Who we are is how we’ll grow

No-one has been left untouched by COVID-19. But the impact has not been equally felt. Women, people with disabilities, those from ethnic minorities and those from socially disadvantaged backgrounds—all groups that were already under-represented in the UK workplace—have been hit hardest.

Emerging evidence indicates that mothers are more likely to drop out of the labour force, young people are more likely to be furloughed, and people with disabilities more likely to be made redundant.

Now, as Covid-19 continues to spread and play havoc with every aspect of our everyday lives and every dimension of the UK economy, we risk those pre-existing faults becoming deeper, and creating an employment crisis that will affect millions of people.

Workplace culture enhances innovation and growth

Over the past three years Accenture has studied the impact of workplace culture on employees and shown the power of culture in addressing inequality. In more inclusive cultures ALL employees are more likely to thrive and advance. The ability and willingness of an employee to innovate, what we call their ‘innovation mindset’, is closely linked to how inclusive their workplace culture is. In fact, a ten percent improvement in workplace culture is associated with a ten percent increase in innovation mindset.

According to our analysis, if all UK companies were able to improve the inclusiveness of their workplace by just ten percent then the resulting uplift in innovation mindset among their employees could increase UK GDP by up to 1.5% each year.

Businesses need to have a relentless focus on inclusion moving forward. From every aspect of how they run organisations from restructuring, training, to our workplaces and recruiting.