Summary

Diversity and Equality are increasingly important issues in the world of marketing.  To help us explore and navigate what can be a complicated area, I'm delighted to be joined by Natasha Broomfield-Reid, head of diversity inclusion and wellbeing at Mills & Reeve.  We explain the differences between Diversity, Equality and Inclusion - and why even small organisations should start their journey now.

 

Key Points

  • A clear distinction was made between diversity (difference), equality (equal opportunities), and inclusion (having a voice), with a stated preference for the term "equity," which focuses on removing barriers for individuals.
  • When navigating language and identity, it was best to ask an individual what they prefer to be called and, if a mistake was made, to apologise, correct oneself, and change one's behavior going forward.
  • D&I initiatives were framed as a "business imperative" that directly contributed to better talent retention, improved client services, enhanced reputation, and overall business success, rather than being a simple "nice to have."
  • For companies beginning their D&I work, the recommended first step was to conduct a review or audit to understand their current state, identify gaps, and prioritise actions, as the work is an ongoing process.
  • The impact of D&I work could and should be measured using both quantitative data (staff engagement surveys, recruitment and promotion monitoring) and qualitative feedback.
  • The commitment and active involvement of senior leadership were identified as essential for successfully driving D&I initiatives within an organisation.

 

Transcript

Transcipts are auto-generated.

Announcer (00:01):
The Cambridge Marketing Podcast with Kiran Kapur, brought to you by Cambridge Marketing College. See their range of courses and apprenticeships at marketingcollege.com.

Kiran Kapur, host (00:13):
Hello and welcome. Today we're going to be talking about diversity and inclusion, an increasingly important part of marketing and communications. And I'm delighted to be joined by Natasha Broomfield-Reid, who is head of diversity, inclusion, and wellbeing at Mills & Reeve. Natasha, welcome to the podcast. Could I start with what's the difference between diversity, equality, and inclusion? Because then words that we get very confused.

Natasha Broomfield-Reid, Head of Diversity, Inclusion and Wellbeing (00:39):
Yes, definitely. Hi, hi everybody. Nice to meet you. Yes, people often get the mix up and often when I do training, this is the first conversation we often have. And I say to people, "What's the difference?"

(00:49):
So to me, diversity is about difference. What makes us unique? What makes us different? You may have people from the same community, the same background, but it doesn't mean they're going to be the same. So diversity is very much about embracing difference.

(01:04):
Equality is about equal opportunities, having equal access to, whether it's services, employment, and things like that. And really and true, I always say we strive for equality because sadly in this world, I don't think we will ever have equality for everybody, but that's what we strive for. And that is why we have things like the Equality Act to protect people who often are discriminated against.

(01:26):
And then we have inclusion. And to me, inclusion is about having a voice, being heard, you having the opportunity to be listened and you are part of the conversation. And also, I don't know if you've heard the saying, there's a saying that goes, and it was, I can't remember who said, and I must remember, diversity is being invited to the party, inclusion is being asked to dance and belonging is dancing like nobody's watching. So it's a whole thing about belonging. And then one last thing I will say is that I really prefer the term equity because equity is more about, you'll see equity discussed a lot more now. It's more about removing barriers so people have equal equity to whatever their needs, whether it's employment, whatever. So equity I prefer because it's very much about removing those barriers rather than equality and everybody because it's not about the same for everyone.

Kiran Kapur, host (02:21):
Yes. Okay. Yes. Well, language is such an important part of this area. And I think it's an area that often one can be very concerned that one says the wrong thing. I am a BAME background myself and I had a passionate discussion with somebody who said, "I hate being called BAME. It sounds like they couldn't quite decide what else to call me, so I became mixed ethnic". I prefer to just be called what I am, but I know it's very much the label that's given. So how does one get around the language? How do you keep up to date with the language?

Natasha Broomfield-Reid, Head of Diversity, Inclusion and Wellbeing (02:59):
I mean, it's really hard. I mean, some like myself, you're in the world to diversity inclusion, so you sort of are kept abreast and aware. But for me, it's around always asking the person what they want to be identified with. But you said, "I prefer my own individual identity." And if you make a mistake, I'm all about, we all make mistakes. If you make a mistake, if somebody said to you, "Oh, that's not what it's called". I'll apologise. What do you prefer to be called?" And then call them what they prefer. Terminology changes. For example, BAME, people are moving away from that at the moment and saying, "How can four letters represent a whole how many million of people? " So there's lots of other terms that use them at the moment, whether they say racialized communities, marginalised communities, ethnic diverse communities. It really, really varies.

(03:47):
But for me, I'm all about what do you prefer to be called? Because some people might say, "Well, I'd prefer to say, I'm Indian, I'm Caribbean, I'm Chinese." And it's being led by that. And also, when is it important? Is it really relevant all the time? Sometimes it's not even relevant to mention someone's ethnicity or their background. So it's all about the purpose relevance. My big thing is though, if you make a mistake, just rectify it because we all do and we all may say the wrong thing at times and that's okay as long as we modify and change what we've done.

Kiran Kapur, host (04:17):
So your point is if you make a mistake and you mislabel somebody or use the wrong term, you apologise, but the most important thing is that you then change.

Natasha Broomfield-Reid, Head of Diversity, Inclusion and Wellbeing (04:27):
Exactly. And every individual's different. So somebody who, for example, I'm a Caribbean, African Caribbean descent and somebody might make a mistake. Some people might say, actually no, I prefer black British or everybody's different. So just because somebody may be from the same background, don't make assumptions basically in terms of the person you know, although you like being called that term, just treat people as individuals. And like I said, like you just said, if you make a mistake, just rectify that.

Kiran Kapur, host (04:58):
Okay. So I said at the beginning, this is an increasingly important area. What made a company like Mills & Reeve, big law firm, decide that not only did they want to embrace equality and diversity, but they also wanted to actually have a whole department and an area and ahead of. So how did that transition come about?

Natasha Broomfield-Reid, Head of Diversity, Inclusion and Wellbeing (05:17):
This all started before I got there. Before I got there, there was, we've got like a diverse inclusion committee, wellbeing committee who were starting to work on inclusion. And Wills and Reeves is well known for its culture and being inclusive. And I think that's really where it came from. And I would say Mills and Reeves were much further ahead of the game in terms of recruiting somebody because when I first started this job a couple of years ago, there were not many sort of diverse inclusion leads or heads of in the legal sector. Often maybe part of somebody else's job. And I think they just truly wanted to make a difference. Anybody who works at Mills and Reeve, we're very much about wellbeing, very much about inclusion, and they wanted to make a real difference. And so that's why they created this job. And so yes, and I was very pleased to take on that role.

Kiran Kapur, host (06:05):
What sort of changes have Mills and Reeves made?

Natasha Broomfield-Reid, Head of Diversity, Inclusion and Wellbeing (06:09):
All sorts of things really. I think my role, because it is a very inclusive culture anyway, my role was very much to enhance what was there, to structure things. So sometimes there weren't always structures, but the work was being done. So we've done lots, gosh, there's so many things we've done, but we've done lots of things on things like making sure we have processes for people who need adjustments. It was menopause, National Menopause Day yesterday. We put support in for people going through menopause. Now we've got five networks where we had one when I started. So we've got network focus on parents and carers, disability, race, gender, and LGBT+. And we've done lots of different activities. We're also doing work externally as well. So looking at how we support our clients and talking about marketing, we're doing a lot more in terms of our communications.

(07:01):
We ask our clients now, we start to ask our clients, how do you like to be communicated with? We've made sure our website is much more reflective of the work that we're doing, but we've just looked at how each of our functions departments, whether it's client focused and lawyers, whether it's business support, we've just looked at each area to identify how we can make it better inclusively, whether it's how we support you, how we deliver our services.

Kiran Kapur, host (07:27):
So can you give me a sort of practical example? Because I think with this sort of area, it can become very quickly sort of fluffy around the edges, sort of nice to have. So is there something concrete that the listeners can understand?

Natasha Broomfield-Reid, Head of Diversity, Inclusion and Wellbeing (07:43):
So for example, one of the things we did when we first came was around disability. So we had really good, we were really supportive, but we didn't have proper structures in place. So that if somebody wanted adjustment, there was a real flow, everybody knew what they were doing. So we brought in a process where, and our adjustment stretches to mental health, disability, and menopause as well, even cultural. So if somebody needs support, whether it's they need some equipment, they need to change their times, there is a process that they go through, they speak to, whether it's myself or one of the HR team, we see what the barriers are, we make sure we remove those barriers and we put what we have in place. We supported that with training for HR, for managers to make sure that they're supporting their teams who may be going through the menopause.

(08:27):
We do a whole range education and learning. There's been a massive part of my role, and I've got somebody working with me as well. It's called Ainsley. She's doing it with me now. And we've done a lot of work. We've done lots of awareness, had awareness on neurodiversity, disability, menopause, just as well. So that education, because people need to understand how it's going to impact on them. That's one thing with also with disability. We did a website audit. So we know that often websites aren't accessible to a lot of disabled people. We put these websites up and website designers, much as they're brilliant, often do not have them, that they're inclusive to people who have a range of disabilities. So we had an access audit done and we are working through making sure we can improve that. So it's all those things around ... And we're even looking at our language with our LGBT network spectrum and we're working together on things like, is our language right in our terminology that we're using on our website, in our copy, all those sort of things.

(09:24):
We've done lots of things to just make sure if you're a staff member, you're a client, we are asking you, we've changed how we do webinars even. We make sure that anybody who attends a webinar internal or external, we're asking them what support you need. And it's really good because we're finding now that people are telling other people because we're putting things in place. We've had a few times where we've put a palen typist and you know, people who type for people who are type that's transcribed, people who are deaf. And if we wouldn't have asked that question, some people might have been excluded. So there's lots of things we've been doing over the last couple of years there. That's just a couple of the things.

Kiran Kapur, host (10:02):
And if somebody's listening to this thinking, "Okay, that sounds great, but you're a big company, I'm in a small firm and I couldn't possibly do any of that or even begin to do any of that. " What would you say to them?

Natasha Broomfield-Reid, Head of Diversity, Inclusion and Wellbeing (10:15):
Well, I would say you could. My previous role quite a few years back, I was head of diversity inclusion for a charity and we did all these things that Mills and Reeve are doing and it doesn't always cost. For example, the adjustments process that we're doing, that is around enhanced new process. It's just time resources. It's not around cost because often people who maybe have a disability, they know what they need and they may have the equipment and you can get support from people access to work. So I would say it's for anybody starting, look at what ... And this is what I did when I first came to the organisation. I did a review. Where are the gaps? What's working really well? What do we need to strengthen? And anybody can do that in any organisation. It doesn't always cost money. I mean, because a lot of my work has been in the public and charity sector.

(11:03):
People laugh at me because I always do some ... I'm very cost effective. I do things that aren't very ... It's not always about cost. It's about what can you do because it's about making sure we're inclusive to people.

Kiran Kapur, host (11:16):
And beyond the fact that it's obviously, I think itself evidently a nice and good thing to do, can you actually measure business impacts on doing this work?

Natasha Broomfield-Reid, Head of Diversity, Inclusion and Wellbeing (11:28):
Okay. And I was going to say devil's advocate then, I sort of disagree with people saying it's a nice thing to do because I think it's a business imperative because, and I know you know this really, it's around ... It's that there's lots of research out there because they like say ... I mean, I've been doing this work for years, but I would say 10 years ago, 15 years ago, there was a lot of organisations who wouldn't even think that inclusion makes business sense. They'd think, "Oh, it's an add-on. It's nice. It's something that we should be doing, but we haven't quite got there yet. We haven't got the time." But so much research now, and people talk about McKinsey, but there are lots of others. They've done lots of different research and why diversity matters through diversity. The three pieces of research that really help to get people to understand the business case, you will have better attention, you'd have talented skill staff, you'll have services that meet the needs of your customers or clients.

(12:26):
You'll have people who are willing to go the extra mile and be loyal because they're like, "Yeah, this is a place..." There is so many things, reputation. I could go on. There are so many reasons why to show that it is a good, good place to be and why it's going to be effective for all organisations. And people are starting to understand that business case. You've got the business case, but the moral case as well, as in we should be doing it anyway. It's the right thing to do. But the business side, there's absolutely several, several reasons. If you want to be the best in business, you want to be the best law firm, the best in whatever you're doing, inclusion is going to make a difference. I had an email today when I just came on where someone said, "I'm so pleased that you mentioned menopause.

(13:12):
There's something that's affecting us here and we really ... " So all those things, you get such good feedback and people are going, "That's great what you're doing." And that makes a difference. That makes people go, "Yeah, I'm going to stay here. I'm going to be a great worker." This is a place for me.

Kiran Kapur, host (13:26):
Okay. So I think one of the things that one can feel with diversity and inclusion is it can feel overwhelming. It's a bit like trying to become sustainable. It can feel like this huge thing that you've got to do. Where would a company start?

Natasha Broomfield-Reid, Head of Diversity, Inclusion and Wellbeing (13:42):
Diversity inclusion is never over. So it's never going to be done because there's always going to be new issues that emerge that come in society, things that happen in the world that make us realise, oh, we've got a lot more to do. So for me, I mean, I work with organisations externally and with the working firm, what I would do is a review or an audit. Where are we now? Because anybody I've ever worked with, you are always doing some ... Even if you say, "Oh, our team aren't very diverse, our board aren't diverse," or whatever, they're always going to be doing something good. I've not met an organisation where they've not got a good start. So for me, it's around looking where you're at, what have you got in place, looking at all the different functions, so your leadership, your recruitment, your services, lots of different aspects, all different functions of the organisation, look at where you are, looking where the gaps are and prioritise because you are never going to get it all done.

(14:37):
So I would say prioritise certain things that are going to work for your organisation and work from there. What's needed first? You might say, well, actually, for example, race is something that our organisation is lacking we've got, whether it's diverse of the teams or there's lack of knowledge and education. So you might start on that and go, "Actually, some of our team are really good at that. " So it's around looking at where the greatest need is, but looking at all the function of the organisation and thinking, right, where are we doing good stuff? Where should we start first? Because there's always going to be things to do.

Kiran Kapur, host (15:11):
And how do you measure the impact of what you're doing? Because I can imagine, again, one could set out on this path and think this is a really good thing to do, but actually either do the wrong things because you haven't measured the impact or just be ineffective. So how is impact measured?

Natasha Broomfield-Reid, Head of Diversity, Inclusion and Wellbeing (15:28):
I mean, things with diverse inclusion, it's both quantitative and qualitative. And so things you can measure, things like your staff engagement surveys. What's it saying? Every staff engagement survey should have something in there that talks about inclusion, wellbeing, belonging, for example. What's it telling you? Is it telling you that it's a good place to work? Is it telling you that they value diverse inclusion? Is it telling you there's no bullying, harassment or indiscrimination? You can ask those questions in a survey and year on year, see, is the culture good? Is it being improved? Other things you can do are measure monitoring is really important. And when we talk about diverse inclusion. So for example, you could monitor who's applying for jobs. You might go, oh, we haven't got a really diverse team, so what can we do? You might try and change your ... Because I work with the organisation, do inclusive recruitment reviews, audits, and we'll go, look, what's happening in your process?

(16:20):
You could then start to measure, for example, the actions you put in place, are they working? So you'd look at who's applying, who's getting the job, and measure that. You could also measure ... We've started to do it at the firm, we're piloting some work allocation. So is everybody getting a fair opportunity at the work versus your protected characteristics? You're looking at promotion, development. We've put a lot of processes in to scrutinise promotion, development, work allocation, so it is a fair process. So for example, is it not all the people in the office all the time, or the people who work full-time versus part-time? All those sort of things. So I'd say monitoring, you're monitoring your starters, your levers, your work allocation, development, so many things, and you can measure that. And I would, any action or anything anybody has put in place, do a lessons learned, do a recap, do a review, because often many people might have a diversity inclusion strategy or action plan, and then they don't check it.

(17:23):
They don't go, "Oh, has this worked or not? " Because some things think time things will work and they may not. And also you need people to bed in time to make it work as well, because sometimes people think miraculously, "Oh, we've changed this and if our team still isn't diverse, it takes time." And even that links into the marketing. "What is your marketing saying? What are you saying on a day to day? What are your social saying? Are you showing and demonstrating your commitment to diversity and inclusion? "Because people look at that when they look for a job. So all those things, it's really much a multitasked approach.

Kiran Kapur, host (17:57):
Thank you. The other thing I was going to ask you is, you say on your profile on Mills and Reef that you run a consultancy called Diverse Matters. And as I said to you before the interview, I actually thought, oh, she's got a side hustle. And then I went to have a look at the Diverse Matters website and it's obviously quite large. So one, how on earth do you switch all that into your day? Please give me the clue of the time travel. And secondly, can we talk a little bit about what Diverse Matters does?

Natasha Broomfield-Reid, Head of Diversity, Inclusion and Wellbeing (18:25):
So yes, I say this to myself every week here and I say," What am I doing doing these two roles? "But I love them both. So diverse matters is, and that's why I only work at Mills and Reef part-time and that's how I manage it. And I also have got great team at Diverse Matters, which enables me to do that. But I do work twenty four seven. I do need to review that constantly. But Mills and Reeve have been really supportive. When I came to the firm, they knew that I had my own business. But since sadly, things like The Murder of George Floyd and other activities, Sarah Evanars and others, the work has really increased because people are realising they're not doing enough. But Diverse Matters in a nutshell is a consultancy. We support all people from all organisations, whether it's public, private, voluntary sector.

(19:12):
And we provide a number of things. I mentioned to you earlier about the audit. So we do audits. They really become very popular because people are like, we want to know where we're at. We want to know how good we are and what we can do next. We deliver a whole range of training on all types of protected characteristics. Sometimes people say," Can you come and help us do focus groups? Because when it comes to inclusion, sometimes it's better to have somebody not from the organisation to come in and then people will be open and honest. And that is generally about how can they improve their practise. We do things like policy updates. So if somebody wants to update their policies or toolkits or guidance, we've actually done quite a few research pieces as well because quite organised, a few organisations are acknowledging, for example, it's the ones I've done recently are at focus on race that they're not particularly inclusive or not inclusive.

(20:02):
They're not as diverse as they should be, I should say. And so we've helped them look at how they can enhance their diversity and we've had focus groups with people from different backgrounds and communities to feed back in. So we do anything that supports you on their journey, help people to put on seminars. We very much do anything that people need in terms of inclusion. We've got different specialists within the team to do that.

Kiran Kapur, host (20:26):
And how long has Diverse Matters been around?

Natasha Broomfield-Reid, Head of Diversity, Inclusion and Wellbeing (20:30):
About six years, I think. People always ask me, I think, "Oh, we need to look back." I think it's around six years now. I think in January it'll be six years.

Kiran Kapur, host (20:37):
And did you set this up because you could see there was a gap in the market or were you just frustrated by what else was going on? What was the motivation?

Natasha Broomfield-Reid, Head of Diversity, Inclusion and Wellbeing (20:46):
Well, actually it was going to put things up because I was head of diversity for a national charity and I was ... A couple of things happened. People used to always say, "Tasha, can you come in? " I was always asked, "Can you come and help me do this? " When I was working, "Can you come and advise me this? We're doing this work." While I work, we did really well. We were the first charity to get leads in diversity accreditation. We're a top Stonewall 100 employee. We did a lot of good stuff. And so people would always just come to me and go, "Can you help me? Can you help me get out? " I thought, "Oh, this might be an idea." And then sadly, I got made redundant and that spurred me on. And I thought, "You know what? People keep asking me about it.

(21:23):
I believe in it. We're doing it for the right reason. I want to do, this is something I'm passionate about. Let's give it a go. " And it sort of went from there really because even though even all my roles in my life have had a diversity aspect to it, I've done things around supporting adults and children learn diabilities. I've worked running mentoring schemes for black African Caribbean administration people. So all my jobs leading up to when I was made redundant had a diverse inclusion theme to it. So it's something that I've done all my life. And I think it just led from people keep asking me and I thought, "You know what? I'm going to give it a go because people are asking me, I must be all right. I must be all right if they keep asking me. " And then it sort of developed from there, really.

Kiran Kapur, host (22:07):
Great stuff. Natasha, you mentioned there were three sort of key reports or studies that had been done into diversity and inclusion and why it was important in the workplace. Were they all McKinsey or were there other places that did those?

Natasha Broomfield-Reid, Head of Diversity, Inclusion and Wellbeing (22:20):
The main ones are McKinsey. Other ones, CIPD have even done one. Somebody called Clover Pop, but they're all, if you just put McKinsey up, they've done three different reports, which they clearly evidenced that the difference when you have diverse teams. And they've actually focused on women if you increase your divertered agenda and also race, but they've done lots and lots. They've got lots of data. People of those doubters out there and go, "Oh, I'm not really sure." That is there to show you the evidence year on year, how it does make a difference.

Kiran Kapur, host (22:56):
That's great. Before I let you go, the final question I nearly always ask is, are there any lessons that you've learned that you would like to pass on? Are there things that people really should do or really shouldn't do?

Natasha Broomfield-Reid, Head of Diversity, Inclusion and Wellbeing (23:09):
The thing I say is fight the fear and do it anyway, because so many people I go, "Oh, we haven't..." It doesn't matter. Everybody has a different starting place. So I think wherever you are in your organisation, and even if you haven't started looking at diverse inclusion, it doesn't matter. Start it now and look at your next step. So a lot of people say to me, "I don't know what to do. It doesn't matter. Just start somewhere." I'd say education is really important. So raising awareness on education around a whole wealth of topics around inclusion is really important. And at Mills and Reeve, they found that really valuable. I mean, pretty much once a month, twice a month, we'll have a webinar and a topic and they really value that because it enhances their inclusion because some people might be ... With diversity and inclusion, some people might be like, "Yeah, I get it.

(24:03):
" It's something that I really do get and actually I believe in it. Other people like that, I'm not really sure. So it helps educate and bring those people forward. So that's really, really important. And anything else? Bring people in, engage people who are really interested and they will naturally then follow. Don't force people. Some part times people have said, "Oh, I'm going to make you an inclusion champion." And they might not be the right person. So bring the right people on board, the people who are passionate and enthusiastic, and that will naturally bring other people on. But I say, audit, check what you're doing, education, learning, and have the right people in place to might move it forward. Also, please, please, please make sure you have senior management on board. Leadership makes a major difference. I'm not saying you can't work it, you don't, but you need to have leadership because if they're not helping you drive it, it's going to be a lot of a tougher road.

Kiran Kapur, host (24:53):
Natasha Broomfield Reed, thank you so much for that insight. I found that absolutely fascinating. Thank you very much for your time.

Natasha Broomfield-Reid, Head of Diversity, Inclusion and Wellbeing (25:01):
No problem at all. Glad to be here.

Announcer (25:03):
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