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Promoting inclusive leadership to achieve DE&I goals

We worked with our manufacturing client to enhance DE&I across the organisation at a fundamental level. By engaging their global leadership and working to mitigate unconscious bias within institutional processes, we were able to amplify the importance of DE&I and reach organisation targets. Read on to find out how.

The challenge

We were asked by a leading merchant and processor of agricultural goods (processing approximately 80 million tons of products annually) to develop a global diversity and inclusion strategy. The specific aims of this project were to:

  • Create a company-specific DE&I roadmap, aligned to a number of our client’s strategic business objectives, including:
    • increasing levels of respect in the company
    • investing in employee wellness and working conditions
    • leveraging diverse talent
    • promoting a culture of work-life integration.
  • Create a sense of urgency on the importance of DE&I as a strategic enabler, through a series of inclusive leadership workshops. A key objective here was to support leaders to role-model inclusive behaviours.

What we did

  • 01 Building the roadmap
  • 02 Socialising the DE&I roadmap
  • 03 Embedding

Phase 1: Building the roadmap

The process for building the DE&I roadmap consisted of three key stages:
  • Stage 1: Review and benchmarking of existing policies and processes: This was a top-level review of key policy areas covering talent acquisition, talent development, performance management and work-life integration.
  • Stage 2: Engagement with key business stakeholders: Conducting interviews with key business stakeholders at the company, including regional HR colleagues and business leaders from across key regional locations – Europe, North America, South Latin America and Asia.
  • Stage 3: Building the DE&I roadmap: Following the key stakeholder interviews, we identified inclusive talent and inclusive culture as key themes to underpin the roadmap. We planned our roadmap delivery over a course of four years.

Phase 2: Socialising the DE&I roadmap and educating the leadership population

As part of gaining buy-in from senior business stakeholders, we devised and facilitated a series of inclusive leadership workshops. Delivered in key global hubs, including London, Geneva, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, and Newark (USA) the objectives of these sessions were to:

  • Create a sense of urgency on the importance of DE&I as a strategic enabler amongst the company’s leadership population
  • Educate the company’s leadership population on the principles of inclusive leadership and the role of leaders as role models in creating an inclusive environment
  • To create awareness on current behaviours and their impact on organisational health, together with building knowledge of the advantages of leveraging diversity from a business and commercial standpoint
  • To socialise the actions as outlined in the global DE&I roadmap and to gain buy-in for local implementation.

Phase 3: Embedding

This process consisted of two key areas of work:
  • Policies and guiding principles: Following the inclusive leadership workshops, we have developed a set of guiding principles that balance global consistency with local flexibility. These principles included:
    • Recruitment
    • Performance management
    • On-boarding
    • Work-life integration and flexible working
  • Data mapping‍: We developed data mapping and data drill-down exercises to:
    • Establish a diversity baseline, covering business priority areas of gender, age and nationality/ethnicity. The data mapping covers key areas of talent acquisition, retention, performance management, pay & reward and training & development.
    • Measure perceptions on unconscious bias and inclusion at work, across our client’s global and regional locations.

The impact

  • Our strategy helped to create a sense of urgency on the importance of DE&I as a strategic enabler amongst the company’s leadership population
  • We assisted in promoting a culture of work-life integration
  • Educating the company’s leadership population on the principles of inclusive leadership and the role of leaders as role models and as creators of cultures of inclusivity
  • Successfully establishing a set of global and regional actions.

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