What will be the EDI focuses of 2025?
Equity, diversity and inclusion is an ever-evolving field. Approaches to EDI in 2020 are not as effective as they were last year. The expectations on us to create inclusive working environments is every increasing, and the challenges are constantly changing.
Last year, we said the focuses would be:
Leadership accountability
The intersection between EDI and environmental sustainability
A broadening in the understanding of how different identities experience discrimination
Dealing with polarisation
Challenging the weaponisation of the term ‘woke’
A shift in how ‘training’ takes place, moving towards conversations rather than passive training.
To a large degree, much of our work reflected these predictions, especially the higher expectations on leaders.
An anticipatory approach to legislation
There has already been legislation change around the responsibility of employers to be anticipatory and protect employees from sexual harassment. With more changes to legislation on the horizon, we expect organisations to try and get ahead of the changes by reflecting on their current situation and identify where changes may need to be made.
As of autumn 2024, there has been an expectation to protect employees from sexual harassment. As we anticipated last year, there is an increasing expectation on employers to create safe spaces. This isn’t set to change, and we anticipate employees having the expectation of safety in the workplace regardless of their identity. It is likely that the legislation on sexual harassment will act as a springboard for further expectations. It is really important to notice that the behaviours which are unacceptable include ‘banter’, ‘jokes’, pranks’. The bar for unacceptable behaviour is, therefore, now very low. This means we may need to anticipate how we adjust and what the consequences of these expectations may be for people, culture and HR professionals, as well as how we support line managers and senior leaders to model behaviours and address concerns properly.
In the pipeline, is the requirement to report on ethnicity and disability pay gaps. This will only be mandatory for those who employ more than 250 people, but people will be watching whether or not organisations take the opportunity to report voluntarily if they don’t meet the requirements to do so, in the same way organisations have for gender pay gap reporting.
The Labour government has a manifesto commitment to creating a Race Equality Act which will also seek to protect people from Jewish and Islamic hate. So, far from the concept of racism and antiracism becoming less of a focus, we can expect a much higher level of accountability in the future.
Getting a clear understanding of where we are now will allow organisations to identify when and how changes should be made.
Representation
There is a continuing and increasing expectation from those who have identities which have been marginalised to make their organisations reflective of the world we live in and local communities. This is particularly the case for those organisations who made commitments after 2020 and the murder of George Floyd to develop antiracist practices and create organisations which are proportionately representative across all levels of leadership.
The proposed Race Equality Act Is likely to be anticipatory with a high level of accountability around the systems and processes which facilitate racism and discrimination.
Senior leadership which is reflective of the representation of people with global majority heritage and those who are disabled for example, is going to need a strategic and mindful approach if it is going to be anything more than tokenism. Therefore, there is going to need to be careful attention to career pipelines and opportunities which will enable those who have been historically excluded to access leadership.
Collaboration and networking
With significant financial challenges for individuals and businesses of all kinds, handing over huge amounts of cash to consultants is not going to be possible for many organisations.
The use of networking and collaboration with peers and employee resource groups will be a useful way of leveraging and driving EDI initiatives in a cost effective manner.
Data and measurability
One potential bi-product of legislation is likely to be measurability. We predict that the days of creating an action plan and providing training and hoping for the best are ebbing away. Being able to demonstrate a return on investment and being transparent about progress, or lack thereof, is going to be an important feature of future EDI work.
Up to now, there has been a significant reliance on net promoter scores and perhaps too much reliance on gut instinct. Going forward, we can expect people to focus on data both quantitative and qualitative which is measured regularly to identify what we are doing well and what new areas for development are emerging.
How can we help?
We have always ensured that clients have a measurable strategy which is informed by a proper data-gathering process. Our partnerships bring together data gathering, strategic plan creation and accountability partnership meetings.
Find out more about our most popular way of working with organisations here.
On the horizon, we are broadening out our offers including the creation of Inclusion Impact discussions where participants will be able to work collaboratively with a network of peers on their EDI challenges.
