- What were the most pivotal actions in shifting culture from compliance-led inclusion to authentic, values-driven engagement?
The pivotal ingredients are alignment with the business goals, consistent application throughout the employee life-cycle, and willingness to continually improve based on any feedback obtained.
- Your leadership has consistently produced award-winning diversity initiatives, including Dive In, which now spans 84 countries. What are the key ingredients for scaling inclusive culture globally without losing local relevance?
The key is agreeing on the global values and allowing local flexibility. It’s imperative that everything you do is rooted in the needs of individual talent, teams, and the overarching business strategy. These factors have some variability depending on geographic context, and that must be respected and adapted accordingly.
- What common misconceptions do senior leaders still hold about diversity and inclusion—and how can HR challenge those effectively while maintaining influence?
A common misconception is that inclusion is about being “nice” to people and can impact business performance. Being inclusive, in fact, requires everyone to be able to challenge, suggest ideas, and have their input respected. HR functions and corporation leaders can challenge misconceptions by demonstrating positive impact through utilising data, employee engagement, and collective outputs that inclusive leaders are responsible for driving high performance.
- You’ve worked across sectors—from media and law to infrastructure and insurance. What’s one universal lesson about inclusive culture that applies regardless of industry?
For me, the lesson I’ve learned working across sectors is to be evidence-led. Understand where the challenges and pinch-points are and then design interventions to address them.
- What metrics or qualitative indicators do you believe best reflect real cultural change, beyond representation figures and compliance dashboards?
There is a wide range of metrics and indicators, and they will depend on the context an organisation operates in. However, sentiment on leadership, performance management, engagement, change, and speaking up are often useful indicators. Ensuring you can analyse the data by various demographic groups, area of the business, and hierarchical levels often gives rich insights.
- What advice would you give HR leaders who want to hold executives accountable for culture and inclusion, but face resistance or organizational inertia?
The first step is finding out why. What aspects of inclusion, belonging, and diversity are important to the business? Recruitment, retention, sales, and customer sentiment are all crucial indicators. organisations must then both provide support and encourage senior leadership to choose the measures that most appropriately correlate to business performance. Choice is a powerful tool.
- You led Lloyd’s response to its historic involvement in trans-Atlantic slavery, resulting in the Inclusive Futures initiative. What can other companies learn from Lloyd’s experience in addressing difficult or uncomfortable parts of their history?
Lloyd’s was careful to take the required time to research, reflect and then respond and I’d advise other organisations to adopt a similar approach. We did that via an independent research with Black Beyond Data from Johns Hopkins University and consultation with over 200 ethnically diverse colleagues from the Lloyd’s Market. It was crucially important to consult on what a meaningful impact would look like before implementing our Inclusive Futures Programme.
- Why is acknowledging the past essential for building a credible, future-focused cultural strategy?
Transparency builds confidence. We want both Lloyd’s Corporation and the Lloyd’s Market to feel open to talent from all communities and backgrounds. The ability to be honest about all parts of your organisational history provides the platform for a more inclusive future.
- If you had to give one piece of advice to the next generation of D&I leaders, what would it be, and what should they do differently from your generation?
The demands on D&I leaders are significant. Make sure you are focused on your own development and remember that you are leading change in an incredibly complex and fast-changing environment. Arguably, truly effective D&I leaders of today and tomorrow need a broader range of skills than ever before.
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