13 June

Culture Change for Inclusion: How to make it work?

“Inclusion is not the opposite of exclusion, it’s about taking action”

Over 50 attendees from businesses across the City came together for our third Power of Inclusion seminar for 2019 to discuss how to create culture change for inclusion in the workplace. The breakfast was kindly hosted by Capgemini and focused on what inclusivity really means and what tangible actions organisations can take to ensure everyone can bring their whole selves to work, looking at fostering behaviours that create culture change, to the importance of a evidence-based approach and the integral role of inclusive leadership.

Melanie Richards CBE, Deputy Chair and Board Member of KPMG UK chaired the breakfast and shared her reflections on the move from diversity to inclusion within organisations as a positive step forward.

Paul Margetts, Managing Director of Capgemini welcomed the audience and shared the 7 values that underpin Capgemini’s success as a leading responsible company, which include honesty, boldness, trust, freedom, fun, modesty, and team spirit. Frances Duffy, Vice President UK HR Director at Capgemini shared how their Active Inclusion brand had been created and how this was contributing to creating an inclusive culture within Capgemini, moving from awareness to action. Watch their Active Inclusion video here.

Emma Codd, Partner and Global Special Advisor on Respect and Inclusion for Deloitte shared Deloitte’s cross-organisational journey to change behaviour within the workplace to create an inclusive culture, from introducing respect and inclusion advisors to mandatory inclusive leadership training for all Partners and Senior managers. Emma highlighted that is is a long journey and change can feel slow but it is possible, with 41% of partner promotes at Deloitte this year are women, which is up from 13% in 2014.

Roger Kline, Research Fellow at Middlesex University Business School shared his experience of developing a radically new approach within the NHS to address race and disability discrimination. He highlighted that his research as part of the NHS Workforce Race Equality standard had highlighted the importance of tackling inclusion, diversity and equality, not solely for staff within the NHS, the largest UK employer, but also for patient care across the NHS. Roger highlightd the importance of having a data driven approach to inform the development of evidenced interventions and were they were likely to work, which has seen significant improvements within the NHS with an increased proportion of BAME staff in more senior grades and at Board level. 

Manisha Mehrotra, Head of Diversity & Inclusion EMEA at Bloomberg highlighted that a sense of belonging was integral to Bloomberg’s approach to inclusion, and that diversity was a fundamental aspect of this that shouldn’t be overlooked. Manisha shared Bloomberg’s work across the organisation, introducing inclusion dialogues to tackle challenging topics and inspire action, and highlighted the importance of Inclusive leadership in making an inclusive culture a reality. Bloomberg are introducing inclusion metrics to performance reviews of all leaders within the organisation to further push forward this agenda. 

A lively panel session followed to wrap up a great morning, which provided organisations in the room with practical take-aways from our speakers as to how to create culture change for inclusion within their own workplaces.