How do you reset a strategy and rebuild trust in DEI?

Challenge

The Board had approved a new multi-year DEI strategy – one designed to create a step change in how the organisation approached inclusion at every level. The next challenge was to bring that strategy to life across the organisation and communicate it clearly to external partners, suppliers and customers.

Our Approach

We worked with senior executives to develop a three-year change management strategy. The vision was to make DEI a core part of what made the organisation successful, and we’d achieve this by framing the conversation in a way that made people feel informed, involved and equipped to act.

Grounded the strategy in real insight

• We began by immersing ourselves in the organisation’s DEI history, future plans and the evolving external environment.
• This gave us a clear view of what had been tried, what was working, and where gaps remained.

Mapped audiences and engagement needs

• We segmented eight internal audiences by influence, comfort, and confidence with DEI and identified six key external audiences. 
• We interviewed leaders across functions and levels to understand current attitudes and blockers, and audited internal DEI communications to assess what was working and what wasn’t.
• For each group, we mapped out their specific needs and points of friction and identified opportunities to drive engagement

Developed a clear narrative and tailored messages

• Using the insights, we created a single, strategic narrative for DEI that could flex across the three-year roadmap. It positioned DEI as essential to performance and aligned to the company’s broader purpose.
• We developed proof points to ground the narrative in real business priorities and results. 
• We tailored the message for eight internal personas, ensuring each group, from the board to managers to employees, had a version of the story that felt relevant, clear and actionable. And we embedded principles of psychological safety to help leaders speak confidently about DEI with their teams.

Established senior leader training approach

• We identified capability gaps and designed a practical plan to build confidence among senior leaders.
• This included developing tailored training materials and creating opportunities for peer-to-peer learning and sharing, both within and beyond the organisation.

Established an employee engagement approach

• We analysed engagement data to understand where employees were most active – primarily in training and compliance channels rather than internal communications channels. 
• Then, we mapped opportunities to weave the DEI narrative into these high-traffic touchpoints.
• We also mapped key events and activations where the story could be reinforced, ensuring the strategy could be rolled out at scale without overwhelming the comms environment.

Established an approach to demonstrate DEI commitment to a broader audience

• We defined how the organisation could demonstrate its DEI commitment externally through consistent messaging to partners, suppliers and customers. 
• This included leveraging existing announcements, reports and events, such as financial results, regulatory and sustainability reporting, to highlight how DEI contributes to business performance, strategy and people outcomes.

Planned the launch and long-term activation

• We developed a detailed rollout plan for the FY27 strategy and a broader roadmap for the three-year action plan, including priority milestones and sequencing across audiences and channels.
• We helped the internal team set measurable KPIs to track awareness, engagement and adoption, ensuring there was a way to measure progress, not just intention.
• To build alignment, we hosted a 2.5-hour workshop to stress-test the strategy and finalise the launch and action plans.