Maintaining focus on D&I during hard times: insight from UK’s public sector

The economic hardships of recent years have hit the public sector in the United Kingdom especially hard, and governmental, nonprofit, and educational institutions have all been required to cut their budgets — including headcount — sharply. Reductions in staff have had the greatest impact on women and black and minority ethnic employees since more of them work in the public sector than in private companies. There is also fear that the gender pay gap will widen as women, who generally enjoy more equitable pay in government jobs, transition to the private sector.

Perhaps the most discouraging result of the economic downturn for diversity and inclusion managers — and one that many of their private sector peers have struggled with as well — is that their organisations are losing focus on D&I. Members of Mercer’s Breakthrough Network for D&I leaders in UK public organisations discussed this challenge at their June meeting. The main difficulty, they agreed, is that it is increasingly difficult to get the attention of senior leadership. Some of D&I’s most supportive allies have lost or left their positions, and, the ones who remain, in the words of one Breakthrough member, “are in pain.” Preserving the organisation’s ability to deliver services is their all-consuming concern, and diversity just doesn’t seem mission-critical right now. In some cases, naysayers have been emboldened by the current climate to become more vocal in their opposition to D&I, arguing that it costs too much for too little return.

All of this can lead to “weakened employee engagement and the loss of the valuable discretionary effort which D&I nurtures so effectively”, says Fiona Bartels-Ellis, head of equal opportunity and diversity at the British Council. To combat the economic malaise, diversity leaders must demonstrate that attending to D&I is not a distraction from dealing with more important problems, but part of the solution to those problems. It’s time to re-examine the goals of the initiative and make sure they are tightly in line with the organisation’s current operating goals.

In many organisations, for example, staff cuts and hiring freezes have led to greater emphasis on retention and engagement of remaining staff. The D&I strategy in these organisations has shifted in concert, concentrating less on recruiting women and blacks and minority ethnics and more on creating an inclusive work environment. One UK government agency, for example, had struggled for years to get managers to embrace flexible working arrangements with little success until budget cuts forced the issue. When the D&I leader could show how flexible working would help contain costs, managers quickly got behind the idea.

The key to sustaining D&I in hard times and good is to so embed it in the organisation’s management processes that it isn’t seen as a separate initiative drawing attention and resources away from “more important” matters. The key to embedding D&I into management processes is to establish strong relationships with partners throughout the organisation who control those processes. And the key to building those relationships is to be able to paint a very clear and vivid picture of how D&I will help each partner solve his or her own problems. The experiences of public sector organisations in the UK remind us that the business case is not something to enshrine in a Powerpoint presentation and leave in the hard drive. The business case must be revisited and adapted continually to the current and very specific concerns of each organisation and its stakeholders.

To learn more about managing diversity in the public sector or about the Breakthrough Network, contact Deirdre Golden, 44 (0) 20 7178 5636