An update from our Executive Strategy Team
In 2021, we launched our first organisational Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Strategy at Macmillan, setting out how we will change our workplace culture and improve workforce diversity; develop our services and advocacy to help tackle inequalities; and build a more inclusive brand and marketing.
Earlier this year, working with our Disabled and Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic employee networks, we commissioned the Social Justice Collective to carry out an independent listening exercise within Macmillan, to help us get a better understanding of the experiences of our Disabled and Ethnically Diverse colleagues. Its findings highlighted unacceptable ableist and racist experiences that colleagues have had, and the changes we need to make in our management, culture and processes to become an anti-oppressive organisation.
Six months on, we wanted to take the opportunity to update you on the steps we have taken to build a more inclusive culture at Macmillan. As a leadership team we also wanted to share some of the important lessons we are learning, which are helping to guide not only how we are working internally, but also our approach to our equity, diversity and inclusion work more generally.
Clear accountability
When we first communicated with you about the listening exercise, we made it clear that as a senior leadership team we fully accept its findings and take accountability for the oppressive and unacceptable experiences that happened on our watch. But apologies are not enough. What is needed is long-lasting, meaningful change.
To ensure clear governance and accountability, our response so far has been led by an executive director, who reports back to the full Executive Strategy Team each week. With a new Chief People Officer now in place, we are starting to transition the immediate actions we have taken into developing a new organisational People Plan, which will ensure we are taking a long-term view and develop the anti-oppression expertise we need. The work is also overseen by our Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Board, which is made up of representatives from our Board of Trustees, as well as executive directors and employee network chairs.
Immediate actions
To ensure meaningful progress, we have focused on working both fast and slow. Taking immediate action, while getting feedback and learning as we go.
In our immediate actions, we have prioritised ensuring safety to speak up, as well as improving the accessibility of our workplace. We have not always gotten it right the first time and we are hugely grateful for the ongoing feedback from colleagues, to help us inform key decisions and make changes when something is not working.
- When we first received the report in June, our initial focus was on making sure we had the right support in place for colleagues who were impacted, including paid leave from work. We recognise that speaking up can come at a cost and with feedback from our employee networks, we are continuing to build on our support offer. As part of this, we have worked with our Employee Assistance Programme provider to give colleagues the opportunity to request support from counsellors with similar lived experiences and direct experience of issues like ableism and racism, and we are now working with the provider to understand whether they can deliver this tailored support on a more permanent basis.
- To establish an open and ongoing channel of communication and start rebuilding trust, we took the lead from our colleagues on the best way to communicate about the improvements we are making. We have made a concerted effort to ‘over-communicate’ — we have shared weekly updates with leadership and our employee networks, and introduced a bi-weekly video update. We have also held regular webinars with all colleagues to set out the progress we are making and give everyone the opportunity to ask questions.
- To ensure colleagues can raise concerns around unacceptable behaviour through an independent channel, as well as request a review of a historical case where they were not happy with the conclusion or outcome, we have worked with independent experts The Equal Group to build a new Independent Case Management process. The Equal Group has helped us to train over 36 new people case managers, made up of Macmillan colleagues from across the organisation and external appointees, to lead the investigations. The new process is now up and running and is being used by colleagues.
- To make sure colleagues get rapid access to support including software, equipment or changes to work patterns or hours, we have introduced a new fast-track Workplace Requirements process. Between June and October, we received 140 requests and actioned over 80% within five days of receiving them. We’ve also worked to join this up with our Wellbeing Passport, which everyone working here is encouraged to have, so that our colleagues’ needs are identified proactively.
A review of our recruitment processes was already in progress when the listening exercise was taking place, which has allowed us to also prioritise addressing the recommendations made on recruitment:
- We have developed a comprehensive recruitment toolkit to ensure we are effectively supporting our hiring managers to recruit in an accessible and inclusive way, as well as holding them accountable for doing so; right through from the role profile and design of the job advert, to anonymised shortlisting and diverse recruitment panels.
- This sits alongside some work that we launched earlier this year to support early careers for Disabled and Ethnically Diverse people at Macmillan, through partnerships with three recruitment agencies who specialise in supporting underrepresented young people to secure internships and work experience; as well as our focus on career development for underrepresented groups within Macmillan, through our new Inclusive Career Development Programme.
Longer-term reflections
To avoid making the same mistakes again, we have kept a firm focus on the future and sustainability. We have treated the report as a prompt to be honest with ourselves — not just about what we need to change about our culture, but also what we have learned about our overall approach to equity, diversity and inclusion.
Inequalities are systemic in our society, and we have a responsibility to challenge and mitigate them. And they are systemic in our organisation, which we are accountable for addressing. The deep-rooted nature of discrimination means that short-term, tactical solutions are not going to deliver the change we need. We had rolled out an EDI strategy across our culture, services and brand. But we had jumped straight into action which did not always have a strong enough connection to the lived experience of colleagues and people living with cancer; we didn’t dig enough into the root causes of a lack of trust in systems, processes and management; and we relied too much on traditional training or learning, rather than focussing on how to fundamentally change behaviour. As a result, we hadn’t built enough trust that the measures we had initiated were the right ones, or accountability that the action we were taking was having the impact needed.
With this in mind, we have been working with external experts to ensure we are developing internal expertise as we go, to avoid leaning on colleagues with lived experience to help us get it right.
For instance, to help build capability, confidence and personal accountability across the organisation, we are now in the process of commissioning an anti-oppression programme of learning for all of Macmillan. However, understanding and refusing to tolerate discrimination must start at the top — and we are starting with independent training for our senior leadership team and the Board of Trustees on anti-oppression leadership, with dedicated sessions from provider Fearless Futures on topics like racism, ableism, gender stereotypes and LGBTQ+ allyship. We will be starting work to better understand what our overall culture looks and feels like for colleagues, so that we can focus on the fundamental changes that will enable colleagues to feel they belong and do their best work, so that we can provide the best possible support for to deliver our mission for people living with cancer across the UK.
Moving forwards
I hope this update will help to demonstrate the steps we are taking at Macmillan to build an organisation which reflects and represents everyone living with cancer, regardless of who they are.
When any leadership team is asked about the effectiveness of their organisation and its culture, they want to immediately reassure that ‘everything is in hand’. While no leader should suggest that it will ever be ‘job done’ in delivering an equitable, inclusive and diverse workplace, we believe that we are starting to make some progress in how we are approaching our EDI work — and we are implementing specific measures to improve safety and accessibility, as well as learning important lessons about how to deliver systemic change.
We remain incredibly grateful to the colleagues who spoke up so openly and to our partners who have been generous in sharing their support, feedback and experience in this space, as we continue to learn and develop. As an organisation we are committed to getting this right. We are committed to being open about the progress we are seeing, as well as the lessons we’re learning, to ensure we have an organisation that is tackling deep-rooted inequalities from the inside out.
Update from Simon Phillips, Chief Operating Officer at Macmillan Cancer Support, on behalf of the Executive Strategy Team — December 2022
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