Reflecting & Anticipating

As I reflect on the year that’s nearly burnt out it’s been 12 months of paradoxical calm and volatility. Much of it spent waiting in the wings of the UK and US elections.

The world has seemed smaller, geopolitical events bleeding into global workplaces inevitably. It’s been complex and unpredictable. The language is changing in this space - moving from EDI, DEI to culture, inclusion and belonging, back and forth.

I anticipate the key focus now to be on broader workplace culture and equity. Looking at underrepresented talent in isolation will be deemed problematic and, in some locations, unlawful.

We don’t anticipate organisations pulling back from the work - far from it. The urgency of talent acquisition and development rely upon healthy culture and empathic leadership behaviours. There is, from our substantive data, a gap in the skill set of would-be leaders. There are far too many ‘accidental’ managers out there and organisations ignore this at their bottom-line cost.

We have seen and will continue to see bias being removed from process in the employee lifecycle, but the intersection of bias with AI and Ethics makes this complex. We have products coming to market soon in this space as there is a significant need here for action and application.

In 2024 we were also relieved to see far more energy put in by organisations on listening audits and conducting deep dives into culture and the identification of where the toxicity was permeating from. This naturally then led to curated development work and the building of accountability frameworks. Hugely satisfying and important work.

2025 and beyond will be dominated by the three ‘C’s’: Culture, Conduct and Compliance. The UK Worker Protection Act and pressure from the regulatory bodies across professional and financial services will continue this momentum.

Non-financial misconduct will also dominate. Couple this with ongoing complex intergenerational workplace makeup and generally poor middle management skills, and it results in an urgency within the workplace globally when it comes to inclusion and the essential people skills needed to maintain healthy culture.

When I reflect on the recent UK MasterChef allegations, if proven, we have yet another example of power, ego, abuse and enablement. Fear lies at the heart of this, fear of the person subject to harassment, fear from the studio to address the issue and fear from the crew to call it out.

Nothing changes without accountability and robust structures for calling out or in inappropriate behaviour and for consequences. I hope we see more architects of change in 2025 – if the fear persists, the problems persist.

On a personal note, next year marks 25 years of working in this space and Inclusive Group is going to be a quarter century old. I’m proud of this milestone and of what we have achieved. We have worked globally with over 15 million people. The work has taken me from Hollywood movie sets to football sized factory floors. I’ve met so many incredible individuals along the way and many broken souls that encourage me to keep pushing.

Above all I’ve been surrounded by a team of individuals at Inclusive Group that lift one another up, do outstanding work and look out for one another. We are united in our why.

Sasha Scott 2024