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Lots of people ask us if it’s equity, inclusion (EDI) or diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) or some other combination in between.
What’s the difference, I hear you cry? According to More in Common’s Executive Director Luke Tryl, EDI is used more in the UK, while DEI is used more in the US. Tomato, tomato?
Acronyms aside, which I will use interchangeably in this piece, I have been soaking up the atmosphere over the last two weeks at the Labour and Conservative party conferences in Liverpool and Birmingham respectively. With ample train travel and the chance to escape the London bubble, I gladly took up the invitations from More in Common to join two panels that explored the current and previous government’s role in the EDI conversation.
Luke and his team recently launched ‘Finding a Balance’, a fascinating paper developed with the UCL Policy Lab. It looked at the reasons why people feel excluded from EDI and set out some vital statistics about how Britons feel. They found:
Half of Britons worry about saying the wrong thing and seven in ten say that people are made to feel stupid for not saying the right thing
EDI frames should avoid reinforcing ‘us vs them’ dynamics, pausing when introducing overarching concepts such as ‘privilege’
Showing how EDI benefits a range of groups — including those who experience class prejudice — is likely to build greater support
While nearly nine in ten think that free speech is one of the most important rights in the UK, and six in ten think it is under threat, they do not believe it is an unqualified right.
The public expects EDI work to start with treating employees and customers well, before engaging in external advocacy on other issues of concern.
With these statistics providing a shared set-up for each panel, the conversations were markedly different for each party and in each city.
EDI is central to hope and respect for Labour
At the Labour panel with Rachel Taylor MP, Parama Chaudhury from UCL and Tim Soutphommasane from the University of Oxford, we unpacked the reason EDI appears to be losing traction across sectors. One word: impact. Those who are investing in it want to know what the upturn will be, whether that’s in sales, relevance, or confidence levels within different teams and organisations. Many people in the audience were keen to hear about what’s working in different sectors and what they could adopt.
Across public, private, and third sectors we agreed — the principles that are needed for equity and inclusion are similar. That’s the understanding that culture and society are changing, and those working in organisations are forever needing to keep up to have a chance of staying ahead.
However, the application and context of different companies and demographics require nuance. The concepts of things like “privilege” aren’t working, purely because they don’t address the real feeling that sits beneath them. If anything, they exacerbate inequality where people don’t feel they have said privilege.
This is where those working in and around EDI need to accelerate their understanding and their offer — moving beyond standardised training that feels like a tick box — and that gains several eye rolls because it doesn’t hit the mark. Moving to meeting clients and society where they are in their view of the world.
This means challenging and integrating the core concepts of inclusion into existing systems and processes. For example, mapping the end-to-end customer experience journey, and understanding where and how different groups might be excluded or intentionally or unintentionally discriminated against within it. This also means using behavioural science and more sophisticated nudges that change how people operate, rather than bashing them around the head with broad awareness about microaggressions.
Interestingly, according to More in Common’s research, referring to lofty concepts such as ‘systems change’ can switch people off from EDI. Instead, it’s about creating equality of opportunity and of outcomes and fixing where and how different people may be held back.
While headlines emanating from the US might suggest we’re living in a post-EDI world and that no brand is safe from showing support publicly. The need for it here in the UK remains central to the direction of travel for the next five years. Sir Keir Starmer set out a platform of ‘respect’, speaking about “the bond of respect that can unite a country, bind us to the politics of national renewal”, and how — through service — his government will provide the country with hope once more.
The ability to respect others is exactly what EDI should be about — it’s about creating an understanding of the different groups that make up the country and making them work together cohesively. While this was the tone in the aftermath of the racist riots across the country over the summer, the underlying tension of people feeling the effects of racism across the UK still exists. Effective work in this space is about tackling the roots of where inequality lies, not just pruning the leaves through feel-good initiatives, awareness campaigns and sensationalist headlines.
For example, while we all want more gender balance in our workplaces and our homes, we’re still subject to politicians such as Kemi Badenoch claiming that maternity pay is ‘excessive’. Rolling news cycles that clumsily throw in lived experience. They don’t speak to facts and stats that inevitably end up on our LinkedIn feeds — partially because X/Twitter has become untenable for healthy discussion.
EDI has not been the Tories’ strong suit
This was the backdrop for the Conservative party conference, where More in Common asked: ‘Telling the Truth on Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion — where do the Tories go next?’, this time joined by former MP Jackie Doyle-Price, Joanne Cash of Women2Win, former government advisor Henry Newman and the aforementioned Tim from the previous panel.
What became clear very early on in the conversation is the shared desire for being outcome-focused, and the argument that EDI today has become performative (with rainbow lanyards being key to that). The core tenet of the Conservative thought is that everyone should have access to opportunity and to prosperity, particularly through economic merit. However, in today’s climate those who are older, with learning difficulties or with disabilities often have the lowest chances in the workplace, and often in civil society. These are also the same people who feel more excluded from conversations about EDI, as we’ve found in our Diversity & Confusion report.
Perhaps most interestingly in this panel the idea of the diversity ‘flavour of the month’ was raised — i.e. the notion that EDI, DEI, D&I or whatever the acronym and organisation uses is subject to the group or groups that is shouting loudest at that time gaining the most attention. I’ve heard many leaders in organisations struggle with the very same, typically drowning in Noah’s Arc of the protected characteristics.
Panellists argued that the field of EDI has become too polarised by the left and that if we really listen to the quiet majority of the UK, we hear that people are fundamentally good people. All too often they don’t want to get involved in the conversation because they don’t fit within the ‘progressive activist’ segment, and are worried that they might say something wrong. And if they do, they fear being told off. And that’s not the best way to build any form of psychological safety.
It was a question from the audience that left me pondering where next and what next. Someone suggested that terms like ‘white privilege’ have gone beyond what anti-racist activists of the 80s and 90s set out to achieve. While we could get into a debate about reverse racism and what’s okay today, my sense is that we aren’t having enough deep and sensitive discussions to work through the real underlying issues. He asked about the intellectual rigour behind where EDI is today and where it might go next. That, for me, is the crux. While there is a lot of noise around the ‘industry’ of EDI (which requires critique another day) and a lot of off-the-shelf training that’s out there, what are we all really trying to achieve?
To find what we have in common
We shouldn’t be debating our differences, we should be respecting them. And we shouldn’t be scared of them, either. As I write this looking out of the window at Coventry station I remember the time, when at university, I sat at the very same platform and saw Gordon Brown walk past. Fourteen years ago, I couldn’t have predicted what things like equal marriage and the Equality Act could do for this country and for me. And I wonder what the country will look like 14 years from now.
My sense is that to move things forward, we need to move from EDI feeling clunky as it does today, where it’s become siloed and stuck, to it feeling more hopeful about what a future could look like in a way that’s integrated into the status quo. A sign in a bathroom in Birmingham summed it all up for me – simple acts of inclusion so we all feel invested in.
That will require us to move beyond calling out differences as ways to score political points, and to move toward a country where people feel valued for who they are and what they bring — whether that’s commercially or culturally. And that ultimately we all reach a place of respect for one another.
Surely that would be no bad thing?
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