Equality, diversity and inclusion: our plan for this moral and strategic priority
Posted 12th March 2024
Over the last year, we have been working hard on developing and rolling out our trust equality, diversity, and inclusion (ED&I) agenda, as this is a strategic priority for us.
There has been significant progress in embedding elements of our ED&I strategy across our organisation. This strategic priority is focused on three pillars: culture, representation, and curriculum. We know that having a range of perspectives in decision making, and the workforce being representative of the communities that it serves, makes us stronger and more successful.
Outside of education, there have been significant studies of the impact of diverse thinking on organisational performance. The findings show that diversity of thinking is a wellspring of creativity, enhancing innovation by 20%. This demonstrates to us that ED&I isn’t only about being fair and nice. We know that diverse teams in respect of both demographics and cognitive thinking perform better and deliver better outcomes.
Being inclusive, is much more than just being nice to people, or even just being aware of our unconscious biases. Organisations with inclusive cultures are three times more likely to be high performing, six times more likely to be innovative and agile and eight times more likely to achieve better outcomes.
In 2020, our anti-racism action plan was developed. Tackling racism and historic under-representation of staff from diverse backgrounds, especially at senior levels in our schools, has been a key priority. We also created our anti-racism cross cutting team recognising that it was important to listen to the reality and narratives of those who have experienced racism.
Over the last academic year, in addition to the amazing work around training, development, and curriculum driven by the anti-racism CCT, there has been a concerted effort to create a wider understanding across Dixons of our broader equality, diversity and inclusion agenda.
Whilst we have made some progress, we recognise that there is still much for us to do and we plan to be even more ambitious.
Visit our Dixons OpenSource website to find out more and see what we have to offer: www.dixonsos.com