What a year it has been for diversity, equity and inclusion

Following the huge global focus on racial inequality last year, it is heartening to see how many more organisations are investing in DE&I – especially within our own industry.

Research from McKinsey & Co. (Diversity Wins report 2020) demonstrates the financial benefits of having diverse leadership teams. In 2015 organisations which had gender diverse teams were shown to be 15% more likely to outperform those organisations that didn’t. This rose to 25% in 2020.

Building diversity is short-lived without a solid bedrock of inclusion and equity but how does hybrid working impact the DE&I agenda?

How can hybrid working challenge the DE&I agenda?

With hybrid working we are not only changing the way we work but we are actually creating new demographics in the process – homeworkers, hybrid workers and office workers. We absolutely need to put measures in place to ensure, as leaders, we are creating the same sense of inclusion and belonging for our people regardless of where they choose to work. Will presenteeism start to creep back in as homeworkers are overlooked in talent management process? I sincerely hope not – but it’s certainly not something we should leave to chance. It’s important to ensure that hybrid working interventions are inclusion-led. We not only need to understand where people choose to work but also why.

At Kindred we have already created these new demographics in the most flexible way possible to account for shifting patterns as people get used to how they work best. We will include that data in our engagement and inclusion metrics and eventually in our talent data to ensure that we are identifying any inequity in the system.

What is the difference between equality and equity?

Equality is providing the same opportunities to everyone. If the last 12 months has shown us anything – not everyone is starting in the same place. So, equity is about identifying where groups may be at a disadvantage in the system and creating interventions to redress the balance.

At Kindred we have been working with our talent management processes for the last two years to identify areas of inequity and build interventions to enable our female talent to move up the ladder at Kindred. We will continue to build inclusive principles across our hybrid working approach and are working with some of the best experts to embed our inclusive leadership capabilities.

What are the positive impacts of hybrid working on the DE&I agenda?

Aside from the obvious impacts on the employee experience through creating choice for people as to where and how they work best, it is also important to note that a good hybrid model can actually impact the DE&I agenda extremely positively. Here are just three ways I believe it can help:

• It can create more opportunities to build equity within the organisation. Those who may choose to work remotely may do so because: the environment lends itself to them feeling more effective, be that from a neuro-diversity perspective or a simple preference; that they can distribute childcare responsibilities more easily with their spouses; that they can simply spend more quality time at home with their families.
• Organisations can also potentially attract a wider talent pool. Organisations which offer fully remote working can cast the net wider when considering talent without the need for a daily commute into the office. Several recent surveys have shown that more female candidates are attached to fully remote roles than men.
• It builds inclusive leadership capability – if done right! Organisations that take an inclusion-led approach will foster a culture of inclusive leadership capability.

We are still very much ‘on the journey’ at Kindred and working out what our hybrid future looks like but by taking a principles and inclusion-led approach and monitoring these new demographics early on in our engagement and inclusion cycles, we are confident we can work iteratively to navigate this new landscape together with our teams.

Suzi Read is head of talent development for Kindred Group, where she oversees learning and development; diversity, equity and inclusion; employee engagement and talent management. Read has 17 years’ experience in HR across several industries where her main specialism has been setting up and leading learning, recruitment and talent functions. She has worked in the gambling industry for a total of eight years in both land-based and igaming. Prior to moving into HR she worked in commercial sales in the financial services sector.