5 Reasons your EDI Strategy Gets Stuck and How to Move Forward
Updated 2nd September 2026
Keeping EDI progress moving in the right direction can be a challenge.
An EDI strategy can lose momentum even when an organisation remains committed to equity, diversity and inclusion. Progress commonly stalls because training has not been translated into action, accountability is unclear, the organisation lacks a process for reviewing its work, resistance is not addressed, or staff do not have enough capacity.
Organisations will sometimes reach out to us when they get stuck. When this happens, leaders and colleagues may feel frustrated, inadequate, angry or disappointed. They may be under pressure to explain why agreed actions have not been completed or why people’s experiences have not improved. This does not necessarily mean the organisation does not care. It often means the structure needed to sustain EDI implementation is missing.
In this article, we explore five common reasons EDI strategies get stuck, practical ways to regain momentum and how ongoing support can help organisations move beyond stop-start interventions.
Why do EDI strategies get stuck?
#1 Training wasn’t translated into action
Training is a significant and expensive investment. The cost will be due to the expertise in crafting learning and the skill to facilitate the session to a high standard. This requires qualifications, experience and talent. Good training shouldn’t be cheap.
You may have invested in antiracism training, unconscious bias training, LGBTQ+ awareness training and more. Providing the training was on the strategy, someone had told them that having the training was important. Maybe it was a committee, working group or steering group that insisted that staff and leaders had training on important topics. Maybe a consultant came and did an audit and said, ‘you need training on ‘these’ topics. The training was delivered and maybe the training was excellent.
However, people have too much confidence in what training can actually do. If no one told the organisation what to do with the training and or people thought the training would solve the issues the training sits in the past and has no impact. If we don’t turn learning into actions and then implement the actions, training is unlikely to have a sustained impact, and meaningful change becomes much more difficult.
As a result, progress on those important topics came to a halt.
#2 The EDI action plan lacks accountability and measurable outcomes
Maybe there is a document in the organisation which had some EDI related aims on it. Aims such as:
Increase racial representation across all levels of the organisation
People feel they belong
Implement inclusive recruitment strategies
The problem is that, without explaining how these aims will be achieved, implementation becomes extremely difficult. Key questions which should be included on the plan are:
How will you increase representation?
How will you measure belonging?
What recruitment strategies will be in place?
This is exacerbated where there isn’t an identified person or people to be responsible for making sure activities and actions happened. Other weaknesses in EDI strategies include no deadline, not stating who would support, not stating how we will know we are successful - what we expect to see, or how to measure success.
In these situations, where there is no accountability drift is inevitable. For example where there is no deadline, the action gets kicked down the road. Where there is no one named as the person responsible, no one picks it up and it gets left to hang in the air.
#3 There is no process for sustaining or reviewing progress
Sometimes organisations receive a strong strategy or action plan but are not adequately supported to maintain it. The initial project may produce clear actions, responsibilities and deadlines, yet leave no process for reviewing impact, responding to new information or deciding what comes next.
Effective external support should build an organisation’s confidence and internal capability. It should also help leaders establish a repeatable cycle of listening, planning, implementation, evaluation and review. Without that cycle, the completion of an action plan can become a cliff edge rather than the beginning of sustained organisational change.
#4 Resistance prevents organisational change
This factor is all too common.
You might be absolutely committed to this work and fully understand why it is essential to the longevity and success of your organisation, but you soon notice that other senior leaders and staff members do not.
You may even notice things that are said or done are contrary to the inclusive environment you are trying to create. They may be ableist, misogynist, racist, homophobic etc. You may find that troubling but do not know how to challenge it and how to move forward with people who are blocking your journey.
An organisation’s inclusion commitments are only credible when it is willing and able to respond to exclusionary behaviour, particularly when that behaviour comes from someone with influence or decision-making power.
#5 The organisation does not have enough capacity
Sometimes the issue is structural. You may be in an organisation where everyone is committed, everyone fully believes in the journey you have created towards an equitable, diverse and inclusive environment, but you don’t have the resources to move forward quickly enough or effectively enough.
Maybe you’ve had to make cuts to your people and to finances recently. Maybe you have a very small staff but work with lots of stakeholders, so whilst your organisation may be quite large, the number of people who can make change is very small. Read our blog on maintaining EDI work when capacity is stretched here.
How to restart a stalled EDI strategy
Much of the work we do with clients is very unique to their situation, their organisation, their previous work, their capacity. So, these tips here are not as refined and specific as they would be for clients, but here are a few tips that can help to get you moving.
#1 Revisit your previous work
If your training provider shared slides and follow up materials with you, go back to them. Maybe there are some suggestions in there that you have not implemented? Maybe there is something in there that you forgot about which you can now revisit and implement.
If you generated some data through listening or a survey, go back to that and see if there is anything there that still needs to be actioned or could be actioned in more depth now.
#2 Strengthen ownership, deadlines and measures
If you have struggled to move forward with an existing action plan, go back to it and make sure it is measurable, includes deadlines, includes people who are going to be responsible for making sure something happens (they don’t have to do it themselves, they are responsible for making it happen). Begin to act upon it making sure you schedule reviews.
#3 Move beyond introductory training
If you are in a position where you feel you’ve done a good deal of work and now need to move to the next level, now might be the time to move beyond introductory work.
That might mean adding some depth to introductory training you may have had. For example, if you covered antiracism in an hour for example, that was very surface level. In our experience, meaningful antiracism learning usually requires a series of sessions, structured reflection and opportunities to apply the learning. A one-hour introduction can begin a conversation, but it is unlikely to provide sufficient depth for organisational change.
If you have had a general introduction to EDI, maybe you need to delve more into the experiences of people with identities which experience exclusion. You can’t cover the way historical and societal exclusion manifests for huge groups of people in 60 minutes. Yes, this is about protected characteristics, but have you considered care leavers, prison leavers, class, accent and how identities intersect?
#4 Listen to colleagues and stakeholders again
Do some listening again. This period of being stuck might be a time to repeat a survey or invite people to a focus group to ask questions about what you have done which is making a positive impact, and what is still to improve. There are some challenges here for another blog, but it is very much worth taking the risk of asking questions, and hearing the answers. When you have identified the themes which come up for people working with you, turn those into new actions which includes clarity on how, when, who, what etc. and how you will know you are successful.
Collaboration is an important part of EDI work. Who can you collaborate with? Which other organisations are on a journey that you can connect with, share resources with and share thoughts with?
If you don’t already have an employee resource group, can you create one so you can work with the people in your organisation to keep things going? For more information about ERGs, you can read this blog
#5 Seek external support where it adds value
Knowing when to get external support is important. There is a huge amount of EDI work you can do which costs nothing and has huge impact, but sometimes you do need some external support. This might be because you lack knowledge about something and need someone with that knowledge to come and support. Getting the knowledge is an important part of getting unstuck.
Sometimes, you are not the right person to do something, and no one else in your organisation is either. Examples might be facilitating focus group conversations – sometimes an external partner will be able to get answers your colleagues wouldn’t want to share with you directly for a range of reasons.
Sometimes you need someone to come and evaluate the impact of your work so far to give you a steer on what has been impactful, and what hasn’t.
Sometimes you need someone else to convey difficult messages because you delivering those messages can put you in an impossible or risky situation, or you simply know that someone else will be able to do it better and respond better to unpredictable questions. Examples might be conversations with your Board or conversations with your SLT about resistance and fragility.
Build a more sustainable approach to EDI
Getting stuck does not mean your organisation has failed or that the commitment has disappeared. It may mean that your strategy needs stronger accountability, a clearer implementation process or access to support that can flex around your organisation’s capacity.
Spotlight Essentials is designed for organisations that want to move beyond one-off training and maintain meaningful EDI progress for the future.
Find out what is included in Spotlight Essentials If you are unsure whether the subscription is right for your organisation, you can also book a discovery call.
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About the author: Shonagh Reid is the Director of Spotlight Inclusion and supports organisations to strengthen EDI strategy, governance, leadership and implementation. This article draws on recurring challenges identified through consultancy, training and facilitated work with organisational leaders.
