Aggregate Industries started their Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) in 2017 – read key takeaways from their journey to better employee lifecycles, achieving gender balance and creating an inclusive workforce.
Have you set an ED&I strategy, but found no positive change?
Aggregate Industries’ ambition was to create an EDI strategy for everyday life, both within the organisation and within the construction and infrastructure industry.
They wanted to create an inclusive culture across their locations, where all colleagues can come to work as their authentic selves. But when they started reviewing data in 2020, the company realised that all their efforts didn’t actually change any of the key metrics set in the strategy – it made no positive impact, in other words.
The ED&I plans didn’t work – what next?
They critically reviewed the situation, set their ED&I priorities, and what they actually wanted to achieve. They paused the existing strategy and took time to actively gather information and work with others to better understand their current position. To create an evidence base for action by:
- Inviting external organisations in to participate in a best practise event
- Benchmarking against others, inside and outside industry
- Measuring data against the industry Maturity model
- Using metrics and case studies from other organisations to inform the strategy
- Created a LEADING indicators dashboard by each division and team focused on key priorities
Data is critical – how to re-start your ED&I journey
Using the latest data, they completely redesigned the ED&I strategy and now use and share data internally to engage their workforce and leadership teams, as well as informing next steps. Now the strategy is based on an EDI 5-point plan focussed on all elements of EDI:
- Affinity Groups (otherwise known as employee networks)
- 360 External Assessments with the National Centre of Diversity
- Zero Tolerance culture to ensure all the workplace cultures are inclusive for all
- Measure by business areas, which allows them to deep dive on local teams
- Female Talent focus to ensure career pathways and development opportunities are available
Good data leads to positive, informed changes
Aggregate Industries now repeatedly use d
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