One of the most rewarding aspects of my role as Davies’ Global Responsible Business Officer, is getting to be part of so many thought-provoking discussions among a lot of influential people in our industry. Recently, I was invited to join the CEO of the Forum of Insurance Lawyers’ (FOIL), Laurence Besemer, and Founder of Huxley Advisory, Mark Huxley, to evaluate DEI progress within the insurance industry, as part of FOIL’s Fireside Chats series.  

Our conversation provided a lot of food for thought, and so, in this month’s Responsible Business article, I wanted to share my top 5 takeaways from the chat, and reflect on how making continuous, meaningful improvement where diversity, inclusivity, and equity are concerned is crucial to our industry and beyond. 

1. Progress has reached a sticking point

An integral part of my role as Global Responsible Business Officer involves looking at the diversity data, both within Davies, and the wider insurance industry. As a result, I have been able to identify that progress within the sector has been much slower than we anticipated. This became a core theme for our fireside chat to draw on in terms of assessing where we’re currently at, and why we’ve reached a sticking point with our progress.  

Data is an invaluable tool when it comes to assessing progress, and UK data has shown considerably declining progress in recent years with regards to diversity and inclusivity. One of the examples I shared with Laurence and Mark concerned the UK’s fall in rank from being the safest place for the LGBT community, to now being the 15th safest place. Similarly, we are still seeing recurring problems with the gender pay gap, representation, attrition, and beyond, which is indicative that we have reached a period of push back. Being upfront and aware about this is the only way to motivate and engage change. 

2. Allyship will move us forward

The resistance we are being met with, and which is decelerating our progress, comes from a lack of allyship—or rather, a lack of real understanding what allyship means and what it could look like. For this reason, it’s important that organisations are looking inward and being truthful with themselves as to whether they are practising real allyship, rather than seeing DEI as a performative, tick-box exercise. If some leaders are practising allyship, it’s vital to look at how they can get others on board with it too. Doing this is simply the only way to foster a diverse and inclusive work culture. 

Although we’ve seen some pleasing progress within Davies’ own diversity and inclusivity policies and processes, there’s much more we want to see moving forward. For example, to help enable more allies, I am currently working on ally cheat sheets which provide colleagues with information about the different diverse communities and groups we have within Davies, as well as conversation starters and direction about what help these groups may need. It’s important to me that anything I do to help in this space genuinely offers my colleagues something useful, so I’ve sought a lot of input from members of our diverse groups and Employee Resource Groups, when creating these, for accuracy and enhanced representation.

3. DEI terms have become devalued 

A key theme within the fireside chat was around the language of diversity and inclusion, and whether it has helped or hindered the progress made so far. In my opinion, I believe there has certainly become somewhat of a backlash against these phrases and given diverse groups have been campaigning to be seen, heard, and treated as equal from way back in history, it’s no surprise that words like diversity, equity, inclusion, and many other associated words have become perceived as tired or overused. After all, what value do they hold when they’re being implemented as tick-box exercises to look good, rather than to make genuine change?  

On a more positive note, I believe culture is changing. Just look at the younger generations and how much more accepting they are of each other, compared to the youth of the past. But while we’ve progressed in this area, terms like “diversity”, “inclusion”, and “equity”, have found themselves under fire, where people seem to feel almost overwhelmed and confused by how much you cannot do or say as it may offend somebody. And it’s sad to see these important terms have been devalued. Often, people with these viewpoints will use expressions about DEI “going too far”, which is troublesome in itself as this can never be the case. To truly level the playing field for diverse groups, and promote inclusivity, we all need to pledge to continuously work on it forevermore. 

4. Setting benchmarks can hold us back

Although having measurable targets to work towards can be great for keeping you accountable for many aspects in business, there are other ways to show progress when it comes to diversity and inclusion initiatives. Not least because it is a continuous movement with no end point, but also because I believe in always taking the slow, meaningful route that activates the most change, rather than the accelerated route that doesn’t hold as much impact. But progress in this area depends on behaviour and culture changes, and organisations globally will know firsthand how difficult culture change can be to implement.  

Although it’s good to have goals in mind, laying out targets such as “to reach X per cent of female leadership” isn’t necessarily a helpful goal to have at all, particularly if organisations simply don’t have the culture to support this goal. Instead, looking at how you’ll implement and develop initiatives that help improve diversity, inclusivity, and equity is much more helpful. You can then evaluate the success of these when you observe things like lower rates of attrition, better employee feedback in surveys and focus groups, and the creation of more initiatives to support diverse peers. 

5. Improvement comes from all levels 

We regularly hear about how crucial it is for change to be led from board level down —a “top-down” approach as we call it. And while it’s true we need people at the top who are influential in driving change and encouraging others to follow suit, we rarely talk about how it is just as important for change to be driven bottom-up as well. And what I discussed as part of FOIL’s fireside chat was just how important it is for change and action to be driven at all levels of the organisation. 

For example, I prioritise working closely with every single department within Davies to look at each and every process and policy, identify the gaps we have, and help us to plan what responsible business initiatives we need to implement to become a more responsible business. It’s not enough to place all the emphasis on the CEO, or on the diverse groups to set the standard, it’s on all of us to be curious and ask the questions and learn how to include the diverse groups and ensure they feel welcome, comfortable, and fairly rewarded.  

You can watch the full fireside chat on FOIL’s website at https://www.foil.org.uk/about/diversity-equity-and-inclusion/. I hope you find it valuable and would love to hear your thoughts. You can catch me on LinkedIn.  

For more of my Responsible Business blogs, you can visit our Davies knowledge hub, or keep an eye on our LinkedIn where we share direct links to the newest ones every month.