How To Set Your Organisation Up for Failure!

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Written By admin

On January 22, 2025

Focusing on Diversity and Not on Inclusion? How To Set Your Organisation Up for Failure!

Diversity and inclusion have a wide range of business benefits, with numerous studies outlining how creating environments embedded with EDI (Equity, Diversity, and inclusion) is essential for business success. However, when approaching the topic, organisations often focus solely on diversity, leaving inclusion out of the equation. Let’s be clear: If this is your approach, you are wasting your time.

Without inclusion, focusing on diversity does not work. That’s because for a diverse workforce to succeed, they need an inclusive culture which caters to their needs and uplifts them with the conditions to work their best. But let’s face it - companies love to tout diversity stats without addressing the systemic issues. Inclusion isn't about token hires or photo ops; it's about tearing down the barriers that keep diversity from thriving. That’s why organisations that prioritise an inclusive environment will see an array of benefits, allowing them to stand out in a competitive marketplace, ranging from improved business operations to financial impact and a healthier work environment for their employees.

How do diversity and inclusion differ?

Diversity refers to the different characteristics of employees that make them unique. It encompasses a spectrum of differences, including age, race, disability, gender, sexual orientation, religious, political, and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Inclusion refers to the conscious efforts, behaviours and policies that allow individuals to feel heard and valued with their unique differences. To be inclusive, a workplace needs to focus on making employees feel accepted, appreciated, and engaged. Inclusion encompasses our behaviours and that of those around us.

What are the business benefits of effective EDI?

Increased Financial Performance– Evidence-led EDI focusing on inclusion is the best-kept hidden secret in generating profit and will have a major impact on your company’s financial performance. Companies more ethnically diverse are 35% more likely to outperform their industry median. Other research found that companies with poor overall diversity performed 25% worse on average financially. It’s clear that organisations need to diversify their workforce for bottom-line impact, so they will need to get real about inclusion to retain them!

Increased Team Effectiveness and Performance - It’s no surprise that when employees feel valued and included in the workplace, they perform to a higher standard. In one global survey by Boston Consulting Group, diverse management teams reported 19% higher innovation revenue than teams lacking diversity. In other research published in Innovation: Management Policy and Practice, levels of gender diversity were analysed across 4277 companies in Spain, with results showing that women were more likely to introduce radical innovations into the market across a 2-year period.

It Mitigates Risk and Boosts Reputation - A study by Weber and Shandwick found that 80% of employees believe that diversity and inclusion improve the reputability of organisations among their customer bases. It’s in the interest of companies to be inclusive so they can mitigate any risk of discrimination which could impact their company legally and the frame of their reputability externally. Incorporating inclusive practices will sway the perceptions of their organisations positively and allow their operations to resonate with customers.

It Reduces Staff Turnover – When employees feel their needs are being met, they are more likely to remain engaged and committed to the organisations they are working for. In a report by Better Up, it was found that when staff feel valued, sick days decrease by 75% and their intentions for staying with their company saw a 50% increase. Inclusion therefore plays a pivotal role in the retention of staff and their valued skill set.

The evidence is clear that this topic should never be a side project for organisations. Yet, despite the evidential social and financial impact, many organisations focus on diversity and forget the importance of inclusion. Auditing for inclusion and creating effective strategies will transform corporate cultures, by attracting diverse talent and excelling your business operations. Don't wait until it's too late, now is the time to use inclusion in securing the long-term success for your organisation.

The Article

Let's be honest about what happens in most inclusion strategy meetings. Someone presents a slide about engagement scores. Someone else mentions that the values poster needs updating. A third person says, with commendable optimism, that they're 'making progress.' Then the CFO asks: 'What's this actually costing us, and what are we getting back?' Silence.

This is where Return on Inclusion® comes in. And it's why your finance director is going to love it almost as much as your Head of DEI.

So, What Is Return on Inclusion®?

Return on Inclusion® (RoI®) is the world's first methodology that measures the commercial and cultural impact of inclusion investment with genuine financial precision. It was created by Dawn Hurst, Co-Founder of EA Group, over 20 years of research and practice — and it won the PwC Innovation Award. It's not a survey. It's not a maturity framework. It's an audit that speaks the language of business.

The methodology assesses 150 data points across 20 organisational domains — covering everything from pay equity and leadership representation to staff retention, procurement diversity, and innovation metrics. The result is a monetised ROI figure: how much value your inclusion investment is generating, and how much it could generate if you got serious about it.

"The Global Mentoring Programme was by far one of the best growth journeys I've taken in my entire career."

— Gianfranco Bianco, Global Web Business Analyst, Sandvik Coromant

The Numbers That Make CFOs Pay Attention

Across clients including SSE, thyssenkrupp, Royal BAM Group, HSBC, and MUFG, the Return on Inclusion® methodology has delivered:

An average 19x return on every pound invested in inclusion
Current trajectory clients averaging £8-10 return per £1 spent
Clients on a focused strategy reaching £19+ per £1
Validated results across 35 countries and 4,000+ organisations

SSE discovered they had already returned £4.52 for every £1 invested — and that with a more strategic approach, they could reach £15 per £1. That's not sentiment. That's the language boards speak.

"The work points out explicitly that SSE has returned £4.52 for every £1 invested in inclusion initiatives. But we also learnt that by implementing a more strategic approach, we can aspire to returning £15 for every £1 invested. This is very compelling evidence for a value-focused organisation."

— John Stewart, Director of Human Resources, SSE plc

How Is Return on Inclusion® Different From Standard DEI Metrics?

Standard DEI metrics tell you what your workforce looks like. Return on Inclusion® tells you what it's worth. The difference matters because:

Headcount diversity metrics don't reveal whether your inclusion investment is generating commercial value
Engagement scores don't tell you whether inclusion is reducing attrition or increasing innovation
Maturity frameworks don't give you a monetised ROI to defend at board level

Return on Inclusion® does all three. It connects inclusion data to business performance, so you're not arguing from principle — you're arguing from evidence.

The Metimur Platform: Self-Service Return on Inclusion®

Historically, a Return on Inclusion® audit required EA Group's consultants and budgets starting at £50,000. Metimur changes that. The platform puts the same PwC award-winning methodology in your hands as a self-service audit tool. You run it yourself. You get the same rigorous 150-point assessment. You receive a board-ready report with your monetised ROI across three scenarios — starting from £5,000 per year.

"Return on Inclusion® gave us the clarity we needed to make meaningful change across all four of our divisional businesses and increase staff retention and colleague engagement."

— Shelley Caton, Director of Inclusion and Diversity, BAM UK & Ireland

Who Needs to Read This

CHROs and HR Directors who need board-level justification for inclusion spend
CFOs and Finance Directors being asked to sign off DEI budgets
Heads of DEI who are tired of being asked to prove their value in engagement score terms
CEOs navigating ESG reporting requirements that increasingly demand inclusion data

If any of those sound like you, you're in the right place. And if you want to see the numbers for your organisation specifically, the Metimur platform can produce them in days — not months.