Names & Job titles of team members:
Becky Cund, head of people & culture
Claire Greenwood, ESG project manager – social Jane Saint, group HR director & ExCo sponsor for D&I
Plus 16 working group leads, and 60 LGBTQ+ allies and EDI mentors.
Please provide an overview of the work your team delivers:
Our EDI team leads discussions and policy change across our business and the wider industry, all whilst empowering the St. Modwen team to deliver superb strides in creating a culture of belonging where difference is valued and enabling our people to perform at their best and realise their full potential, professionally and personally.
Our team is small but mighty, comprising a core team of three, plus 16 working group leads and 60 LGBTQ+ allies and EDI mentors. EDI is just one strand of our teams’ role, but realising its critical importance across our workforce of c.800 people, and a wider industry of millions, we’ve worked tirelessly to be inspirational and experienced leaders who accelerate progress by introducing fresh energy, passion and best practice into what we do, whilst acting as vocal role models.
>From day one of our EDI journey, we’ve focused on engaging and influencing senior leaders, often with little experience and knowledge of EDI, ensuring they prioritised EDI as a critical business need – today, EDI is one of our six ‘responsible business’ pillars. Our drive and passion to propel our business and industry forward have enabled our senior leaders to realise the importance of advocacy, which led to the creation of our working groups and allies network. This community of EDI advocates are given a voice and the ability to enact change – armed with dedicated budgets to drive engagement across our calendar of campaigns. Our working group champions are self-nominated, representing diverse interests and lived experiences, including neurodiversity and disability.
To foster data-driven innovation, learning and continuous growth, we forged our strategic partnership with EDI consultancy, Brook Graham, to deliver drive and purpose, whilst holding ourselves accountable for making real change. Together, we assessed our business against its maturity matrix to develop an EDI strategy that aligns with our commercial ambitions. The EDI initiatives and programmes outlined below stem from our ability to translate metrics, research and trends into strategy, coupled with gathering intelligent and sensitive data, testimonials and understanding of the evolving issues our people face.
Today, Brook Graham views St. Modwen as an EDI success story, utilising our journey as a best practice example. Becky Cund has been invited to speak at their last two Global Equality Diversity
and Inclusion Conferences to share our journey on driving progress, whilst allowing them to utilise the training and EDI we developed together as a toolkit for others, regardless of their sector, business size and in-house resource.
With St. Modwen owned by Blackstone – the world’s largest alternative asset manager – Becky also sits on the D&I group of our portfolio companies chaired by Revantage, a fellow Blackstone portfolio company. After just her second meeting, Becky was approached by Blackstone and asked to present our EDI strategy to these portfolio companies, which resulted in two other group companies choosing Brook Graham as their external EDI partner. Becky also proudly acts as a sounding board to other Blackstone businesses that openly ask her questions about dealing with culturally sensitive topics to implementing new change policies and programmes.
Seeing is also believing, and we truly believe in the power of role models and the game-changing opportunities of practising what you preach. Becky, for example, recently took a period of adoption leave and, upon her return, penned an article on LinkedIn about her excitement to come back to work and her experiences away from the business, whilst dispelling the taboos of being a mum with a high flying career. Speaking openly to her network, not just at St. Modwen but across all disciplines and sectors, is vitally important, and this post received more than 1,500 impressions.
Please list any significant achievements made by your team since its inception:
Our work to ensure our business is diverse, inclusive and equal whilst tackling issues in today’s society is never done.
Our EDI strategy has three intertwining pillars:
1. A clear action plan and measurable targets
2. Visible leadership and an extended network of ambassadors
3. An unwavering focus on culture and engagement
Recent achievements include:
– An independent recruitment audit resulting in a raft of inclusive hiring improvements – developed in partnership with our resourcing partner, Morson – including fully inclusive job adverts, anonymous D&I questionnaires sent to all applicants at application stage and asking all candidates whether they require any reasonable adjustments ahead of interview. In addition, we rolled out two people interview panels, ensuring interviewer diversity whilst appointing interviewers across two different departments, who score independently to eradicate bias.
– EDI training during inductions, workshops for all employees, and specialist manager workshops outlines our EDI journey, aspirations and expectations, and how to avoid bias. Joiners can enrol as EDI champions from day one.
– We’re a ‘Ban the Box’ employer. Applicants are only asked about criminal convictions at the point of job offer, reducing exclusion.
– We’re signatories of the Armed Forces Covenant (recently awarded Silver from our previous Bronze accolade) and reviewed policies to ensure we’re forces-friendly. We have developed internal networks and external partnerships to support the armed forces community into employment, whilst also launching an armed forces working group.
– Achieved Bronze in MIND’s Workplace Wellbeing Index, and appointed a wellbeing consultant to support cultural shift, build healthy workplaces, and assist colleagues through change.
– Collaborated with Women into Construction and the HBF to support a nationwide Site Management initiative, offering females uniquely-funded programmes assisting with childcare and training costs.
– Supported the first REACH Next Generation summit, enabling female teens from the most deprived wards to hear inspirational role models, showcasing opportunities and raising aspirations.
2023 marked the third cohort of our Early Careers Programme, offering a further 20 permanent roles across all business units and broadening access into a range of entry level roles to move the dial towards more balanced representation. Together with our previous cohorts, we now use this pool of 60 individuals as a sounding board for underrepresented groups and to tap into the experiences of those first entering the world of work. Many of these mentoring partnerships from our first two cohorts are self-sustaining, with mentors and mentees continuing their journeys together post-programme. The results speak for themselves: 23% ethnic minority and 42% female representation across all Early Careers roles.
We recently reviewed our Supplier Charter to embed EDI values into supply chain onboarding practices, whilst also incorporating inclusion and accessibility checks into our site audits and health & safety monitoring framework, including accessibility of female WCs, appropriate provision for prayer and broader wellbeing needs, monitoring of inclusive signage and PPE etc. Just as we sought thought leaders and experts to develop our EDI strategy, we’ve shifted the dial to become an EDI role model ourselves. In doing so, we’ve begun sharing knowledge and EDI campaigns with our supply chain to support organisations of any size, regardless of budget and in-house expertise, in rolling out campaigns of change.
What impact has your team had on the organisation?
EDI is deep-rooted within St. Modwen. Championed at every level, we’ve a clear action plan aligned to the National Equality Standard, which sees us working to comply against rigorous competencies and multiple legally protected characteristics.
EDI is one of our six ‘responsible business’ pillars, which also covers net carbon reduction and environments. We’re focused on attracting and retaining the best, most diverse talent and creating a safe, inclusive environment where colleagues can bring their whole selves to work.
By 2025, we’ve clear and ambitious targets to achieve:
• 50% senior females
• Total workforce: 40% female and 14% ethnic minorities
• Early careers: 75% female and 50% ethnic minorities
• Continue to narrow our gender pay gap, which has already reduced by 20% since 2017
• Deliver EDI awareness training to 100% of our workforce, with regular top-up sessions
Fast forward to today, and our executive committee regularly endorse awareness campaigns and employee engagement initiatives, demonstrating commitment from the top. CEO, Sarwjit Sambhi, has hosted our Pride month guest speaker session and introduced our National Inclusion Week campaign.
Enabling senior leaders to realise the importance of advocacy also helped form our working groups and allies network. EDI advocates are given voices and the ability to enact change, and this growing army voluntarily champions topics of bias: Parents, Carers, Faith & Belief, Disability, Gender, Sexual Orientation, Health & Wellbeing, Menopause and more.
Company-wide EDI celebrations regularly occur, with 2022/23 events championing Pride, Carer’s Week, National Inclusion Week, Black History Month, International Women’s, Men’s and Non-Binary Day, to name but a few. Internal communication channels – intranet, Yammer, emails, videos, blogs, posters – promote activity and reach every employee. Pride, for example, recently included talks from members of our supply chain – VINCI and Taylor Woodrow – who shared their coming out stories, whilst discussing what their organisation did to proactively support them and how collectively we can create cultures to encourage others to do the same without prejudice or fear.
Our 2025 EDI targets are clear, and by the end of 2022, we met or exceeded all interim targets:
Gender Diversity – Total Workforce
2025 target: 60/40 M:F
2022 target: 62/38 M:F (ended 2022 on 60/40 M:F)
Ethnic Diversity – Total Workforce
2025 target: 14%
2022 target: 10% (ended 2022 with 12% ethnic minority representation)
Please provide an endorsing statement from someone who can support this nomination (Max. 500 words) Kieron O’Reilly of Pinsent Masons LLP, said: “St. Modwen was one of the first in their industry to take a holistic approach to develop their EDI strategy. St. Modwen actions from employee feedback, both positive and challenging, to create their EDI strategy. The challenging statements received by employees continue to be shared in all training materials as a reminder of why their work remains a priority and to hold themselves to continuous account.”
One St. Modwen colleague said: “I went to an external meeting and was wearing my lanyard, which had my LGBTQ+ sticker. After the meeting, someone came over to me, saying they’d spotted my sticker and wanted to share that they’d recently come out and how lovely it was to see visible support from someone outside their organisation.”
