What DEI is and isn't
Over the past 6 years, I’ve seen major shifts in how Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is treated.
I’ve seen a lot of energy, investment and activity by employers on DE&I because they knew they had to do something about it but unclear why. This was especially the case during and after the first lockdown.
Fast forward 6 years on, how much has really changed?
Much of the focus was on surface level interventions: external speakers sharing their lived experiences, lunch and learns to rolling out programmes or one-off training on unconscious bias, anti-racism and other topics. These were often treated as the solution to complex workplace challenges.
But what difference have these interventions really made?
As an external DE&I Consultant I’ve been fortunate to have worked with a wide range of businesses of different sizes, sectors and at different stages of their inclusion journey.
I’ve facilitated workshops, led listening sessions and supported leadership teams.
And what still stands out is DE&I is often seen as:
• Something we celebrate when a key event in the calendar comes round like Black History Month or International Women’s Day
• One-off training on topics like unconscious bias or allyship
• Something we talk about when there’s an important update in a town hall briefing
• When we get asked to share our diversity data in our annual employee engagement survey
• Hiring based on someone’s race or gender
There are many more, but the pattern is clear.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is not about awareness days, plug and play or one-off initiatives.
It’s about how it is embedded into the day to day operations of a business: the systems, processes and behaviours that shape peoples’ everyday experiences at work.
This is what it is about:
1. Inclusion by Design
Decisions are applied in a fair, transparent and consistent way. from how and who we hire to onboarding to who gets promoted and how we reward performance. That means things like standardising interview questions, using more inclusive person criteria, welcoming onboarding experience to ensuring criteria around promotion and performance are fair and robust. This also means building flexibility into how jobs are designed to how we plan for and provide reasonable adjustments for candidates and employees to making employee benefits inclusive and more.
2. Fostering a safe, respectful and inclusive workplace
Employees need to feel safe, heard, and protected. That means having clear processes and making it easy to report a concern. It’s about ensuring employees know how to report and feel safe to raise a concern. And leaders and managers role have the capability and confidence to respond to those concerns in a sensitive and considerate way.
And it is also about challenging the wrong behaviours, having difficult conversations and leading by example.
Lastly but most importantly, it' means providing different ways employees can feedback, feel their viewpoints are being listened and acted on.
3. Strong foundations
Your people policies and practices are only as effective if they are applied consistently. This is where many organisations struggle not because the policies exist, but how they are applied.
That means regularly communicating on key people policies, what is and isn’t acceptable behaviour and equipping managers with the tools to identify and respond to poor behaviour.
It also means regularly reviewing data to spot the gaps in your people policies and practices and assessing what needs improving.
4. Everyday acts of inclusion
Small, consistent steps matter.
Overtime, these can add up to have a big impact.
Showing genuine interest, active listening, and inviting and acknowledging different perspectives.
These shape peoples’ day to day experiences at work.
But these can only be effective if supported by the right systems, policies and expectations.
DE&I shouldn’t be seen as a side project or after thought.
It’s critical to how decisions are made, how people are treated and how organisations hold themselves to account.
If this sounds familiar, it maybe because DE&I is still seen as a side project in your organisation rather than embedded into how things actually work.
That’s exactly what my Inclusion Health Check is designed to address.
It’s a structured diagnostic that reviews your people policies, processes, data and employee experience to understand how inclusion is currently showing up in practice — and where it isn’t.
You get a clear, honest picture of where DE&I is working well, where it’s inconsistent, and where it’s being treated as activity rather than infrastructure.
More importantly, you leave with a prioritised, practical roadmap to embed inclusion into the day-to-day running of your organisation — so it becomes business-critical, not a side project.
I also offer a range of Inclusion Health Check options to suit different organisations, budgets and stages of maturity, so support can be tailored to where ever you are on your journey.
