Stakeholder Management for Inclusion

Welcome to Talking Inclusion with From Inclusive Employers. I'm Ariel Chapman, my pronouns are he and him and I'm a senior consultant at Inclusive Employers and your host. These podcasts are for anyone who has an interest in inclusion and diversity. In our podcast we share life stories and experiences, learn about best practices and hid practical advice for employers from our guests and Inclusive Employers own inclusion and diversity experts. Before I introduce our guests, in case you don't know us, we are Inclusive Employers. Our mission is to make every workplace an Inclusive Employer, where every colleague values difference and can contribute their skills and experiences fully to their organisation. Together we're taking action towards more inclusive workplaces and celebrating progress toward making inclusion an everyday reality for everyone, and today our podcast focuses on stakeholder management, what it is and why it plays a crucial role in making inclusion an everyday reality. I'm pleased to be talking with four members of the Inclusive Employers team. Together they not only bring a wealth of information as inclusion is, but they each have practical experience in stakeholder management in different sectors before joining Inclusive Employers. In this podcast we will hear reflections from the first and third sectors, including FTSE 100 organisations, emergency services and the sporting sector. So I'd love to welcome our guests. First we have Carol Buchanan, Head of Inclusion Qualifications here at Inclusive Employers, previously a senior inclusion diversity consultant. Carol's led inclusion in one of the UK's largest FTSE 100 organisations and is a specialist in change management. Hi Carol. Hi Ariel. Next up we have Sam Phillips, a management and leadership development trainer with a specialism in emergency services, a member of Chartered Management Institute team here at Inclusive Employers and a former police officer of 19 years. Hi Sam. Hi Ariel. And I'd love to introduce Kayla Thwaite, a management and leadership development trainer, a member of the Chartered Management Institute team here at Inclusive Employers and the team lead on providing stakeholder management training for inclusionnaires. Hi Kayla. Hi Ariel. And finally we have Michelle Daltry, Head of Sport, previously the partnership manager for Disability Sport Wales. In 2020 she was named the 8th most influential LGBTQ+ person in Wales and is formerly the chair of Welsh Wheelchair Rugby Association and is the current chair of LGBT Sport Cymru, a network established to promote and support opportunities for the LGBT community and she's also co-founder of the UK LGBTQ+ Sport Alliance. Welcome Michelle. Morning everybody. Welcome all of you to the programme. So let's start by understanding what stakeholder management is. So over to you first Kayla, as a management and leadership development expert and the lead on this, can you help us define stakeholder management? Thanks Ariel. Yeah, of course. I think if we start by defining what a stakeholder is. So if we think of a stakeholder as anyone either inside or outside your organisation who's interested in or impacted by the work that you do, then stakeholder management is as simple as identifying who those people are first and foremost and then taking the time to understand what they need from you to support your project or goals or the work that you're doing and recognising that that's going to be very different for different people. There's no one size fits all approach to stakeholder engagement or management for that matter. And then the next part of stakeholder management is regularly communicating with those people in a way that is both tailored to them, suits their needs, suits their personality, suits their time commitment, suits their interest in what you're doing and also connects them with what you're doing. So it creates that link between what they're working on and what you're working on and what their interest level is in our subject being inclusion and what you're working on too. So it creates that really strong connectivity between their priorities and yours. And then lastly, with certain stakeholders, there's an element of collaboration. So making sure that you're creating something that works right now for the people it's designed for and something that will last and be sustainable within your organisation. So for inclusion, that looks like a recent Forbes article, for example, some do it beautifully. They called creating inclusive workplaces a collaborative sport. What did they mean by that? Well, they meant that very often in organisations, inclusion work is done by a sole individual or it's a standalone strategy and we see those faults sometimes and worse fail. Why is that happening? Because not enough people are involved in the work that need to be involved, either because there's a lack of interest in perhaps senior levels within an organisation or the people who are directly impacted by the inclusion work haven't been involved from the start. So we know, don't we, that real change needs long-term commitment and strong support, especially from those people. And then the other complexity for inclusion work is unlike a lot of other business projects, inclusion work impacts everyone. So there is a natural conclusion to stakeholder management within inclusion that everyone in your organisation, to some extent, is a stakeholder of yours. So really understanding how your work impacts all of the different people in your organisation and creating a really tailored approach to engaging with them, connecting with them and getting them all to a place where they are buying into the goals of the work you're doing is a really fundamental part of managing your stakeholders really effectively. Thank you very much. And to expand on that, I'm going to come over to you, Carol. Would you tell me a bit about stakeholder management in setting ADI strategies specifically? Yeah, absolutely. So for me, Kayla talked about stakeholder management and stakeholder engagement, and both of them are really important. So when it comes to setting strategy, to be able to decide what it is that you're going to do to pick your strategic approaches that are going to have the impact that you want, you need to have the right information, you need to have the right data points. So the data points often come from identity data, census data, maybe employee lifecycle data, but the information that allows you to interpret what those data points mean, what the lived experiences of people in your workplace is, that comes from engaging your stakeholders. We also know that decision making is better when we have a broader range of voices. So not only do your stakeholders help you understand what the data is actually telling you, they will also help you make better decisions on what should be within your strategy. So that's the first part for me of the engagement side of it. You need that to help save strategy. Stakeholder management is slightly different. Stakeholder management for me, and in my experience, is about how you get the strategy delivered. ETI practitioners really have the power to affect change of behaviour in organisations. So if we think about where they sit within an organisation's hierarchy, they really sit in a position where they have the authority or power to get people to do things differently from a very senior perspective. And we know that we can put in programmes, we can make some policy change, but ultimately to create more inclusive workplaces, we need senior leaders to buy into what we're talking about, to have humility, to be authentic, to go on their own learning journeys, and to sponsor the programmes of change and work that need done. We need them to role model and hold to account the people who work for them around what we need to see in inclusive leadership. You can't affect that change solely as an ETI practitioner. You might have ultimate responsibility to deliver the programme, but you cannot deliver that with your own personal power and influence. You need the power and influence of people who can affect real change in the organisation. And for me, that's what stakeholder management is all about. It is a business skill. So if we think about an example when I worked in the commercial sector, one of the things that I wanted to bring about was to pre-networks or employee resource groups in the organisation that I worked in. So we had a parent company, and that parent company had networks, but the work that they did, the roles of people in those organisations were predominantly professional roles. So the lived experience of people in the networks and those leading the networks was very, very different to those inside the organisation that I worked with them because that was predominantly engineers, and we had cult centres in there as well. And we had some professional services, of course, but the lion's share was more front-line roles. So the networks were not speaking to those communities, the networks that existed. So what I wanted to do was bring networks into the space that supported communities of people who were in those types of roles that spoke to their needs, that spoke to their lived experiences. And that would help me understand if the strategies we had were the right strategies and really give voice to those people. I wanted to make that happen. However, in the role that I had, even though it was a senior role, I did not have the power to make that decision and affect that change myself. So I needed to understand who is it that has this power and can I influence them to agree with and support what I want to do here. So that was part of the initial strategy, was that actually we needed to create ways to understand, listen to and interpret measure of the employee experience to create the next level of strategy. So what I did is I thought about who's interested in this space and who has influence in this space to make the change happen. And I did a little bit of mapping around senior people. And I identified a number of people who were powerful enough to make it happen, given their positions in the hierarchy, but they weren't really interested. I did identify one senior HR director who I thought would be interested, but I would need to convince him that we needed to stand these up and why they were beneficial versus using what we already had. So the first part was mapping my stakeholders to identify the right people to help me. And the second part of it was about influencing. I needed to understand what would convince this person to support my agenda, to drive up inclusion. So that was not about speaking my language, it was about learning to speak their language. So for me, this is really critical in stakeholder management. You need to understand what's important to the person that you're speaking to and you need to help them understand that by supporting your agenda, it will further their agenda. So that's what I did in that space. It took a couple of months of convincing, it took a couple of conversations where I was learning what his reservations were, where he was coming from, and I was able to use all of that information to help me create an influential and compelling enough narrative for him to do this work. And I got his sponsorship, he then helped me get the sponsorship of the other senior people on the team that we needed. And then we made that change happen. So for me, stakeholder management was about identifying, mapping who could help, creating a strategy to engage that person, influence them, and be really clear about with them about what I wanted and why and how they could help me get it. When I moved into role as a senior consultant, I've done consultancy work with organisations across all sectors and driving real change in the space, how to apply stakeholder management there. Of all of the findings that we come up with in our work as consultants, all of the things that we find going on in organisations, there's always more to do than you could possibly do in one to three years. So part of prioritising what you're going to go after now, if you've got a real business head on here, part of prioritising what you're going to go after is what can you get these senior people to sign up to. So if there's 20 things you could go after, but you know that there are five things that will really affect positive change, and there are three of them that you think you could convince and influence your senior stakeholders to really get behind, that's the three to go after. Because if you're not having impact in this space, there's no point in going after it. So thinking from a management of stakeholder lanes about what's important to them, how you can influence them, really comes into play when you're trying to do consultancy work and trying to get people behind, advancing your inclusion agenda. Thank you, Carol. And I think there's something there around sometimes the challenges within inclusion work of that, you know, it feels sometimes deeply personal because it's people's lives and we may be personally committed to it, but also balancing that with the business case. And as you said, sort of moving into that business mind, I think that's one of the key challenges for a lot of inclusion professionals, particularly in their careers. How could someone go about moving into that business mind? So how could they go from being that professional activist that a lot of people are when they start in inclusion roles, through to being more business minded and pushing inclusion through that way? It's a really, really important reflection, and it's something I've been thinking a lot about recently, actually, in the work that we do. So let's not broad brush everybody to pigeonholes here, however, I am going to share my personal experience of working with lots of EDI professionals, working in senior roles and working with lots of senior stakeholders as well. And there's a bit of a difference in what brings us to the work. So for many EDI practitioners, what brings us to the work is the importance of the work to us. There is a value set there, there's a level of importance there that we have. Something from the heart brings us to it, okay? Leadership roles, conversely, often those who get into powerful positions in the hierarchy, it's been quite a cognitive thing for them, it's been business skills, it's been delivery of objectives, it's been focus on maybe financials or KPIs or the ability to drive results. So when we look at senior stakeholders, it doesn't mean that they don't have strong value sets, but it means that the approach, the skill sets, what they've done within their career, they're coming at things from a different perspective, oftentimes in an EDI practitioner. So it's almost like a cultural difference, it's about being able to learn the language of the person that you're engaging with, and not just assuming that your language and your narrative, what would convince you would convince them. So stepping out of that. And for me, it's all about impact, if we're coming at this from a value set perspective, we want to have a positive impact, but to have a positive impact in a world of powerful stakeholders who speak the language of objectives and KPIs and business outcomes and performance, we need to learn that language and be able to connect with them in a way that they will understand it. For me, it's about, and you know, this is something that we can all do as EDI practitioners, we can learn the business skills of how to apply them to advancing our agenda and meeting our objectives. So it's thinking a little bit laterally, you know, you've got the value set, you know why you're doing it, broaden your skill set and use those fundamental business skills to advance your agenda, the way that somebody does to advancing your agenda. Wonderful. And I think I'm going to come over to Michelle in a moment because we're talking about stakeholder management and obviously there's some strategies that are the same across all sectors, but then there's also unique challenges within specific sectors. So Michelle, what about stakeholder management in the sporting world? So I suppose in really theoretical management terms, stakeholder management is around the process of maintaining really good relationships with the people that are going to have the most impact in your work. So how you organise, monitor and improve relationships with the people that are going to have the biggest impact. But from a sport and physical activity perspective, that's very much ensuring that it's not just the usual people that we talk to. So ensuring that we're creating really strong relationships with communities that can help to diversify the voice and help us to understand how to best improve the offer that is available in the sports sector. And Sam, similar question over to you. What about stakeholder management in policing and emergency services? Well, I think my only caveat here, I obviously spent a long time in policing, so I'm not necessarily qualified to speak on behalf of all emergency services, but what I am learning is there are often some really strong parallels and similarities between all of the services. And I think to start, I should explain that when I was first invited to come and do this podcast, I really had to ask myself, hang on a minute, Sam, you know, what exactly do you know about stakeholder engagement or stakeholder management because it turns out that whilst I have actually done it all throughout my career, I just saw it as, right, I need to achieve this, who on earth do I need to go and speak to? Who on earth, you know, what doors do I need to go and knock on to actually make this happen? And now that I'm here, I obviously know that that is stakeholder engagement and latterly the management. But I've got to be honest, I don't really think in my opinion that it's any different in policing than it is in any other sector, to be honest. It's about identifying those key players who is going to be able to help me achieve this. And I suppose that is the one thing that can be tricky in policing. It will probably come as no surprise to any of you that policing is hugely hierarchical. You know, there are nine different ranks from an entry level PC all the way up to the chief constable, the top. So, you know, the first hurdle can be who on earth is the right person to actually be engaging with. Obviously, police forces can be varying in size, we know that, but they all tend to be large organisations. You've then got the geographical logistical issues that all the people that you need to speak to are scattered across your county. And within that you have people that all wear multiple hats at one time, you know, varying responsibilities all at one time. So actually identifying them and then managing to actually get an audience with them can sometimes come with its logistical challenges. But I think with that, a little bit of perseverance and a bit of tenacity goes a long way. And I think I realised that during my time in policing. And whilst, you know, Ariel, I apologise this isn't necessarily an inclusion example, but I think it illustrates really nicely that whilst not everyone has the power, you know, and if you link that to police forces, we normally, that's normally synonymous with rank. Okay. So whilst not everyone has the power, they can still have an awful lot of interest and influence on that given matter. And I learnt that in particular in my time in the training department. I was an acting police sergeant at the time. So if you look back to the nine ranks that I've just referred to, I was relatively low down the food chain. And I mean that with no disrespect to any fellow acting skippers out there. But I did hold three different training portfolios for our entire training department. So I was a little fish in a very big pond. I had a low rank, but I had a high amount of responsibility. And I soon realised that decisions were being made about these training programmes that was affecting me and my teams massively, but we were no part of the decision making process. The decisions were being made by those people in high positions of power. So they had the power, but they didn't necessarily have the knowledge of training that I did. So the whole process was disjointed. We weren't working in partnership and it was just, to be honest, it was more difficult than it needed to be. And I think this is where the little bit of tenacity came in because I thought, well, this has got to change. I'm clearly not engaging with the right people and I need to. So I reached out to everyone I could and I really worked hard to plan how I was going to use my knowledge to get myself a position on that board, you know, that decision making board where they were making the decisions that were affecting me. So after quite a few months, I must say, I used that position from training as my leverage and I actually earned myself a place on that board, bearing in mind this is a board comprising of very, very senior officers. And this was the first time that anyone had ever been invited from a training capacity, but by goodness, was it worth it? Because from then on in our collective goals were just far more achievable because all parties had a vested interest. We then built that positive working relationship and we had really good open lines of communication. So yes, it took a little bit of time, no doubt, but we were working collaboratively and we were far more efficient and effective. So I stand by my suggestion that I don't think stakeholder engagement or stakeholder management is any different in policing. You might not realise you're doing it, but trust me, you are, it's about identifying your key players, it's about understanding who you need to access to really drive that agenda forward and thinking best, you know, how can I influence them? How can I get myself a place at that table? Thank you, Sam. And Michelle, I'm going to come back over to you. So Sam talked about identifying key stakeholders, the challenges of that, and then getting into those spaces. How would someone go about identifying their key stakeholders within the sport world? That is actually the key challenge that lots of our partners that we engage with face. So the desire to diversify the offer in sport and physical activity is absolutely there. The recognition that sport and physical activity is not as diverse and representative as it should be is really, really clear from the stats that we see coming out on a UK level, but also globally. And that typically is because the workforce itself is not that diverse. It's improving. And Sam talked about kind of ranks. When you move up to a senior leadership C-suite, the level of diversity drops off significantly. And yet the vast majority of people who engage in sport and physical activity will never meet those people in real time. So the actual influence is the people that make the difference, the people that make or break your experience in sport and physical activity are not those people who are traditionally making the decisions. So when it comes to that engagement piece that you talk about, I'm finding those people, it's firstly about building trust. It's not about just taking from communities. It's about building trust with communities that typically have been disenfranchised, don't believe or trust in the system, don't even think that sport is for them. And it's helping them to see, based on their values, what the benefits are of that provision. And that might not be, do you want to be an Olympian or Paralympian or Commonwealth Games athlete? That might be, do you want to build better connections within your communities? Do you want to have some friends? Do you want to improve your mental health? Do you want some time for yourself? And I think traditionally sport has missed a lot of those really important things and focused very much on, well, there's a pathway and you can move through the pathway and of course you know why sport is good for you. And I think when it comes to that community engagement bit, it's about tapping into and really understanding the values of communities that you're engaging with. It's finding the right people within those communities as well. Community leaders, very often if we're talking particularly around faith groups, it's broker in conversations with leaders within those organisations that can help you to open doors and to have conversations or better still have those conversations for you because we're going to say it's a good idea, clearly, you know, because that's our job, but when you've got people who reflect your experiences and your values, talking about it, it carries so much more weight. And that's where you know, stakeholder management is, it's not just about extending the offer to more people, it's also about making a job a little bit easier. And it's about making sure that we do things with people, not to people. And with the best will in the world, we're trying to put on programmes that we think are appropriate for different communities, but very often that isn't our own lived experience, so we're not entirely sure. And it's that lived experience that is so important that we need to bring that to the table. It's about leveraging that diversity that is out there, but that means working really hard to build that. And it might not be as quick as just going around the table and having a conversation with, you know, Sam and Ariel and whoever else is there and saying, right, what should we do? It might take more time, but I can guarantee that you end up with better outcomes as a consequence of that engagement. I was reflecting my background within higher education and higher education is a really quick changing environment, and that can sometimes make senior leaders a little bit scared when it comes to inclusion and a little bit nervous, especially within higher education because things can be politically charged, sometimes that's the environment in which we work. So Kayla, I wanted to come to you to ask about how to manage sometimes nervous stakeholders when it comes to inclusion work. That's a great question, Ariel, and it's so common, isn't it? That fear of saying the wrong thing or being labeled something that you don't identify with. I think the first thing is to practice your skills of empathy. We all get things wrong. And in the inclusion space, especially when we're so personally invested, it can at times be so frustrating when somebody gets something wrong that we forget to stop and give them some grace because this is a, inclusion is a skill, ultimately, it's something we've all got to learn. And like higher education, inclusion is something that is changing and changing fast. So we're all still learning. And then layer over that, we're all coming from our own unique lived experience. So we're not going to understand where somebody's coming from straight away. That takes time and curiosity and cultural competence, so understanding differences between us all. So the first thing is, Brené Brown talks about giving people grace and giving yourself grace. So remembering that most people, most of the time, are coming from a good place and recognising that. And then the second thing is role-modelling the right approach. So here I would suggest things like vulnerability. So role-modelling that I, too, make mistakes, and that's a very normal part of working in inclusion. And if I am not willing to make those mistakes, then I am not going to learn and therefore I'm never going to reach the level of inclusion that we need. And along with that comes the role-modelling the approach to take when you do as a really seasoned inclusion expert, get it wrong. So that looks like acknowledging what was said or what was done that was non-inclusive. That looks like repairing whatever it was that you've done and working really hard not to do it again. And how does that play on to stakeholder management then? Well, simply put, the more we do it, the more our stakeholders see us do it, the more comfort we provide people to step into that space where it might be uncomfortable, it might be scary. But I can see that that kind of fear of getting it wrong and doing it anyway style approach is accepted here. And it kind of slowly but surely becomes culturally normal. And in your stakeholder relationships then you can have the really tough, sometimes conflict driven challenging conversations that are needed to create that space where everybody is psychologically safe, able to come be themselves at work. Carol called it the inclusion agenda, drive your inclusion agenda forward. So we've talked about the importance of positions of power and engaging leaders. So how do we influence those in such positions to support the inclusion agenda? Sam, I'm going to come to you first. What are your top tips in doing this? I think for me, I've already spoken about a little bit of perseverance and at times a little bit of tenacity can go a long way when appropriate. But I think for me, particularly when looking at the emergency services, is to not become fixated on the hierarchy. And it's very easy to do. You think you have to go to a person of rank. But I referred to myself as that little fish in a big pond. So I guess my top tip would be don't overlook the little fishes in your ponds. And actually, if you are that little fish, give yourself a little bit of credit because chances are you've got a huge amount of influence. So if you've got something to say, work really hard to get yourself a place at that table and say it. And Michelle, what about the sporting world? I think it can be really valuable to really understand what the key outcomes that your partners are looking for. So if you can analyze what their strategies are, if you can look at what outcomes they are trying to achieve and identify how you can lean into those as well, you're more likely to create a positive and powerful relationship that is a two-way relationship, not a one way street and I think sometimes we miss that I think sometimes it's like, well, you know, as I've said, I need to deliver on this and go, I'm going to come talk to you just about this thing. But if I can talk to you about how the work that we collaboratively and then we'll lean into both of our objectives, whether that is people development, community cohesion, health and wellbeing, whatever it might be, then we are more likely to come up with a really powerful relationship that is built upon trust, but is also a two-way street. So it's not just about taking from, and particularly I talked about community engagement before, it's not just about taking from communities, it's about giving back to. And I think sometimes we overlook that because we've got a goal and we've got probably time frames that we've got to work within and maybe funding partners that, you know, want to satisfy with specific outcomes, but it's more than that, it's about saying, you know, I'm building a strong relationship with you. And that's just about people. So you probably don't think about it as stakeholder management nine times out of ten, it's just connecting with people and with human beings, and with that is the getting to understand people piece of it as well. So what are their values, what are their biases, what are the things that make those individuals take, how do they best work and coming up with a framework that we know that we can stick to and fulfill both sides of our agreement in that mix. And Carol, what are your top tips on influencing those in positions of power to support inclusion? My top tips are, firstly, use the models. You know, people have done lots of thinking and lots of research. You're not the first person to have had this challenge. So rather than trying to solve it yourself, go and find out what other people have done and that will work, you know, what will really work. So go and learn skills around how to do stakeholder mapping, go learn the skills and get the tools around how to plot and create a plan for how you're going to engage in influence and maybe get some influencing skills training. That stuff's there for you to get your hand around. You don't need to navigate this, you know, without that support. So stand on the shoulders of those who've done the work before. Get the models, get the advice, use the skills and the tools to help you plot and plan your engagement strategies, your influencing strategies and do the work. Rather than just turn up and give it a try, I would always say, find out what works and use those frameworks to make you even more effective. And the second bit of it is really that holding the mirror up of where I'm coming from versus where somebody else is coming from and that humility to recognise that you maybe can't speak someone else's language right now, but if we really think about that from an inclusion lens, you know, that means that it's something that's important to us, learning to see things from other people's perspectives. Maybe just not be protected characteristically, but it is definitely coming up things from a different place. And then if you need to convince them, you're going to have to learn how to talk in the language that they're used to, that they're accustomed to, and that is going to convince them to support your agenda. And by doing that, it is going to give them things that they want. What's in it for me? And Kayla, finally, is our lead in this space. What are your top tips? Some of them are very similar to Carol's Ariel, so the first is take the time to plan. Some of us are good at just going into the moment, chatting to folk and getting them on our side, but it's rarer than you think, especially like Carol said, when you are not speaking the same language or your personalities aren't the same. So the first thing is that, who am I engaging with? Who are my stakeholders? Who do I need to manage? What do they need from me? And how am I going to engage with them? And that plan needs to be really nuanced and really robust. And Carol mentioned there are loads of models out there that will help you do those. But remember, one size fits one. So you need to be tailoring your approach to your individual stakeholders. The second, again, Carol alluded to it is develop your skills. So stakeholder management is underpinned by loads. Those are including, but not exclusively, empathy and trust building, listening and communicating. Carol mentioned implementing and I would always put storytelling next to that, which is such a useful skill when it comes to connecting other people with information and data. Brain does amazing things when you're listening to a story, but it would also include things like negotiation. So do you understand where you're willing to compromise? What your zone of possible agreement is, I think it's called in the negotiation sphere. And then it's also really tangible skills like project management. So if you've got lots of stakeholders, you're going to have to have a really robust approach to communicating and you're going to need to do that regularly and on time because as soon as that stuff starts to slip, trust starts to slip in you and your credibility starts to get lost. And a number of those and the models that Carol mentioned actually are covered within a couple of the CMI courses we run. So we're just about to launch and we're very excited about a stakeholder management for inclusion unit, which talks about how you identify your stakeholders, how you engage with them, how you create those really robust plans and some of those human skills or soft, I'm using air quotes here, soft skills that I've described. And it's also part of our level seven CMI qualification, which is called strategic approaches to equality, diversity and inclusion, EDI, which gets senior decision makers. So those people we know as inclusion is, we need to influence to start thinking about inclusion as an integral part of their strategy and included with that is some content on how as a senior person within your organization, you engage with your stakeholders. And then my final top tip is every time ensure that the right people are engaged with. So yes, of course, that always includes those senior people in your organization that set culture and drive strategy. But it also includes Carol mentioned it before, diverse voices. Because whilst we continue to do the work around diversifying our most senior levels in our organization, if we just manage those stakeholders and engage with those, we run the risk of not hearing the voices of folk within our broader organization who are most impacted by the work that we're doing. So always engage with people directly impacted by your work that might be utilizing your staff networks or an employee resource groups, it might be reaching out directly to colleagues affected by whatever it is you're working on to ensure that we're not perpetuating what we see at the moment, which is conversations in our broader sphere, political or otherwise, where a topic is being debated, transgender rights, for example, and a transgender person is not part of that conversation. It's not inclusive. And it's not going to come to the conclusions that are needed to create inclusive workplaces for those people. So time and planning, top tip number one, develop your skills, top tip number two, and ensure the right people are engaged with at all stages. Top tip number three. Thank you, everyone. And thank you, Caleb, for those final top tips. And I was reflecting there about getting more diverse voices to the table, to input on all those important decisions. In my background within the public sector, increasingly we're seeing more organisations, public sector organisations, engaging with service users and with students, people using their services. And that's also an amazing way to get feedback on your inclusion initiatives and really shouldn't be underestimated. And that brings us to the end of today's podcast. I want to say a huge thank you to Carol. Thanks, Ariel. Bye, folks. And a thank you to Sam. Thanks, Ariel. Bye, everyone. Over to Caleb. Thank you. Thanks, Ariel. Bye, everyone. And last but not least, a big thank you to Michelle. Thanks so much, Ariel. For more information about inclusion qualifications and tailored support on creating more inclusive workplaces, don't forget to visit our website at inclusiveemployeds.co.uk. You've been listening to Talking Inclusion with Ariel Chapman. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast, then please subscribe and leave a review from wherever you get your podcasts. Find out more about Inclusive Employers at inclusiveemployers.co.uk.