In 2021, we started as two employees who realised the need for an improvement in EDI throughout the business. As a result, the Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Special Project Focus Group (EDI SPFG) was born. We started off as a small group of passionate individuals that volunteered to work on EDI on top of our day jobs. In the last 5 years it has grown to be, at its largest, a group of 22 employees from all areas of the business, from office to field-based staff across the UK.
Our vision is “to have a culture where everyone feels respected, valued and empowered to bring their authentic selves to work. By cultivating an inclusive workplace, we commit to enriching every life we touch.”
Initially, we focused on raising organisational awareness by delivering communication campaigns and education to strengthen employee’s understanding of EDI. This included ‘awareness spotlights’, which were regular monthly communications on important topics, such as International Women’s Day, Pride Month, Black History Month, and Ramadan. The spotlights provided information to employees on the event, importance, and actions they could take to support the cause. Workstreams were set up to drive change in key areas; these have evolved over the years in line with priorities and advancements, but have included Recruitment & Attraction, Accreditations and Assessments of EDI, People Metrics, Internal EDI Knowledge and more recently developing an EDI Strategy.
The Recruitment & Attraction workstream had notable success from the beginning, by strengthening recruitment practices to support inclusive hiring. The significant improvements were: reviewing job advert language to minimise gender-coded wording, removing formal qualifications and time-served experience on adverts to focus on skills and behaviours, offering 1st stage interviews via MS teams to support flexibility, especially for those with caring responsibilities, introducing structured interview templates to support non-bias decision-making, and ensuring salary ranges are posted on job adverts. Through these measures, we have been able to reduce our gender pay gap to 8.05% in 2026, which is considerably lower than the national average.
Over the last 5 years, our influence has grown by maintaining strong connectivity across the business, with regular representation at Board, Operational Management, and Employee Forum meetings, ensuring continuous dialogue with leaders, managers, and colleagues.
As this momentum grew, it became clear that the organisation required a clear EDI business strategy that put EDI at the core of the organisation. In 2025, we developed our very first 5-year strategy with a vision to 2030. By reviewing policies and practices, and combining experience and feedback from employees across the organisation, it ensured diverse perspectives from across roles and backgrounds were fully represented. The new strategy was proposed to the Board by the EDI SPFG at the end of 2025 and through a collaborative workshop it was formally agreed to launch in January 2026. The strategy introduced three core EDI objectives supported by five strategic pillars: Inclusive Leadership, Inclusive Workspace, Inclusive Business, Inclusive Culture, and Inclusive Measurement. Each pillar is owned by a member of the SPFG, with clearly defined short-, medium-, and long-term actions to drive progress. Our group began with no budget and no defined resources, but through teamwork, dedicated volunteered time and multiple board-level proposals it has secured a budget for 2026 to fulfil the first strategic year of actions.
In the last year, during the development of the strategy and since its launch, our team has undertaken multiple projects including: organising a comprehensive EDI audit of the whole business, EDI training for our Board and 80+managers in the business, annual mandatory EDI e-learning for all employees, and implementing a new demographic data collection system.
The impact of our group has been felt across the organisation, with improvements on our scoring in our latest employee engagement survey, showing that employees felt diversity is valued. It’s clear that because the EDI SPFG have championed and continue to work so diligently on improving the processes and practices within the business, that the employees have felt the workplace become a more diverse and inclusive environment.
From what began as a small group of individuals sharing a passion for shaping a diverse and inclusive workplace, we have grown from just communicating awareness to embedding inclusive values and practices backed by a board-approved strategy. Thanks to our team’s committed work over the last few years, the organisation has risen from 60th in the IT50 to 44th. The EDI SPFG have taken what was once a “nice-to-have” approach and engrained EDI as a core part of the business.
