The situation

The business had faced two challenging years including change of ownership, restructuring, increased competition and a lack of diverse candidates in a highly competitive labour market.  Although committed to achieving greater diversity and gender balance in the business, the senior leadership team was distracted by more immediate business pressure.  This created the perception that they lacked commitment to greater diversity and inclusion and they were losing ground to competitors who were ramping up their D&I initiatives and market communications.

The challenge

In 2016 a D&I steering committee was formed in one of the primary business divisions.  Although the committee had a passion for the topic, a number of key leadership and business changes meant they had lost momentum and very few changes has taken root.

Then in 2019 GKN Aerospace launched an organisation-wide ‘Great Place to Work’ initiative rolling out key values which demonstrated the importance of a diverse and inclusive culture.  In parallel, our client launched a new in-depth leadership development programme so both initiatives created a unique opportunity to reignite the strategy and leadership on D&I.

With so much change underway, it was crucial to ensure that the relevance of D&I did not get lost or diluted.  Our focus was to explore new and different ways to integrate D&I into the ‘day job’ of managers and leaders and create the mindset and behavioural shifts that would ensure sustainable change across the business.

The solution

Working with the divisional D&I steering committee and senior leadership team (SLT) to form an empowered D&I steering committee with an integrated and targeted D&I execution plan for 2020.

The results

• Sparked a momentum for change within GKN Aerospace, that gave potential advocates the voice, platform and community to effect incremental changes in the organisation.

• Formed the D&I steering committee: both the core board and wider advocate network.

• Established the three-pillar strategy for increasing D&I.

• Initiated key strategies across all three pillars from new communication and awareness campaigns, to engaging the full HR recruitment partners and suppliers on creating unbiased, representative recruitment.

• Formed strong active sponsorship of D&I within senior leadership teams.

• Delivered a collaborative plan in partnership with the business, piloting key initiatives at strategic sites and building the internal business case for change through measurement of the pilot’s impact.