EDI Thinking Is Still Making People’s Working Lives Better

When there’s a clamour from the world outside trying to discredit EDI approaches it becomes more important than ever to demonstrate how supporting people benefits all organisations.  It comes down to this; would you rather work somewhere where you are seen and heard for who you are, or somewhere where you are not?  Recruitment and retention are important to any employer, so the answer to that question matters.  In education, with learners to consider too, it is doubly important.

Rather than shrinking away from EDI values of which some may disapprove, we must constantly look for more opportunities to promote equity, encourage diversity and celebrate inclusion.  We should all wear our recognition with pride and make a noise about it.  We have the Investors in Diversity Gold Award from the National Centre for Diversity, and the same organisation named us the tenth most inclusive workplace of 2025.  We also have our Menopause Friendly Accreditation, and with a workforce that is 70% female, wouldn’t we be crazy not to?  I don’t reference these awards and recognitions to boast; heaven knows there is so much more we could and should do.  My point is that all of us in the sector have a responsibility to grasp any opportunity to showcase our beliefs in equality.  We need to be a beacon, and if that looks like showing off or virtue signalling, so be it.

Benefiting Everyone

The key thing to remind people about who are sceptical of EDI, is that supporting people with specific needs and vulnerabilities benefits everyone.  The prevailing narratives in the world outside can make organisations nervous about strategies that elevate the vulnerable, but we shouldn’t be deterred.  How can it be wrong to give extra help to learners who were on free school meals or who have an EHCP if they need it?  How can it be wrong, therefore, to support staff with challenges of their own – caring responsibilities, disabilities, medical conditions?  Giving people the tools and environments they need to do their jobs as effectively as possible has to be beneficial to all.

A good example of this is hybrid working.  Technology provides flexibility, and different people work more efficiently in different ways.  Why would any employer, keen to recruit and retain the best people they can possibly find not allow staff to work – as much as possible – in the way that is most convenient for them?

Employee Networks

Then the question comes, how do we make sure we know what people’s needs are?  The best way, surely is to encourage them to tell us.  A powerful tool for this is employee networks.  These can be centred around any number of groupings, for example Men’s, Women’s, Cultural Diversity, Disability, LGBTQ, Climate, Carers, Armed Forces (is your college signed up to the Armed Forces Covenant?) – whatever grouping emerges from your workforce which will be dependent on factors like geography and the kind and size of college in which you work.  These can be significantly more than talking shops.  Our Menopause Awareness accreditation came as a result of the deliberations of our Women’s network, for example with the Men’s network exploring how members can develop allyship and support for those women. 

Each network should benefit from having a representative, a champion, from the senior leadership team who can act as a sponsor, offering, for example, mentorship to the chair.  Chairs can benefit from taking a well-regarded external Staff Network Leadership Programme.  The networks will benefit from their allotted senior leader’s support, while the senior leaders will gain greater insight into the needs and challenges experienced by their members, informing their input into strategy and policy, genuinely shaping both.

Allowing everyone with a College Group email address the option to include chosen pronouns on their digital signatures is so easily sneered at, and yet can be hugely beneficial.  It is important that it is genuinely, optional and that nobody is judged for using or not using it.  It has an often overlooked, broader benefit in that while it is generally perceived as an LGBTQ initiative, if the organisation includes people who originate from all over the world, it saves the embarrassment involved when not recognising the gender represented by an unfamiliar first name.  A simple piece of inclusion, but it makes people feel more comfortable.

When attempting to make sure people feel like they belong, the desire to achieve that must apply to every department.   Buildings are a perfect example.  Organisations will talk about improving access.  Better surely to refer to barrier-free design?  A lack of barriers doesn’t single out groups or individuals who might need concessions made on their behalf, it instead accentuates the desire for everyone to move around the place with equal ease.  Barrier-free design covers the provision of faith spaces for people of religion, designs that are sympathetic to people who are neurodivergent – it’s about so much more than handrails on the steps.  In the case of this College, when recruiting for our prison education teams we clearly operate under constraints that are beyond our control.  However, that doesn’t mean we can’t go out of our way to inform prospective new team members of what those limitations are, rather than have them find out on the first day they come to work.  It’s about being welcoming to all, whether they’re with us at the moment or not.

And what’s the net result of all this?

People who work where such attitudes prevail are happier, feel more appreciated and understood and are more likely to stay, and people you want to recruit, are less likely to be put off by the way they’ll be treated.

Perhaps if we renamed EDI, SEP – Sensible Employment Practice, the critics would come to appreciate what we do.

By Arv Kaushal, Head of People Development & EDI, Milton Keynes College Group