ve done a lot of work over the past couple of years to try and reassure people and we’ve done things like updated our data policy that’s connected. We created an infographic that outlined some of the main reasons why this data is important.
We tried to make it easier for people how to update their data, because they just all they need to do is go into their profile on Workday. There’s now a monthly alert that goes out and just to remind people that’s missing, like there’s no obligation to provide it, but we would really love if you could provide it, and here’s why”
As the inclusion worked progressed with Inclusive Employers support and guidance, Fiona noticed more employees and line managers asking for support with neurodiversity. Fiona developed Neurodiversity (ND) Awareness training with IE. It was a collaborative process of developing the content, running ‘train the trainer’ sessions and supporting 30 people across the business with lived experience of Neurodiversity to deliver the training. “Emily was so impactful in reassuring us, like stabilizers on a bike, helping us get going.” So far 80+ employees have been through the training.
The training was just the start of significant activity around neurodiversity, including:
- A Toolkit – magazine format – about ND, different conditions, what resources are available.
- A senior leader colleague started an ADHD blog sharing his personal experience, leading to several colleagues coming forward who wanted to get assessed as a result
- A senior leader who is dyslexic – did a live Q&A about it
- Creating an ND support group on internal comms channels offering support, advice, intel and just a fun place to connect with other ND people “As an employer you don’t have an obligation to make connections but if you support and facilitate it you’re more likely to have engaged, thriving staff”
- A series of live chats with leaders called ‘This Is Me’ “typically there’ll be a senior leader and another colleague that have this live conversation about times where they’ve either felt vulnerable or made mistakes or overcome an obstacle. So far some of the topics have been like imposter syndrome. The power of failure, breaking through assumptions, succeeding against the odds” The talks are popular, with lively Q&A sessions afterwards where other colleagues often share their own stories of the theme. Fiona felt empowered by her IE account manager to package the talks as a series “It was inclusive employers advice that helped us to package it up like that and to go forward with it.”
Momentum continued to grow: demographic data disclosure rates continued to rise, and more colleagues were connecting with inclusion across the business.
“This wouldn’t have happened the way it did without IE, we feel very lucky to have you”
“Inclusion isn’t a one and done thing; you can’t do these 10 things and be sorted. Inclusion maturity is constantly evolving. Having the support of Inclusive Employers means we are focused on aligning our inclusion work with our values and progressing our inclusion maturity.”
How membership has progressed inclusion
As momentum built, and with IE’s guidance, Leidos value of ‘inclusion’ began to embed into the whole business.
Some of the impact includes:
- Investment from Leidos in specific I&D roles – the promotion of the US Head of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion to Vice President, and in the UK the creation of Fiona’s full-time role
- A more transparent and open culture: colleagues are more comfortable disclosing or talking about different conditions. Employees will ask questions or positively challenge when something doesn’t feel right
“There’s been such a big change just in the way that people are happy to come forward and talk to us and open up those conversations.”
- The 7 ERGs were recently awarded a Leidos Global Award from the global CEO in recognition of their efforts. This has led to more colleagues joining ERGs as allies and supporters, even if they are not in the ERG’s under-represented group
- Recently some branding guidance around emails was communicated which didn’t mention using pronouns in email signatures. A large number of colleagues quickly responded to ensure pronouns could still be included in email signatures within the new guidelines. They were, but what Fiona noticed most was the swift action taken by so many staff, when not that long ago very few would have noticed: “I loved seeing that in a way because it was showing people then felt they could stand up for that.” “a few years ago, people were like, oh, my goodness, why would we put, like, gender pronouns in your e-mail signatures? We were starting from absolute basics and trying to educate people and like, why it’s important, whereas now it’s just like, why have you not even mentioned it?”
- Importantly, employee engagement metrics have shown that staff have felt tangible changes “if we look at our last global engagement survey in March, inclusion was one of the top three strength areas from the whole survey. People are more interested in and curious about inclusion”
Inclusive Employers’ expert support has helped very step of the way. Fiona personally has felt a significant impact from IE’s support. “In the beginning, we were a bit nervous in some cases, like how do we respond to this because we were building our own awareness at the same time. Having Inclusive Employers there to workshop some of those questions or help construct responses, partly to mitigate any risk, but also make sure that we were giving full proper answers and explanations back to people.”
IE’s flexibility of support has meant that other colleagues can access our expert insight. For instance, bringing members of the recruitment team into a monthly membership call “We’re responding to where they’re at and what they need. bringing them directly into the call means that then they can ask questions real time. We can workshop some of the challenges there and it’s like it’s much more efficient empowering for them.”
The ongoing support and advice has helped Fiona feel confident in her decisions: “the sense-checking, gives me confidence. I don’t have formal training in I&D – to have an independent expert to validate and say “you’re doing a decent job” is good for confidence”
Making a business impact
“I don’t know if without IE we would have been able to make as much impact as we have.”
Leidos has seen real impact from their Inclusive Employers membership. This ranges from cultural and behaviour shifts “All those employees coming forward to talk to us and share their stories, that for me is probably the biggest thing.” In a recent Inclusive Leader training session the trainer used shy and introvert interchangeably. They were positively challenged by an attendee who opened up a discussion around introversion and shyness. “That person then wrote a whole blog about their experience of being an introvert and why that’s different to being shy. We shared that out, and other colleagues came forward to say ‘this is so true, this resonates for me’.”
“It’s just constantly listening to employees and when they do come forward, making sure that we’re listening. But we’re also then helping them to do something about it.”
To win work “If you spoke to some of the leaders or bid team, achieving Silver in IES has helped us win work and keep work. That is only possible due to support from IES. Because it’s an independent benchmark we know it’s genuine. It has a tangible effect on our commercial business.”
What’s next
With Inclusive Employers’ expert support, Leidos UK wants to keep building on their success. Fiona will be collaborating more with her US and Australian colleagues. “I know we can leverage IE’s global support to help with that”.
Leidos will also be working on supporting their senior leaders, continuing to improve their data demographics and working on supplier diversity.
Ready to transform your inclusion strategy?
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