Women on Boards
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Corporate Equity, Diversity & Inclusion

Shifting the dial on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

Our work on Corporate EDI dovetails with our non-executive WB Directors network, where we support board members to understand why EDI is a board-level issue and how to tackle it in the boardroom.

Our six point plan

Our brief report outlines the key factors you need to create an impactful EDI strategy.

Your Equity, Diversity and Inclusion strategy needs to be looked at as a major change programme. Under-representation of many groups, with a culture that enables it, is the current ‘business as usual’ in many organisations.

This is about bottom-line performance and the long-term competitiveness of the organisation, not just box ticking and ‘being nice’. The good news is that it is possible to shift the dial on EDI reasonably quickly.

We have identified six key factors in making an impactful change on EDI. These are:

  1. Start at the top
  2. Define and lead your change programme
  3. Invest in inclusion, upskill your leaders
  4. Understand your data
  5. Support diverse ambition
  6. Remove the blocks to diversity
Download our Six Point Plan report

WB Directors has a decade of experience in supporting organisations of all types to nurture their diverse talent, as part of their wider EDI strategy. We also support many of our Corporate Partners with our advisory services, to maximise their effectiveness. Our input is based on a deep knowledge of the research in this field, combined with our practical experience.

We have worked with boards and senior leadership to make a pragmatic business case for EDI, building consensus and debunking any concerns that EDI is at odds with meritocratic principles. We support EDI leaders to decide how to maximise impact from often limited resource allocations. We also work with organisations on specific projects, such as improving efficiency of their Employee Representation Groups and more.

Download our Six Point Plan report

driving change from the board

Why EDI is a board-level issue

The board have to own it. Every board member has got to understand how their company works, and people, diversity and inclusion is a huge chunk of that.
Fiona Daniel
FD&I and WB Directors Partner

Expertise from our network

Boards should have robust and consistent oversight of their organisation’s Equity, Diversity & Inclusion strategy. Here are just five questions you may wish to raise as a non-executive director:

  1. How is our ED&I performance helping or hindering our strategic priorities?
  2. Are we as a board getting regular updates on our Diversity & Inclusion strategy and progress against metrics? Are they the right ones to support our vision?
  3. What is our gender pay gap and ethnicity pay gap overall? How do they vary across divisions/departments? Let’s lead this agenda, not be limited by government reporting requirements.
  4. At which stage of our talent pipeline does our diversity drop off? Is this the same for gender, race, disability, LGBTQ and other under-represented groups? How effective are we in tackling it?
  5. Look around the table. Do we bring insight into our staff and customers backgrounds and perspectives? Do we have the expertise needed to support ED&I?