Diversity without the nonsense

Simon Fanshawe OBE, co-founder of Diversity by Design, argues that EDI needs to reset and return to its roots; he urges organisations to avoid ideology and focus on how diversity can support their aims.

Just for fun sometimes I tease clients by opening a session by saying, “I thought we’d spend the next two and a half hours exploring micro-aggressions on the intersection of the protected characteristics”. Their faces freeze in anticipatory agony.

No one talks like that in real life. It’s an impenetrable language invented by a group of people who want to give the impression that only they know what 'diversity' and 'inclusion' are.

I prefer to begin sessions with a far warmer quote: “It is hardly possible to overrate the value… of placing human beings in contact with persons dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar… Such communication has always been… one of the primary sources of progress”.

Who wrote that and when, I ask?

The answer is John Stuart Mill in Principles of Political Economy vol. 2, book 3, chapter 7, section 5. In 1846.

Finding difference, then using it for good

There is nothing new about the power of diversity. It is profoundly human. The only thing we have in common is that we’re all different. We can’t know each other. So, when we work together, we have to find each other’s difference – what you can bring and what I can bring. Then work out how we best combine our contrasting contributions to achieve the common goals of the organisation that employs us.

I mention this because diversity – or more accurately that damaged brand ‘EDI’ – has lost its way. We did some research in October 2024, before the US President took his flamethrower to it, which revealed, as we’d feared, that the practice of so much ‘EDI’ was divisive. It wasn’t being drawn from or communicated to the whole of an organisation’s people. Too often it was activist-driven and appealed to a relatively small group of enthusiasts.

This defeats its object. It is quite clear, despite all the noise about ‘EDI’, that most people support creating greater opportunity and fairness for people in, up and across their organisation. What they push back against is often the methods not the aims. So we need, to reclaim a phrase, to get back to basics.

To understand the relevance of diversity for your organisation, you need to start not with diversity but with your core goals. What and who is the organisation for? And then ask: why would diversity – and what kind of diversity – help you to achieve those aims? We don’t need a business case for diversity; we need a diversity case for your business.

For instance, we’ve been working with a number of fire and rescue services (FRS) recently to develop what we call diversity frameworks. FRS have three core functions: prevention, protection and response. The diversity in talent required to deliver each is different. Working on prevention, for instance, in, say, Birmingham, where many businesses are owned and run by an ethnically very diverse population, it will probably be sensible to make sure you’ve got officers out in the community who understand the cultural differences so they can communicate fire prevention effectively. But when it comes to response – putting out fires – that’s not the germane issue. Who cares who comes up the ladder to rescue you from the flames? But one of the discussions post-Grenfell has been about developing collective rather than solo leadership when dealing with an incident. That is about a combination of leadership styles – maybe a combination of men and women or longer serving leaders and newer ones.

So, each FRS develops its own approach to diversity to best deliver those core functions in the specific community they serve. With one FRS, we worked with a group drawn from across the service to develop a framework. They came up with four principles:

• Recognise and value differences – We acknowledge and value the many dimensions of diversity in our staff so we are equipped to understand the diversity of needs in the communities we serve.
• Promote inclusion – We are committed to creating a workplace where we all feel valued, treat each other respectfully and so can fully contribute our skills and experience to the service.
• Strive for fairness – We aim to identify and address any barriers that may disadvantage individuals or groups from applying, joining and thriving within our organisation. We will do our best to ensure that anyone, regardless of background, is able to make an informed decision based on a level playing field to apply for a role, and that no one is disadvantaged by the recruitment process. Those we attract must have the right aptitude, personal qualities, abilities, values, and skills - once employed, we will support them to thrive.
• Engage contribution – We will foster a culture where everyone can contribute, grow, and lead. The strength of our service lies in the contributions and ideas of our people. Embracing diversity of thought and experience will help us deliver a better service. Many of those we recruit today will become our future leaders. By drawing from the widest possible talent pool, we create opportunities for all and build a stronger future.

Under each sits a set of actions, outcomes and measures of success. It is determinedly practical and expressed in language – not mine, but from the staff in the service.

Back to the knitting

Our response to the pushback, the attacks over the last year on work on diversity, should not be to defend practices that have often divided staff rather than unified them. It should be to get diversity and inclusion ‘back to the knitting’ (as my granny used to say), to its core objective of increasing fairness and opportunity. And we should be doing that in ways that can be supported by your whole staff.

Avoid the ideological and focus on what will make a material change to the effectiveness of the talent you have, will recruit and should promote. Set goals, not targets, and use them not to straitjacket actions but to analyse and understand what is working and what is not. Don’t allow single viewpoints to dominate work on diversity. It’s called diversity for a reason, so embrace the reality of viewpoint diversity in your staff. And lead in such a way that your staff can combine their differences to collaborate at their best.

www.diversitybydesign.co.uk