Our Vision for 2025: Utilising EDI to solve business challenges

2024? was the year we celebrated our 10th anniversary. We marked it with a fantastic Driving Diversity conference in February where we also introduced our EDI Journey Milestone Awards.? Here’s a recap of that inspiring day.

So, what next, you ask??

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, we will continue to 'drive' Diversity because we passionately believe that Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) is essential to the success of an organisation, from setting impactful strategy to solving common challenges.??

Over the last decade, however, we’ve noticed that, while most people champion EDI, they often fail to harness its benefits.? There are probably many reasons for this, but we believe that this lack of success is fundamentally rooted in how EDI is perceived – and therefore implemented.???

When it comes to implementing EDI, we have observed 2 dominant tendencies:??

1. To think of EDI as something we do for others, and?

1. To think of EDI as something that sits alongside the business agenda - not as part of it.?

Flawed Approach: Benevolent EDI?

Many EDI champions and allies recognise the injustices of our world.? We are aware of the growing wealth gap between the have and the have nots, affecting access to education, healthcare and housing.? We are aware of systemic gender disadvantages that women and girls experience, including wage gaps, access to education, underrepresentation in leadership and more.? And we are aware of many other inequities that make access to opportunities disproportionately unjust.??

People who care about inequity tend to be great proponents of EDI.? They want to do what they can to level the playing field within their sphere of influence.? This is a great, benevolent endeavour.?

So why is this a problem?? As a matter of principle, this isn’t a problem at all.? Yet,? when it comes to the understanding and full implementation of the benefits of EDI, this ‘Benevolent EDI’ perspective looks at the benefits of EDI as something we – the privileged few – do for others.? We want to level the playing field for them, improve opportunities for them, even step aside so they can have a chance to do what they would not otherwise be able to do.?

When we have this perspective, we fail to reap the full benefits of EDI for us all.? Even worse, this approach is prone to creating division (for instance, why this group of society over another?)??? ?

Flawed Approach: EDI is not an urgent agenda item?

Many of our clients are disheartened by the fact that, when it comes to discussing important EDI matters with leadership, they find that often, EDI falls off the agenda as meeting time is dominated by other, more pressing business items.???

Leaders often view EDI as ‘non-core’ or ‘non-urgent’ initiatives, and group them into similar baskets of initiatives such as?employee wellness (often viewed as ‘soft’ rather than directly impacting the bottom line), corporate social responsibility (CSR,? often viewed? as community engagement or philanthropy, areas that might lose out to quarterly financial performance or crisis management topics), and other more long-term strategic planning like sustainability or research and development investments, deferred in favour of addressing immediate financial pressures or market demands.?

The flaw in all this is that, by thinking of EDI as a ‘non-essential’ business topic, we fail to utilise the?EDI lens to help us deal with those 'core' and 'urgent' agenda items.?

In other words, we?fail to see EDI as something that is good for us as individuals, our teams and our organisations, and this failure often results in flawed implementation of EDI that leaves people and talent behind.???

Which leads me to our aim for 2025!? ?

Seeing and utilising EDI as a tool to help solve many of today’s challenges?

To correct the way?we see and utilise EDI, we’re making it our business next year to show you?how EDI can be used as a tool to help address many of today’s challenges.???

We will bring you examples and conversations on various topics from the business world and show you how applying the EDI lens can lead to more impactful results.??? ?

?Conference and Awards 2025?

Towards the end of the year, all these ideas and insights are going to be collated and shared by different experts at our annual conference, entitled Solving Leadership Challenges with the Benefit of Diverse Perspectives.? Our speakers will address challenges in areas of?sustainability, technology, future of work, governance and more.??

The conference will then conclude with our phenomenal EDI Journey Milestone Awards. Our?awards recognise individuals and teams who help progress EDI within their organisations, in categories such as?Most Inclusive Leader, Most Impactful Leader, Most Influential EDI Advocate, Most Inclusive Workplace, and Most Diverse Team.???

Awards are a powerful way to pronounce to the world how important EDI is to an organisation. They are also?a simple and effective way in which to recognise and honour our own people.??

Nominations for our Awards will open in the Spring of 2025 and we encourage everyone to nominate as many people as are believed to qualify.? Nominations are free of charge and all finalists will be invited to attend our conference and awards celebration.?

To conclude, while 2024 has been an exciting year of reflection and planning, in 2025 we will drive Diversity by implementing our 10+ years of learning?to show?leaders how to think about EDI in a way that aligns?with their visions.?

I hope you will join us!??

This blog was first published on the Voice At The Table website ?

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