To achieve a green and prosperous UK for all, Green Alliance aims to develop policy solutions that create a better future. As well as the environment, Green Alliance will consider people and social justice when designing environmental policies to bring about a fair green economic transition.
Green Alliance believes that an inclusive culture is fundamental for people to thrive, and feel valued and recognised. They value a diversity of perspectives and lived experiences to enhance their organisational culture and creative policy thinking.
The environmental and think tank sectors are among the least diverse workplaces in the UK. Green Alliance is committed to changing that, in both the way they operate and by exercising their influence.
They believe making progress on equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) is essential to their success and they recognise that this is a continuous process of improvement and learning.
EDI is important to Green Alliance because they want to:
- Design better and more effective policy solutions
- Be an inclusive and diverse organisation where everyone thrives
- Take action to change one of the least diverse sectors in the UK
2023:
To achieve a green and prosperous UK for all, we will develop policy solutions that strive to create and help embed better futures. As well as the environment, we will consider people and social justice when designing environmental policies to bring about a fair green economic transition.
We believe that an inclusive culture is fundamental for people to thrive, feel valued and recognised. We value a diversity of perspectives and lived experience which enhances our organisational culture and our creative policy thinking.
The professional environment and think tank sectors are some of the least diverse in the UK. We are committed to changing that, in both the way we operate and by exercising our influence across the sectors.
We believe that making progress on EDI is essential to our success and recognise that this is a continuous process of improvement and learning. EDI is important to us because we want to:
• Design better and more effective policy solutions
• Be an inclusive and diverse organisation where everyone thrives
• Take action in changing one of the least diverse sectors in the UK
Objectives
We are working to improve our EDI performance. This is summarised in five objectives for the two years from April 2023 to March 2025:
1. We will ensure that, as well as the environment, people and social justice considerations are embedded in their policy thinking, design and advocacy.
2. The diversity of the board and workforce will be increased and nurtured, especially regarding socio-economic and ethnic diversity.
3. They will build a more inclusive culture at Green Alliance. They define this as welcoming people from all backgrounds, experiences, identities and characteristics, enabling our employees to feel that their differences are valued.
4. They will listen to a diverse range of people and enable a greater platform for underrepresented and lesser heard voices across their internal and external work.
5. They will play an active and collaborative role within the think tank and environment sectors to increase diversity and inclusion.
In 2022 we:
• Appointed an EDI Champion on our board of trustees.
• Integrated our commitment to diversity and inclusion into our published 2021-2024 organisational strategy.
• Engaged with external consultants to develop our EDI Strategy.
• Contributed to and actively engaged in sector-wide EDI initiatives and working groups, including signing up to The RACE Report.
• Piloted a new recruitment process to help remove bias from decision making.
In 2023 we:
• Delivered the first nine months of a two-year Action Plan on EDI.
• Actively engaged with external EDI initiates, including the RACE Report, Diverse Sustainability Initiative and the Link EDI group.
• Contributed to research on EDI led by Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.
• Carried out research into how we can improve wider engagement in policy development, leading to recommendations which will be rolled out in 2024.
• Updated our Workplace Adjustments policy to provide greater clarity and support.
• Engaged the whole team in neurodiversity training.
• Increased the diversity of our applicant pool for the graduate scheme and continued use of anti-bias recruitment process
• Delivered seven ‘lunch and learns’ with the team in EDI related topics and three staff social activities connected to celebrations for different communities.
2024:
In 2024 we plan to:
• Identify actions to progress our work on anti-racism; where appropriate forming task and finish groups to lead on activity, as this has been a successful mechanism for delivery.
• Complete a review of our organisation-wide recruitment process. Aiming to improve the diversity of the applicant pool, track our success in retaining diversity through the recruitment process and ensuring a warm welcome to new starters of all backgrounds.
• Engage the team in training on being and active bystander (allyship), inclusive recruitment and other topics as identified.
• Launch a podcast series on engaging lesser heard voices in policy development.
• Host a webinar on ‘Putting Fairness at the heart of climate action’, with follow-up events dependent on feedback.
• Raise funds to increase participatory research techniques in projects where behaviour change is part of the policy recommendations.
• Recruit some new trustees following updated guidance on increasing diversity and removing barriers to access