Business drivers for investing in diverse talent San Johal Executive Director of HR & OD

Our drivers for diverse talent Business growth, organisational transformation We want more talented people from different backgrounds and demographics to join us and stay with us We are committed to being a client that leads by example. Make the point about diversity of the organisation having a good foundation, our journey in the last two years in particular have been around the so what question? Having employees from a broad range of backgrounds is not enough, what happens to people when they become part of the system and what happens when we have performance conversations, make talent decisions and make opportunities available, how are they being treated. Put simply for us, if we can build a leadership and management team that can lead and manage (speak to people) in an inclusive manner, create systems to enable that, we end up with a high performing and engaged workforce which creates a high performing culture. Given what we have to deliver and how that will increase, this is the route to success for us. But the system needs to have this aim at their heart too otherwise the two things are in contention, ie. An inclusive manager working with a non inclusive enterprise wide system will eventually revert to type and lose the battle/resilience needed to do the right thing, the right thing being inclusively. Leads to the work we have done to review our own recruitment practices so that we can remove the system barriers and better enable inclusive practices (next slide).

Recruiting for success We are serious about securing the talent we need to deliver our ambitious programme We asked an inclusive recruitment specialist to come in and take a thorough look at our own recruitment practices and tell us where we need to improve our practice to recruit more inclusively We invited our supply chain to open up their recruitment practice to the same scrutiny. We are preparing now to go for inclusive recruitment accreditation in 2018 We are changing as a result and using our influence to change the sector too

Early & diverse talent careers.highways.gov.uk/ Investing in early talent/diverse people Women returners programme 5% club Highways England is growing and can offer great career opportunities Refer to