Ronnie Calderwood-Duncan, Head Of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at the National Highways Agency says investment in networks is integral to corporate innovation.
Ronnie became head of EDI in 2019 and part of his role entailed creating a new structure for staff networks. His dual aim was for them to feel valued and run effectively in line with the business objectives.
“Network leads do their roles on top of their day jobs and I wanted to ensure that we regarded them highly,” he said. “I put in place quarterly meetings for the network leads, myself and the HR Executive Director to share updates and give feedback on what members say. This has fostered a strong two -way communication and a positive relationship.”
He also wanted to recognise the work that staff networks leads did and created an option for a network role to be reflected in an employee’s end of year performance review with a pay related reward. Other bonuses include a recognition platform called ‘high five’ where a line manager can give a voucher for a good piece of work.
Ronnie said it is important to invest in network leads through CPD so they can get the skills to develop and he was keen for them to do the Radius training. “Myself and the whole team, including the executive sponsor have done the training alongside the network leads,” he said. “I think the stakeholder management and strategy is the one thing that has helped networks understand how to make a difference. For example, what their output was, how to measure success and what funding they would need. “
Investing in staff networks has had a direct result on employee engagement and in the company’s recent survey, EDI was rated as the top strength of the organisation with 80% of employees having a positive response to EDI. “This was in part due to the work we are doing alongside the staff networks so it has been a positive collaboration” he said.
The networks have also been key to policy innovation, for example, Ronnie said they realised they needed to adjust the company’s gender identity policy due to a scenario faced by a trans colleague. He said they needed to make it simple for people to manage their time out of the organisation for transitioning. Three colleagues from the LGBTQ+ network, ‘Rainbow Roads’ worked with the policy team as they specifically had expertise on this. He said: “They raised our awareness of some of the challenges that trans colleagues might face with taking time out. We wanted that real, valuable life experience input and as a result, we are changing our HR system to have different categories of absence included into the list of reasons for time out of work, whilst also maintaining individual confidentiality.”
Ronnie is updating the reasonable adjustment policy too and has put together a working group of the networks to make sure all needs are met. “For example, our disability network, will be at that meeting to discuss the lived experiences of its colleagues and some of the processes that could be supporting staff better. It is so vital we go to that particular group to ask, have we got this right and if we haven’t, we take that feedback before we then launch anything or sign a policy off,” he said.
Talking is the key and there have been frequent network collaborations, fostering new ideas. “Our carers network collaborated with our leading women network to talk around the support they offer. We’ve also had our LGBTQ+ network meet with our menopause and hormonal condition network because, quite rightly, someone going through a transition will experience hormonal changes in ways depending on what transition they are going through” he said.
“I genuinely mean it when I say we have a really positive relationship with our networks and I constantly remind them all of how vital they are. “
