Diversity is not a competition but a goal that will only be achieved through combined efforts and partnership

Arup

In January 2019, we published our equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) strategy, “Total Inclusion”, which set out our four strategic aims to deliver clear and tangible objectives and targets for our entire organisation to achieve. In 2022, whilst we are still focusing and evolving our efforts around delivering against our four strategic aims contained within our Total Inclusion strategy, our immediate priority actions directly respond to our key findings in our employee Inclusion Survey, employee diversity data trends and consultation with our under-represented groups – these are as follows:

1. A new and more transparent approach to promotions
2. Investing in developing more BAME leaders
3. Investing in developing a Reciprocal Mentoring scheme
4. Setting ethnicity aspirational goals to improve representation at all levels
5. Leadership accountability for driving and delivering EDI across our organisation

Ashden

Ashden's mission is to accelerate transformative climate solutions and build a more just world. Our awards, events, networks and analysis support climate innovation in the UK and developing countries around the world.

In 2022:

Agreed that as an organisation we will the Applied platform for all recruitment, increased the diversity of our judging panels and carried out our first DEI survey which we will use to benchmark our progress.

In 2023:

2021 Awards Cycle - Ashden’s Green Communities Award- taking an inclusive approach

The environmental and sustainability sector is the second least diverse sector in the UK economy, and this is something that Ashden wants to change. The Green Communities Award is a new UK focused award for Ashden. We wanted to specifically reach out to organisations who are engaging diverse audiences on climate change. If we are going to achieve a just transition for people, then we need to engage more diverse communities and perspectives to inform a diverse range of solutions.

To help shape the award process we engaged with external voices and actors who represent diverse communities. We wanted to make sure that we weren’t creating barriers to participation and that the awards process would be of value to those involved, so that even the winners benefited from the process. Promoting inclusion is something new for Ashden so we want to learn from organisations who are often excluded in the environmental sector.
What did we do?

We invested time in finding and reaching out to organisations working with diverse groups, using our network of past award winners and harnessing the power of Twitter and LinkedIn to identify organisations and their followers. We invited 26 community organisations to participate in the design of the award process. We reviewed our understanding of ‘diverse groups’, and allowed organisations trusted in underrepresented communities to shape the application process, award criteria and what benefits the process could offer. We decided to offer applicants the option to apply either in writing or an alternative form such as video or podcast after community voice from underrepresented groups suggested that more traditional written application forms tend to favour predominantly white organisations with greater capacities. We also reduced the number of award-specific questions applicants needed to answer by 50% to encourage more organisations to apply.

What was the outcome?
10% of applications received for the award were video and/or audio-based and we found that this medium gave an easier and more tangible way to learn about the applicant and their work. We found that breaking down barriers to applying improved the quality of the applicant field. Of the 6 video/audio based applications we received, 5 reached the longlisting stage, Many of the organisations submitting a video application said they wouldn’t have applied otherwise; this importantly included a neurodiverse applicant. Going forward we will allow applicants to apply in non-written form across all of the UK awards for 2022 and are investigating suitable ways of doing this for our international awards too.

We set up the Green Communities Learning Network and have run two webinars which have been deeply engaging and well-attended. Our first event focussed on how climate action community groups could better engage diverse audiences, giving us the opportunity to platform some of the underrepresented climate voices we came across during the Award research and allowing for their methods and best practice to be adopted further afield.

Astutis

We are committed to driving positive change within our own business, our partner and customer community through the promotion and delivery of environmental and sustainability skills training.

Banka BioLoo Limited

Diverse Sustainability is not a mere Initiative at Banka BioLoo. We live and practice diverse sustainability every day, at all work sites – making it more of an attitude and a habit.

We shall uphold the diversity of age, class, caste, race, religion, ethnicity, immigration status, ability status, sexual orientation, and most importantly, gender in our policies and practices.

We commit to diverse sustainability internally and externally - in recruitment, promotion, pay and everything else; and very importantly, in our solution delivery to the varied users.

We, already, profess diversity in our work. We'll, further, strengthen it.

Bat Conservation Trust

In 2022:

• Adding EDI to our risk register and for the issues to be considered at both senior management and trustee meetings. EDI is now a standing item at both senior management and trustee meetings. It has also been added to the risk register.
• Undertaking a survey of staff, trustees, members and other volunteers to understand the current make-up of our workforce and supporters. We have now completed survey of staff, trustees, members and our citizen science volunteers, and have done a follow-up survey of staff, which included data provided to the Race Report.
• Reviewing our recruitment/induction processes and implementing changes to make them more inclusive. This will be an ongoing process but we have made a number of changes to our recruitment processes. This includes changes in the way the JD is presented (learning from the Race for Nature Kickstart scheme), not requiring a degree where it is not really needed, and advertising more widely.
• Providing placements for three Kickstarters via the partnership Race 4 Nature. We have provided two Kickstart placements to date. The shortlists for these roles had no people of colour in them despite our best efforts. However, both placements focused on increasing our work to be more inclusive and reach a broader set of people, and we learnt a lot from the placements.
• Providing unconscious bias training for our staff. Most line managers attended the unconscious bias webinar, but for all staff we have decided to prioritise anti-oppression training in the coming year, which will include work on unconscious bias.
• Adding WCL anti-racism statement to our website and speaking out more about our work on diversity. Statement added. Diversity mentioned in our annual report and review, as well as at our national conference (including a panel discussion on EDI).

In 2023:

- Implementing Year 1-2 organisational actions from the WCL Route Map
- Continuing to implement improvements to our recruitment processes to encourage more applications from under-represented groups
- Implementing monitoring systems and contributing data to the RACE report
- Rolling out anti-oppression training for BCT staff
- Providing placements through the New to Nature role and a funded internship for Project Nightwatch.

British Trust for Ornithology

In 2022:

Make Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) more visible on our website - DONE

Add EDI to our risk register - DONE - Governacne and N&N now GS&I has oversight and includes 2 EDI expert Trustees, re trustee recruitment; Board engagement; regular updates from Management)

Provide more EDI resources to support managers with recruitment - DONE - IAT tests and guidance are sent to every recruiting manager and we work closely with recruiting managers and panels

Introduce blind applications for short-listing all jobs - DONE - we use TALOS which goes further than anonymising CVs

Provide unconscious bias training for all BTO staff - IN PROGRESS - using the IAT test + this will be an element of Anjana's training

Collate baseline information on the diversity of staff and applicants - DONE - we collect for all recruitment and for staff via the RACE report

Consider ways to capture baseline information on the diversity of our supporters and volunteer surveyors - IN PROGRESS -under new strategy/JNCC

Commit to hosting at least one Kickstart internship - DONE -and now we have a 'new to nature' one

In 2023:

Make Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) more visible on our website

Continually review EDI status on our risk register - regular updates to Board and Finance and Risk Committe (part of Board) from Management

Provide good EDI resources to support managers with recruitment

Blind applications for short-listing all jobs

Promote our use of the disability and BAME confident recruitment scheme

Provide unconscious bias training for all BTO staff

Collate baseline information on the diversity of staff and applicants

Capture baseline information on the diversity of our supporters and volunteer surveyors

Commit to hosting at least one 'New to nature' internship

Develop and implement an EDI Action Plan

Bumblebee Conservation Trust

The Bumblebee Conservation Trust was established because of serious concerns about the ‘plight of the bumblebee’. In the last 80 years our bumblebee populations have crashed. Two species have become nationally extinct and several others have declined dramatically. We have a vision to create a world where bumblebees are thriving and valued ensuring our future food security.

In 2022:

We continued to implement and plate targets to our Acton plan, Submitted data to the Race Report, sit on the Advisory Board to the Race for Nature. Worked with Wildlife and Countryside Link on their EDI roadmap and subsumed it into our action plan. Attended Youth and environment services meeting, led on the Rethink nature EDI forum, developed an internal EDI staff group. Developed and sent out tender to EDI facilitators for a training/conversation for Trustees and Senior Managers to take place in June 2023.

On our website we have an EDI statement: https://www.bumblebeeconservation.org/how-we-are-run/

In 2023

To ensure that our stakeholders and staff and Trustees continue to drive EDI as per our action plan.
To ensure our redeveloped recruitment process provides more accessibility to all and entices more applications from diverse groups

Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management

In 2022:

CIEEM has been working with our members to raise awareness of Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) issues within our profession. We have undertaken two workshops looking at barriers to inclusion in the sector and published the final report ‘Breaking Down the Barriers to Inclusion’. Actions identified through this work, together with data from our members survey have been synthesized to prioritise an Action Plan based around seven areas of progression.

In August 2022 CIEEM appointed a dedicated Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Engagement Officer who has been coordinating CIEEMs work with partner organisations. CIEEM has been undertaking collaborative work through The RACE Report and Wildlife and Countryside Link’s Route Map towards greater ethnic diversity the environment sector. CIEEM has been working alongside partners from RSK, ARUP, WSP, Green Environmental Consultants, Mott MacDonald and Atkins to develop engaging and inclusive STEM career resources and training for our members. It is aimed that members will deliver these resources across the STEM schools network, reaching beyond our usual networks.

This feeds into a key progression area which CIEEM has been focusing on in 2022 namely the pathways to entry into our profession. In October 2022 CIEEM launched the Green Jobs for Nature Website which is packed full of useful information and showcases the range of opportunities available for people of all ages and backgrounds wanting to enter our sector.

Alongside this CIEEM have been reviewing our membership application and assessment processes, as well as our professional development activities, communications, governance and recruitment. We have Published four blogs and three articles on aspects of D&I within the sector.

Diversity and Inclusion is included as part of our Championing Change Strategic Goal in CIEEMs Strategic Plan. D&I has been on the Board agenda every other meeting and has been discussed by our Advisory Forum and Fellows Forum.

In 2023:

CIEEM will continue working with our members and partners to raise awareness of Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) issues within our profession.

We will run workshops and social media engagement with our partner organisations focusing on issues relating to D&I in our sector. This will include additional promotion around the Green Jobs for Nature website, to achieve this CIEEM will be hiring a Green Jobs for Nature Outreach Assistant through the New to Nature scheme.

We will continue to keep progress on our Championing Change Agenda visible.

We will give members a voice on this issue through blogs, vlogs, social media and by dedicating the September issue of InPractice solely to ‘Diversity, Accessibility & Capacity in the Sector. This issue will explore the people element of our profession. We aim to promote submissions on improving diversity and inclusion in the sector, removing barriers to enter the profession and creating new routes into the sector, addressing capacity issues and skills shortages in the sector, and improving the status and standing of the profession.

We will continue to be a part of change

City to Sea

In 2022:

1. Increasing staff confidence and competence regarding diversity issues and creating the conditions to diversify our staff, board and volunteers by attending team-wide quarterly training sessions from EDI experts in the environmental sector. 2022 focus areas include: Intersectionality, Decolonialising Environmentalism, Inequalities faced by LGBTI persons and persons with disabilities.
• Last year we did not undertake any EDI training that we paid for but we did undertake biannual team wide Intersectionality training utilising Break Free From Plastics webinar resources on topics listed above.
2. Conducting quarterly monitoring of team satisfaction with our diversity & inclusion actions.
• Conducted biannual surveys not quarterly
• Survey revealed an 80.39% team satisfaction rate regarding our diversity and inclusion actions.
• In 2nd survey of 2022 added new question about belonging: I feel that my identity and background is valued and welcomed at City to Sea.
• This showed that 33.3% Strongly agreed // 53.3% Agreed // 13.3% neither agreed nor disagreed, giving an overall rating for this particular question of 86% satisfaction
3. Having annual diversity targets for our staff and board.
• We have benchmarked our team diversity twice. In 2019 and in 2022. We have benchmarked our Board diversity once in 2022.
Targets 2019
• Team: 5% increase of ‘non-white, non-female and 45+ year old employees
• Board: comprised of at least: 16% identifying as BAME, 15% as identifying as disabled, 50% as identifying as non-male and 1 member as under 30 and 1 member as over 60 and 10%identifying as LGBGTQQI+
2022
• Team (based on applying 5% increase year on year of these three areas rounded up to nearest decimal point) non white: 3.5% non-white, 18.5% non-female, 8.1% 45+ years old
• Board: (same target as in 2019) At least: 16% identifying as BAME, 15% as identifying as disabled, 50% as identifying as non-male and 1 member as under 30 and 1 member as over 60 and 10%identifying as LGBGTQQI+
Team Diversity
• 2019
• non white: 3%, non-female 16%, 45 years old+ 7%
• 2022
• non white: 6.25%, non-female 25%, 45 years old+ 18.75%
We have therefore exceeded our targets in all areas.
Board Diversity
2019
Not measured
2022
• 66.7% identifying as BAME, 33.3% as having a specific learning disability, other disability, impairment or health condition, 33.5% male, none under 30, none over 60 and 33.3% LGBGTQQI+
We have therefore exceeded targets regarding ethnic and gender identity. We have also exceeded targets set if we broaden our definition of disability to include identifying with ‘a specific learning disability, other disability, impairment or health condition’. We have not met our targets regarding age.
4. Working with diversity experts and influencers to ensure our campaigns have the best reach to inspire and diversify the movement and sector at large.
• We have concentrated on creating inclusive and diverse ethnic representation in our campaigns.
• We have undertaken to measure this by benchmarking how reflective of diverse audiences our supporters perceive our campaigns to be. We are waiting for our 2022 survey results.
5. Considering diversity and inclusion in the identification and screening of all new partners to create awareness and shared commitment across the supply chain.
• We have not achieved this.
6. Implementing a ‘guarantee for interview’ to all candidates who identify as having a disability or from a minority ethnic group.
• We have implemented this.
• We have also introduced an equalities monitoring form for recruitment applicants
• We have tracked that on average 44% of those applying for a new role have engaged with our voluntary equalities monitoring form. The results from these 44% of applicants show that:
BAME Identification: average across: 30%. Disability Identification: average across: 4.60% Age 16-25: average across. 15% Age 25-34: average across 35%Age 35-44: average across.23% Age 45-54: average across

In 2023:

1. Increase staff awareness, confidence & competence regarding diversity issues in the environmental sector by offering at least biannual team-wide training sessions.
2. Conduct biannual monitoring of team satisfaction with our diversity & inclusion actions.
3. Benchmark extent to which our team feel a sense of cultural belonging and inclusion with our new biannual pulse question about belonging.
4. Aim to increase our team diversity by 5% in these areas:
• 6.6%+ team identifying as from a Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic background.
• 26%+ team identifying as a non-female
• 19.7%+ team identifying as 45+
• 4.8%+ team identifying as having a disability, based on this definition: a specific learning disability, other disability, impairment or health condition
5. Aim to have equivalent proportions of board diversity across our existing and new CIO board:
• 16%+ identifying as BAME, 15%+ as identifying as disabled, 50%+ as identifying as non-male and 1 member as under 30 and 1 member as over 60 and 10% identifying as LGBGTQQI+
6. Reflect diversity including ethnicity, gender, age, disability representation across our campaigns and content.
7. Offer a ‘guarantee for interview’ to all candidates who identify as having a disability or from a minority ethnic group.
8. Sharing our learnings via the Diverse Sustainability Initiative (DSI)
9. Having an annual, ringfenced EDI (Equality, Diversity and Inclusion) consultancy / training budget.
10. Participation in Bristol’s ‘Black and Green’ initiative providing pro-bono mentoring for ambassadors.
11. Participation in the annual RACE survey.
12. Annually benchmark out team and board diversity

Costain

Costain is a technology-based construction and engineering company operating across the aviation, defence, energy, highways, rail and water sectors. We deliver a broad range of innovative services across the whole life cycle of our clients’ assets through the delivery of integrated consultancy, asset optimisation, technology, and complex delivery services. Our purpose is to improve people’s lives by helping to connect and keep the nation moving; keep water clean and flowing; power communities sustainably and keep people safe. Being a responsible business underpins everything that we do.

In 2022:

We made our EDI commitment at the start of 2022 and have held several workshops chaired by Costain’s Group EDI Manager throughout the year. The aim of the workshops was to gather the thoughts and opinions of the attendees to shape the direction of our EDI Action Plan for Environmental and Sustainability staff. Several actions (mostly focused on recruitment) arose from the workshops which we have been working on addressing. For example, we reviewed recent job adverts against the IEMA article ‘Dos and Don’ts When Creating an Inclusive Job Advertisement’ and are updating the job advert template based on the findings to make it more inclusive.

In 2023:

We commit to further developing our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan for Environment and Sustainability staff throughout 2023. We commit to obtaining baseline data to assess our current inclusivity and to identify areas of improvement and actions to create a more inclusive culture.

Crowberry Consulting Ltd

We operate to ISO9001 Quality Management Standard and are a Lancashire Skills Pledge provider, as well as a Chartered Environmentalist Employer Champion. We are a women owned/LGBT business and work to ensure that our opportunities to join our team are promoted to BAME, women and LGBTQIA applicants consistently.

In 2022:

During 2022 we worked with both Lancaster University and University of Liverpool to offer paid summer placements. We were fortunate to recruit a talented person of colour to one of these positions. We continue to be a part of the Lancashire Skills Pledge, committed to offer apprenticeships, student placements and internships each year to upskill Lancashire. We also Joined Out Britain the UK First LGBTQIA Chamber of Commerce, and we won Best Collaboration with University of Liverpool at the National Undergraduate Awards as a SME provider of internships and PGR placements for over 7 years. We won highly commended SME Employer of Apprenticeships at the North West Regional National Apprenticeship Awards. We won the SME Lancashire Apprenticeship awards category. We continue to offer opportunities for under represented groups and all backgrounds to join our team at Crowberry Consulting Ltd.

In 2023:

For 2023 we aim to recruit at least two people of colour/under represented groups to our team as paid internships, student projects or year in industry roles as part of our growing sustainability services we provide to clients. We will continue to work with local colleges, Universities and providers to help us communicate our goals on EDI. As a micro SME we are fully committed to EDI in our business being a women owned LGBT business.

Derbyshire Wildlife Trust

In 2022:

We will build awareness and foster an inclusive culture by listening, learning and being honest. We will ensure everyone feels valued, accepted and enabled to reach their full potential without pressure to conform.

• We have reviewed our key organisational company documents. We have developed an active feedback loop that has allowed the organisation to listen, learn and act. The lived experience of colleagues has contributed to policy development, review and key organisation decisions, such as:
 Trailing a 9-day fortnight
 Pay Policy
 Flexible working policy
 Bullying and Harassment policy – zero tolerance.
 Real living wage employer accreditation
 Disability Confident Employer
 Mental Health First Aid training across the organisation
• We have a dedicated inclusion manager and have launched a staff network which has supported in producing an organisation wide action plan with accountability to Senior Leadership and Board.

We will work to reduce the barriers that prevent people accessing nature. We will ensure more people from diverse backgrounds are accessing and engaging with nature in Derbyshire.
• We are connecting with a range of communities through our Wilder Wellbeing and Communities work. Some of the community organisations worked with include Derby Refugee Forum, Derbyshire Mind, Women’s Work and Royal Crown Derby. We are listening and acting.
• We have launched projects such as Nextdoor Nature and Team Wilder, designed to work with individuals and community groups to help nature flourish on their doorsteps.
• We have begun the work needed in making our spaces accessible to all, assessing our nature reserves and working with universal design in mind and practise.

We will ensure Derbyshire Wildlife Trust has a wide range of opportunities for people from all backgrounds to gain work experience and skills in nature conservation.
• The use of early career programmes such as working for nature and our early talent stream of work experience, trainees, interns, and placements has allowed us to welcome even your diverse voices and minds to the Trust, allowing us to shift barriers to employment within our sector.
• In the last year we have had over 20 opportunities created across the organisation for traineeships, placements and internships.
• Additionally, we have recently completed a 4-year project alongside two other Wildlife Trust organisations designed to train 24 people with no previous experience or qualifications in the sector. The individuals developed hands-on practical experience and vital professional skills to help take that first step to a career in conservation.

We will ensure we have a diverse workforce, Board, volunteer and supporter base that is more reflective of the communities that we serve.
• We have addressed and reviewed our recruitment practices and have learnt and continue to learn from expertise to allow us to confidently say we practice inclusive recruitment within our organisation.
• Inclusion training has been undertaken by Trustees and staff
• We have improved our data collection and monitoring practices on EDI

In 2023:

We have three key priority areas, we want to achieve the following three objectives…

Be an organisation that represents our communities within Derbyshire and Derby City.

We want everyone to feel celebrated, recognised and valued.

We want inclusion to be our everyday, to be at the heart of what we do.

Earthwatch Europe

Earthwatch Europe is an environmental charity with science at its heart. We drive the change needed to live within our means and in balance with nature. We do this by connecting people with the natural world, monitoring the health of our natural resources and informing the actions that will have the greatest positive impact.

In 2022:

We're making great progress. Our working group meet monthly and are really pushing things forward, and our Trustees are very engaged and committed to bringing about real change. Specifically:
1) We have added new questions to our annual staff satisfaction survey to help us monitor how welcome staff feel and how able they are to be themselves. We continue to score very well in the survey.
2) Our HR department continues to work on the details of our recruitment processes and have made a number of changes.
3) Our Trustees have signed off on our priorities and themselves are focused on the next round of Trustee recruitment with diversity being a major priority.
4) We have written and published a Gender Equality Plan
5) We have hard-wired a focus on working with disadvantaged and marginalised communities in urban areas into two of our programmes, both of which seek to bring nature closer to these communities. One of these programmes has secured substantial funding. The other is a key focus for our fundraisers.

In 2023:

Our commitment to 2023 is to deepen our work to connect disadvantaged urban communities with nature. We believe that this is one of the most fundamental things we can do to improve racial diversity in the environment sector in the long run.

ECIU

The Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit is a non-profit organisation that supports informed debate on energy and climate change issues in the UK.

Climate change presents important challenges and opportunities to Britons in the decades ahead, while the choices we make on energy have implications for society, the economy and the climate system. We believe that debates on these issues should be underpinned by evidence, and involve the full range of stakeholders.

We support journalists, parliamentarians and other communicators with accurate and accessible briefings on key issues, and work with individuals and organisations that have interesting stories to tell, helping them connect to the national conversation.

In 2022:

We successfully recruited for a young early-career minority ethnic intern in early summer last year and engaged her on several substantive projects contributing to our programmes of work; one of her pieces of briefing is on our website and was quite heavily used for briefing purposes ahead of, and during, COP27. As an organisation, we undertook some introductory training looking at individual and structural bias in the context of the duties and requirements of the Equality Act. From that, we then began working with a consultant to review our recruitment processes, in real-time, as we began hiring for two new roles. That is ongoing, and has involved a mix of practical advice and help, and additional training specific to how we go about recruiting new staff from a more diverse range of backgrounds. As we have worked through our planning processes this year, we have begun a review of the people we work with as senior associates and on our advisory board, seeking to broaden the diversity of both; that work continues. Whilst we have nominated a member of staff to be a champion for diversity and inclusion, we have yet to do that at board level, and we are still in the process of working through how we learn from the work we’ve been doing already to build equality, diversity and inclusion more routinely into all of our planning, risk and PDR processes. But the process has already initiated a discussion about framing a set of organisation values and purpose, which will be an important step in building EDI into our reporting, planning, and how we present our commitment publicly for those who seek to work with us or for us over the coming year. And finally, we have yet formally to share more of what we have been working on with partner organisations, but we have been making connections, seeking and sharing advice, where others are working on similar.

In 2023:

• We will continue to revise and change our recruitment processes, embedding learning from live recruitment processes into new procedures and policies to help guide all future recruitment in the organisation.
• Continue our work with consultants to help us to ensure that we are doing all we can to best retain, support and develop those we recruit, so that our commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion does not stop at recruitment.
• Conclude the current review of our associates and advisory board to bring in new and more diverse voices to work with us as spokespeople and experts on specific projects, and to advise and guide our work from the advisory board. We seek to ensure that the board at least reflects the make up of society in terms of the Black, Asian and other minority ethnic members.
• Continue to seek and undertake training to help staff to: embed our commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion; to work to remove structural bias; to build diversity and inclusion into our communications; and to make it core to our planning, risk, funding and performance appraisal processes.
• Nominate a member of our board to champion and lead on diversity and inclusion.
• Communicate this commitment and work to other organisations in our sector with whom we work particularly closely, with a view to encouraging others to sign up to this initiative, and work with us on elements of these commitments.
• Offer another paid internship this summer, particularly welcoming candidates from groups under-represented in our sector: those from a Black, Asian or other minority ethnic background; those from a socially or economically disadvantaged background; and those with a disability.

Ecobirmingham

We are a sustainability charity, supporting greener, fairer and healthier communities in Birmingham. We deliver a range of activities from cycling, education, community gardening, and sustainability action planning.

In 2022:

The progress we have made against our commitments between joining the DSI in July 2022 and January 2023 are set out below.

22-23 Action: Regular progress reports (every 6 months) to the People Committee of our Board reporting progress against the DSI actions in our annual business plan. Progress - actions for 22/23 agreed, in annual plan, and progress reported to Board

22-23 Action: Pictures of staff and board on our website to be transparent about diversity of organisation. Progress - not yet completed, but latest 21/22 impact report published in Sept 22 includes a range of ethnicities, genders and ages engaged in environmental action

22-23 Action: Recruit new trustees based on skills gap, including access to a range of networks across the city that represent more diverse communities. Recruit a young Trustee Board member (22-30). Progress - Board and volunteer open day held in July 2022, generated interest but no applicants. Will try again in 2023.

22-23 Action: Case study of working with a partner to reach a diverse audience. Progress - worked with local community partners in Sparkbrook and Sparkhill to deliver local cycling, route finding, and childrens activities for women from a largely muslim and south asian heritage. Case study yet to be written up. Worked with multi-faith partner to deliver energy and environmental advice to over 12 different places of worship and faith communities. Case study yet to be written up.

22-23 Action: Undertake staff training on how to listen and engage with different diverse audiences. Progress - training not yet held, engagement events being piloted, included one with different faith communities in December 22.

22-23 Additional Action: Identified by our People Committee during a 6 month progress review. Ensure consistency of current good practice in job recruitment (description, recruitment networks, opportunity to talk to recruiting manager about role, equalities monitoring, blind shortlisting etc) is also being applied to our other recruitment type processes for Trustees, volunteers, and associates.

In 2023:

We will seek to continue to make progress on our initial commitments in 2022 around Board recruitment, staff and board pictures on our website, case study of working with local partners in diverse communities, staff engagement training, and an internal review to ensure our good practice in recruitment and monitoring is also applied to other forms of recruitment for the organisation.

Energy Confidence with Phil Beardmore

I have oodles of experience in:

• energy saving advice to householders
• energy saving advice to small businesses
• strategic environmental consultancy
• helping to develop new environmental and energy saving projects.

In 2022:

I decided that I could achieve more by working with others than I could on my own as a sole trader. I was contacted by BRIG (Birmingham Race Impact Group) who wanted to set up an environment sub-group, and asked me to get involved. So I did, and was part of a steering group and in November 2022 we held a very successful mini-summit - https://www.wearebrig.co.uk/po...

In 2023:

To continue to contribute to the BRIG environment working group https://www.wearebrig.co.uk/bl... is going to be the most impactful thing that I can contribute to.

Environmental Services Association

In 2022:

ESA has promoted best practice diversity initiatives through the publication of case studies in our annual report. We have also reviewed our recruitment process, including where we advertise roles, and equal opportunities policy to ensure that we continue to receive strong applications from a diverse range of candidates.

In 2023:

Continue to promote best practice diversity initiatives from across our industry in our annual reports.
Review our Rules to ensure that these encourage diversity of participation across our Member groups.

Fit For Purpose Consultancy Ltd

Fit for Purpose is a boutique sustainability consultancy, and our mission is to help businesses to lead through purpose. We help businesses of all sizes identify the positive contribution they can make to people and planet, and then work with them to broaden and deepen those positive impacts, whilst also reducing or eliminating the negative impacts. Our role is to bring purpose to life through identifying key actions businesses can take, and helping them listen and respond to the needs and expectations of a broad range of stakeholders, from customers and staff to the communities where they operate.

In 2022:

We made two main commitments. The first was to offer mentoring to at least one sustainability professional or aspiring professional from a diverse background. This was achieved in early 2022 when our founder managed to secure a mentoree through the ICRS's programme. The second commitment was to focus on increasing the % of our client projects that included insights and recommendations for how they can address Diversity and Inclusion in the strategy projects we run. In FY21 25% of our projects resulted in clients' setting new D&I targets or commitments for their companies as a result of our recommendations and insights. In FY22 this rose to 33%.

In 2023:

In FY23 (starting in April) we will again challenge ourselves to offer mentoring for 1-2 people from diverse backgrounds who want to enter or progress in the sustainability sector. However, our most significant area of impact is through our clients, so in FY23 we intend to focus on training and skill expansion for our consultants to help us take more more Diversity and Inclusion specific consulting projects which we hope in turn will result in more of our clients setting themselves more ambitious targets in this area.

Frefort Consulting

Fredfort Consulting is a management consulting company providing corporate strategy development based on derived data- based business insights and research. Effective strategies are not only developed but implemented to ensure effectiveness through monitoring & evaluation activities. Fredfort Consulting is incorporated as a registered Nigerian company in December 2020. Fredfort Consulting is set up to provide the following services:

• Business Consulting

• Corporate Strategy Development & Implementation

• Data Analytics & Business Intelligence Services

• Business Development & Management Services

• Research & Advisory Services

• Learning & Development (LD) We will earn the trust of everyone impacted by our operations, demonstrating our commitment to ethics, diversity and human rights through our words and actions. This includes working to ensure the health and safety of our employees, and promoting societal benefit through community investment activities.

FSC UK

The Forest Stewardship Council ® (FSC®) UK is a registered charity dedicated to promoting responsibly forestry and helping to ensure Forests For All Forever.

FSC UK would like to make a public commitment to work towards improving diversity within the environment and sustainability sector, and among environment and sustainability professionals.

We have added the issue of diversity to our risk register
We have reviewed our recruitment processes and now remove names from application forms
We signed up to the Race Report

In 2023:

• Develop an Equality, diversity and inclusivity policy and make this visible on our website
• Provide unconscious bias training to line managers
• Ensure application packs use inclusive terminology and do not overstate the skills/experience required for a role
• Explore a greater range of advertising media, and particularly social media, to reach a more diverse talent pool
• Continue to anonymise applications
• Collate data on diversity of staff and applicants
• Continue to learn from others

Green Alliance

Green Alliance is an independent think tank focused on ambitious leadership for the environment. We are committed to meaningful change to become are more diverse and inclusive organisation and to improve diversity in the wider environment sector. Over the next six months, we will:

In 2022:
We have...

- 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 a two-year EDI Action Plan.

- Contributed to and actively engaged in sector-wide EDI initiatives and working groups.

- Piloted a new recruitment process to help remove bias from decision making

In 2023:

We are currently finalising our EDI Action Plan for 2023-2024 and will share our key actions once the plan is complete.

Greenheart Consulting

Greenheart is a Certified B Corporation full-service social & environmental impact consultancy dedicated to helping companies integrate regenerative thinking throughout their business model.

We specialise in B Corp certification and re-certification, impact strategy & governance and environmental & supply chain sustainability management.

In 2022:

We...

- Created EDI parameters for our recruitment strategy and hired an external consultant to improve our process.
- Developed a process for posting job openings so that all job descriptions are reviewed against language bias, mention a salary range, and clearly state which skills are essential and which are desirable.
- Introduced questions in the candidate application form, and a short task for candidates qualifying for a second interview, to allow applicants to demonstrate their skills regardless of their level of experience as per their CV.
- Organised different interviewer panels for each interview round and introduced an interview scoring system to reduce risks of unconscious bias.
In addition to the above, we also:
- Signed up to the RACE Report, aligned our internal EDI survey to the guidelines and submitted our data in support of greater transparency in the sector.
- Acknowledged ‘Resilience through Diversity’ as a branch of the company’s Impact strategy and developed a roadmap of initiatives for the coming year(s).

In 2023:

Focussing first on our inner journey, in 2023 our main priority is to make Greenheart a place of authentic belonging, ensuring the contribution of global voices and thinking to our work.
To this end, we commit to:
- Rolling out a comprehensive EDI training for our team along with facilitated discussions to share takeaways and embed them in our ways of working.
- Organising conversations with external speakers to enrich our thinking thanks to voices of lived experience.
- Keep conducting our annual EDI survey, submit data to the RACE report, and publicly report on our target of +90% positive responses to inclusion questions.

We have now appointed a mentor to challenge and guide our leadership team, and we commit to making resources available to get this critical feedback on our strategy and approach going forward.

Besides, we recognise that our core services are only available to the privileged and that we therefore have a responsibility to bring our knowledge and networks to a wider audience of changemakers. In 2023 we will launch an equity pricing program. We will offer discounted rates (up to 50%) to individuals from underrepresented or underprivileged backgrounds, or to organisations owned and led by such individuals, assuming they are aligned with our mission and values. We will measure the success of this program by annually reporting the number of projects under this scheme and their satisfaction survey responses.

GS2 Partnership | Global Sustainable Search

We are an executive search firm focusing on the sustainability profession. Led by a person of colour, we believe strongly in transforming the sustainability sector, by encouraging and supporting individuals from diverse backgrounds into the profession.

In 2022:

We will uphold our commitment by ensuring that all of the searches we conduct on behalf of our clients are diverse. We challenge the norm and hold our clients to account, to encourage diverse thinking within their recruitment processes
[all client delivered have achieved specific diversity goals from our clients]

We train our clients in unconscious bias interviewing, along with working with them on their diversity goals.
[Each executive search mandate we deliver includes the option for our clients to learn and we guide them on this journey]

We established a mentoring programme for future leaders within the sustainability space, with a focus around diverse candidates and individuals pivoting into the space.
[This programme will be established in 2023]

In 2023:

We will establish a mentoring programme for future leaders within the sustainability space, with a focus around diverse candidates.

Hope Solutions

Hope Solutions is a leading sustainability consultancy and solutions provider for international businesses, projects and events.

Hope Solutions is committed to improving diversity within the environment and sustainability sector and among environment and sustainability professionals.

In 2022:

Successful flexible working model - Implementation is ongoing as new starters join but feedback from employees during quarterly reviews is encouraging to hear that hybrid working and optional flexible hours allows them more flexibility in their day/week to manage their workload and our client’s expectations with success.

Company recently undertook an internal strategy and values meeting to review both our company and individual employee team members values, motivations, boundaries and expectations etc, to align on an agreed vision, missions and values.

On our last recruitment round candidates were screened and assessed on skills, experience and best fit for the job role requirements in order to reduce any unconscious bias. We would like to take this a step further in future recruitment to explore anonymised applications.

Reviewed all employee salaries to date and adjusted accordingly in line with experience, training undertaken and their position. There will also be continuous reviews as we onboard new staff and as individual staff knowledge develops to maintain pay equity. This is in addition to ensuring all staff and regular subcontractors receive the real living wage (as a minimum).

Begun to engage a handful of clients with ED&I and social sustainability alongside their carbon reduction targets. We would like to increase the reach of this this further this year.

All employees undertaken a unconscious bias training webinar, with 1 employee going further and completing a short CIPD course: Inclusion & Diversity Introductory Programme.

Helped developed a programme with an external colleague for a client to look at providing internships, by looking at ED&I from a grassroots level within their organisation and event. This would include engaging organisation's on best recruitment practices, as well as ensuring mental health and welfare support throughout for the successful applicants.

In 2023:

Hope Solutions is committed to improving diversity within the environment and sustainability sector and among environment and sustainability professionals.

We endeavour to maintain our commitments we made in 2022. In addition targeting some of the action points we didn't achieve and aim to improve on. We acknowledge that we are on a journey with ED&I and are developing our knowledge and continually learning to ensure a more equitable workplace and industry.

1. Complete an internal assessment of of our internal company structure, looking at core demographics to better understand our data and position in order to create an appropriate action plan

2. Developing a Company ED&I action plan through collaboration with diverse voices and experts.

3. Flexible working to support employees and working parents to strike the balance between work and home life.

4. Providing leadership opportunities for all employees with a focus on ED&I

5. Removing barriers to employment and exploring options for anonymised recruitment to reduce unconscious bias

6. Speaking up and providing a platform for colleagues to share their lived experiences as well as bringing in other voices

7. Working alongside others to introduce a mentoring scheme for female and non-binary professionals as well as those who identify within minority groups

8.All employees will receive the real living wage (as a minimum) from hire, reviewing all salaries annually to ensure we’re maintaining salaries in line with cost of living /inflation

9. Continuing to maintain pay parity for all staff according to position, by reviewing regularly and revising accordingly.

10. Embedding diverse practices into stakeholder engagement activities for clients to ensure an inclusive process from the beginning whilst consulting on their sustainability strategies.

11. Provide ED&I workshops and training for the team and increase staff competence around ED&I discussion

IEMA

What IEMA have done:

Recruitment:

• All candidates who attend an interview will receive feedback either directly from IEMA or via the recruitment partner.
• Two stage interviews by different interviewees to ensure that it is fair.
• All our recruitment adverts include an inclusivity statement, and we follow guidance to ensure that our adverts are inclusive in regards to the language we use.
• We undertake a salary benchmarking exercise every 3 years to ensure all our roles are paid competitively and we pay particular focus on gender differences to ensure that everyone is paid equally.
• We ensure for each role we recruit there are specific skills, experience and person criteria which form the basis for assessment in the interview process to ensure objectivity.
• We ensure our recruitment practices and assessments are free from bias or discrimination by having more than one interviewer in the process when making hiring decisions and we have clear objective selection criteria for each role.
• IEMA has adopted an approach whereby if we have two equally qualified candidates at final interview, and one is from a diverse or disadvantaged background and one is not, we would treat the former candidate more favourably by offering the job to them in order to encourage more diversity into the organisation.

Other:

• Added diversity to our internal risk register.
• Contributed time and funds towards research on the current diversity data in the profession.
• Contributed resources and funding towards the Diverse Sustainability Initiative.
• Ensured that interns receive full pay to encourage diverse candidates and offer a fair opportunity.
• Put together a guiding principles document for all staff to ensure that our organisation and its culture are as welcoming and inclusive as possible.
• Monitoring and improving the diversity of IEMA’s webinar panellists and event speakers to ensure that those given this platform are representative of different identities and cultures.
• Captured diversity data via our state-of-the-profession survey and created actions based on the survey results.

IEMA’s 2023-2024 commitments

Accessibility-

• Ensure that our virtual meetings and webinars are digitally accessible for our members and stakeholders by asking for communication preferences beforehand. By the end of 2024.
• Ensure that all our virtual meetings and webinars include closed captions by the end of 2024.
• Ensure that the sign-up process for new members is accessible to all by surveying new IEMA members. By the end of 2024.
• Ensure that all IEMA staff refer to a compulsory digital accessibility checklist before hosting a meeting/ presentation. By the end of 2023.
• Ensure that our digital transformation project addresses any concerns or limitations for those who may struggle with digital accessibility. By the end of 2024.

Representation-

• Begin capturing diversity data from applicants for steering groups to ensure that we are reaching a diverse audience. By the end of 2024.
• Ensure that our image bank contains images of different underrepresented groups, to ensure that this is representative of our membership. By the end of 2023.
• Ensure that where relevant, talks hosted by IEMA address worldwide problems and encourage members to consider the impact on underrepresented communities. By the end of 2023.
• Add a diversity statement to all our steering group advertisements and speaker advertisements. By the end of 2023.

IEMA staff-

• Ensure that ALL IEMA staff have received training in allyship, anti-racism and unconscious bias. All new staff will be required to complete compulsory e-learning on the above subjects to ensure that all staff support an inclusive environment. By the end of 2023.
• Ensure that staff are aware of the different disabilities, visual & hearing impairments, and neurodiversity so that the team better understand communication styles, how that might impact discussions/ emails and how best to be understanding and inclusive of this. By the end of 2024.

Recruitment-

• Continue to make efforts to ensure our job adverts are available and accessible to diverse communities and we will continue to explore groups and organisations to partner with that actively support marginalised or underrepresented communities. By the end of 2023.
• As we develop our website, our aim is to create a candidate landing page where we will be able to include our Diversity Policy and further details and insight about our culture at IEMA. By the end of 2024.
• We are keen to join the Government’s Disability Confident Scheme , committing to offer an interview to people who self-declare as disabled, if they meet the essential criteria to encourage more disabled workers into the workplace. By the end of 2023.

What IEMA are doing in response to the state of the profession survey (2022)-

• We will ensure that our ‘How To Series’ addresses topics that members have marked as barriers, such as ‘lack of self-confidence’ especially by women. By the end of 2023.
• We will trial a small-scale mentoring programme to support IEMA members of colour by the end of 2024.
• We will actively encourage more women and other underrepresented groups to speak at IEMA events by sharing speaker opportunities on a wider scale. By the end of 2023.
• We will ensure that the Green Careers Hub begins to address the ‘unclear pathways’ into the profession by sharing case studies by people in the profession and their journeys. By the end of 2023.
• We will ensure that we continue to host a networking session for underrepresented groups for IEMA members at IEMA connect, to allow the opportunity to network with one another and discuss barriers openly. By the end of 2023.
• Ensure that the Green Careers Hub is inclusive by embedding an EDI (equality, diversity and inclusion) strategy. By the end of 2023.
• Advertise the DSI’s people of colour network more widely amongst IEMA members. By the end of 2023.

Alongside our commitments, we will ensure that we take on board any feedback received via the DSI’s people of colour and LGBTQ+ network and continue to listen to feedback from our members.

We will also continue to submit our data through the RACE Report to ensure that we are transparent about our diversity data.

Lou Chiu Coaching and Consultancy Ltd

In 2022:

I've been able to work with one organisation so far, providing training and recordings for an IEMA member.

In 2023:

Lou is a Culture and Relationships Coach and Consultant, specialising in supporting aspiring allies, individuals and organisations. As a sole directorship company, Lou applies trauma-informed and allyship values to her practice and work within organisational cultures.

Her contribution to the Diverse Sustainability Initiative includes:

- Enabling DSI members to reach their EDI goals by offering one complimentary one-hour support call. This can be booked using this link: https://calendly.com/louchiu/d...
- Communicating options, approaches and support exclusively for DSI members by publishing a list of services by February 2023.
Contributing to collective knowledge for DSI members by publishing four blog posts and two webinars in 2023.

National Forest Company

The National Forest Company is responsible for leading the creation of the National Forest, working in partnership with landowners, businesses, public, private and voluntary organisations and local communities to deliver and champion the shared vision for the Forest.

In 2022:

In the past year, the National Forest Company (NFC) has made significant improvements in monitoring the diversity of those we support, which will allow us to better understand the demographics we’re currently serving and therefore potentially under-serving. A Board level EDI champion has been agreed, and the diversity of Board members enhanced through recent appointments. All staff were offered mental health first aid training, and staff wellbeing in all its forms has been given more prominence in the new Safety, Health and Wellbeing group that has been set up. The NFC also held an organisation-wide workshop on what accessibility to the Forest means to staff and their work programmes, which provided a springboard for future work in this area. This has already resulted in a broader range of audiences receiving grant support.

In 2023:

The National Forest Company commits to offering specific and detailed EDI training to all its staff and Trustees in the coming year. We will also use the enhanced diversity monitoring to check whether the demographics of those we support fully represents communities within the Forest. Any gaps in representation will be identified and strategies identified to engage any under-served groups. The NFC has also been working on a new website which will be launched in 2023 and will be accessible to all, clearly outlining our commitment to EDI. In addition, a more diverse group of voices is being used as part of NFC communications to better reflect the range of audiences across the whole of the National Forest.

Society for the Environment

In 2022:

A review of the Standards (Chartered Environmentalist (CEnv), Registered Environmental Practitioner (REnvP) and Registered Environmental Technician (REnvTech) have been carried out by SocEnv Registration Authority across the three registration levels from the perspective of maintaining standalone identity but also facilitating progression, now migrating into individual Practice Directions.

The bulk of the work is reflected in the competences of the Practice Direction, with a change made by removing ‘written’ for specific requirement for evidence that applicants submit, to open up the opportunity for more diverse range of submissions in the future.

In 2023:

Guidance material and workshops on the Standards are to be rolled out to Licensed Members in 2023.

Students Organising for Sustainability UK

In 2022:

SOS are committed to making sure our organisation is a sector leader on diversity, inclusion and equality. Externally this has meant being at the forefront of the Race for Nature program, facilitating the process by which envrionmental organisations could attract recruits from backgrounds previously excluded from the sector. Additionally we have run and implemented the Race Report, seeking better transparency and inclusion practice in the sector for people from racially or ethnically minoritised backgrounds. We internally foster a culture of inclusive practice throughout our staff and management. In practice this means constant review of our recruitment practice so that we are actively seeking candidates for vacancies from as wide a demographic pool as possible. A separate Inclusion directorate is responsible for this work and we are accountable to a diverse board who challenge and empower the team to always improve. We are committed to ensuring that people with protected characteristics are proportionally respresented at all levels of the organisation. We are currently outperforming the rest of the sector on gender and race.

In 2023:

We commit to continual review of our inclusion and diversity practice, by empowering staff to speak honestly when they see bad practice or would like to improve our current systems. We are committed to ensuring our organisation is respresentative of British society as whole in line with the protected characteristics laid out in THE Equality Act (2010). We will continue to provide safe spaces for discussion, criticism, idea-generation for members of staff with protected characteristics such as race, gender, sexuality and disability. We will continue to work hand in hand with partners both institutional and individual to create greater transparency and action within our own organisation and the sector in general.

Sustrans

Sustrans is the charity making it easier for people to walk and cycle. We connect people and places, create liveable neighbourhoods, transform the school run and deliver a happier, healthier commute. Sustrans works in partnership, bringing people together to find the right solutions. We make the case for walking and cycling by using robust evidence and showing what can be done. We are grounded in communities and believe that grassroots support combined with political leadership drives real change, fast.

In 2022:

- We have commissioned ENEI (Employers' Network for Equality and Inclusion) to do a Diversity & Inclusion audit of Sustrans. This audit commenced in November 2022 and is due to be completed in February 2023. Actions and recommendations from the audit will inform our 23/24 Business Planning.
- We have reviewed our Race Equity Action Plan in light of progress against the actions outlined in the plan thus far, as well as emerging findings from the Diversity & Inclusion audit.
- We have organised a series of EDI Leadership Masterclasses, online and open to all colleagues, from January to March 2023. The first speaker was Tufts University Professor Julian Agyeman who discussed environmental justice; the second speaker will be Rachel Laurence, Deputy Chief Executive at the Centre for Thriving Places, who will share her expertise on active travel and wellbeing economies; the third speaker will be Ayeisha Thomas-Smith, Executive Director of the New Economy Organisers Network, on power and privilege.

In 2023:

We will prioritise and progress key actions and recommendations from the ENEI Diversity & Inclusion audit. We are in the process of assembling an EDI Board, featuring DIrectors and members of Exec, to gain buy-in from senior leaders in the organisation, drive action to advance EDI in our workplace, as well as build in accountability.

The Coal Authority

We’re united in our passion and commitment to make a better future for people and the environment in mining areas. We carry out a wide variety of essential services from responding to coal mining hazards, to keeping people and the environment safe from mine water pollution. We are excited about what our future holds. Our work is helping to develop a new sustainable source of renewable energy for the UK. By harnessing the energy from mine water heat, we hope to play a key role towards helping the UK to meet net-zero emissions by 2050. We truly are a supportive organisation where we all live and breathe our values. We are inclusive, trusted and progressive in everything that we do.

In 2022:

Over the past year we have made positive progress on our commitments to improve ethnic diversity within the environment and sustainability sector by;

• Creating and publishing an Antiracism Plan 2022 -25 with our Race Equality Network, People Team and Executive Leadership Team to help us address racial equality, diversity and inclusion issues and become an employer of choice for people from ethnically diverse groups.
• Reviewing our recruitment processes and taking steps to remove opportunities for bias and actively attracting candidates from underrepresented groups. This has included anonymising all CVs and application forms during the shortlisting process, ensuring inclusive language in our job adverts, promoting family friendly and flexible working and expanding where we advertise our jobs to more targeted media to reach a wider pool of candidates e.g. Race Equality Matters jobs board.
• Supporting the development of our Race Equality Network which has continued to evolve and held variety of events throughout the year to support education and engagement of colleagues and leaders on race equality issues, including a number of inspirational keynote speakers, hosting the ‘Digging Deeper’ Black Miners Exhibition showcasing the history of Black miners and connecting colleagues through food and culture 'fuddle' events.
• Introducing voluntary Pay Gap reporting for ethnicity, disability and sexual orientation to help us better understand, measure and address inequality where it exists in our workforce.
• Introducing an Executive Race Sponsor to support strategies for success in delivering our vision for becoming an actively antiracist organisation.

In 2023:

The Coal Authority make a public commitment to work towards improving diversity within the environment and sustainability sector by;

Implementing our Antiracism Plan 2022 – 2025 to help us achieve our long term vision of being an antiracist organisation, where people from ethnically diverse backgrounds feel psychologically safe, are represented across our organisation and we are seen as a leader by our communities, partners and contractors.

During 2023 we will;

• Introduce antiracism and race equality training for all colleagues to help us better understand and address the impacts of racial inequality and have more courageous conversations about racism.

• Introduce a guaranteed interview scheme for ethnically diverse candidates who meet the minimum criteria for a vacancy.

• Pilot a reverse mentoring scheme to help build awareness of barriers faced by ethnically diverse colleagues, build inclusive leadership capabilities and approaches and empower diverse talent.

The Conservation Volunteers

The Conservation Volunteers (TCV) is a charity that connects people and green spaces to deliver lasting outcomes for both.

In 2022:

The Conservation Volunteers' (TCV) strategy - For people and green spaces: a thriving network for everyone - contains three strategy goals, one of which is dedicated to equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI):

TCV Strategic Goal 3 - We will support more diverse audiences to connect with green spaces. Everyone deserves to have nature in their lives. We will create safe, welcoming spaces for people who face barriers to accessing green space, especially those who could benefit most, and make our activities relevant and accessible for communities in which we work.

Our Goal 3 lead is our Head of People Services who chairs our EDI subgroup and regularly reports progress to TCV's Leadership Team and Board of Trustees.

We are working in partnership with the Employers Network for Equality and Inclusion (enei), a not-for-profit organisation that helps employers build and maintain diverse teams and inclusive cultures. TCV commissioned ENEI to complete a diversity and inclusion audit to identify gaps in our practice and include short-, medium- and longer-term recommendations. Using these recommendations, we have:

1) Formed and supported our EDI subgroup
The EDI subgroup has members of staff, self-selecting from across the UK, with lived experience and direct delivery responsibility. We hold monthly meetings that focus on practice sharing, focussed on specific groups, for example asylum seekers, LGBTQ+ and People of Colour (POC), creating a safe space to learn and develop our EDI plan. Engagement is good with evidence of open and honest dialogue and increased understanding.

2) Developed our EDI action plan
An EDI action plan has been produced based on the recommendations from the enei audit and including a focus on leadership and accountability, communication and engagement, and improved data collection. The plan also brings together our commitment to allied initiatives like DSI and the Wildlife and Countryside Link Route Map.

3) Data
We have improved our data collection using a digital format for volunteer EDI information. We have also included EDI questions in our annual employee staff survey.

4) Training
enei have provided 2 online Anti Racism training sessions reaching 60 TCV employees.

5) Campaigns
We have actively developed campaigns and toolkits linked to Pride, Black History Month and Disability Awareness.

6) Communication
We have shared practice examples from across our teams and communicated the learning from these to TCV colleagues including a presentation to our Board of Trustees.

In 2023:

1) We will support the development of our EDI subgroup, consolidate the progress we have made, and develop the members to become EDI champions.

2) We will work to understand more about the data we have collected and its implications, and the impact of our improved communications, and share practice and learning to build confidence across TCV.

3) We will continue to work with ENEI to implement and track the progress we are making against the recommendations and our EDI action plan.

4) We will deliver more specific EDI training sessions supported by ENEI. We have plans to begin 2023 with a focus on Neuro diversity as this was identified as a priority need via staff feedback.

5) We will build on our existing projects to ensure each TCV region/nation has a project with a specific EDI focus.

6) We will increasingly engage with our Board of Trustees ensuring they have opportunities to see Goal 3 in action and understand their role in enabling TCV to achieve our shared ambitions.

The Institution of Environmental Sciences

In 2022:

In February we published the results of a research project into the experiences of ethnic minorities in the environmental sector. We held a webinar in March, attended by stakeholders from across the sector, to provide an overview of the report and featuring guest speakers involved in the project, with the opportunity to ask questions to the report authors. This report will provide a research basis our future work around EDI.
We continued to participate in the Professional Bodies Diversity and Inclusion Progression Framework to measure our own progress.
We published diversity statistics of our membership in our annual report. This showed even binary gender split and that 9.7% of our members with a UK address identified as being from an ethnic minority,
Our CEO acted as an advisor to the Race Report.
We updated our accreditation criteria to the new ES3 benchmark, with EDI criteria now being part of the assessment process.

In 2023:

We will be launching Phase 2 of our diversity work for the sector looking at placements, targeted professional development support, mentoring and ambassador schemes.

The Orchard Project

The Orchard Project is the only national charity solely dedicated to the creation, restoration and celebration of community orchards. Our vision is to bring orchards into the heart of every urban community. We prioritise working with marginalised communities in areas of urban deprivation where people have poor access to quality greenspace.

The Orchard Project is committed to creating resilient biodiverse orchards teaming with wildlife as much as we are committed to creating diverse organisations. We need everyone’s voices, strengths and solutions to help create an equitable, resilient sustainable society.

In 2022:

Our EDI programme includes:
• Delivering funded training programmes to help people get jobs in the environment sector. E.g. our CICO (Certificate in Community Orcharding) course offers bursaries to people of colour, people from minority ethnic backgrounds or who are ethnically diverse. We have had a huge success rate with these courses, with a third of participants progressing into work or further training.
• Feasibility work with new partners who are led by people of colour, minority ethnic backgrounds or ethnically diverse people to develop orchard programmes that better reflect need in these communities.
• Introducing blind recruitment to overcome our unconscious biases. We track diversity data through each recruitment round to identify where we can improve our processes.
• Improving the language and where we advertise for staff and trustees to make our recruitment process more accessible. Our recruitment criteria is based on experience rather than academic qualifications and we recruit using sites specialising in helping organisations become more diverse.
• We have proactively sought to increase the diversity of our board, both in race and other demographic metrics such as people on low incomes. In Dec 2022, we finished a round of recruitment and have 6 new trustees who will be joining the board over 2023. The new trustees offer fresh perspectives in terms of lived experience of race, age, neurodiversity and socio-economic backgrounds. We hope that our more diverse board will continue to amplify EDI work within the charity.
• Removing economic structural barriers for people accessing our work, especially around volunteering and affordability which we have sought to address in part through the creation of paid for intern roles where we can secure funding for these.

In 2023:

In addition to commitments stated above, for 2023 we are aiming to:
Deliver new funded training programmes to help people get jobs in the environment sector. For 2023, we are developing a culturally appropriate planting section to our training courses
Secure funding for programmes with new partners who are led by people of colour, minority ethnic backgrounds or ethnically diverse people to develop orchard programmes that better reflect need in these communities.
Continue to improve our processes for attracting more diverse candidates to our workforce
Amplifying EDI work within the charity through our more diverse board
Having a budget line specifically for EDI work to ensure resources are directed to this area

Verlander Walker Ltd

In 2022:

In the last year, these areas of commitment have been successful:
- Continuing to work with She is Sustainable / She is Still Sustainable to support women, including women of colour, disabled women and LBTQ+ women, who work in sustainability.
- Explicitly considering diversity and inclusion when designing and delivering work for clients. This has been the area where I have learned and improved the most. My approach has included considering the diversity of the teams I put together for projects, leading to more partnerships with people from a diverse range of backgrounds. I have also been able to learn from colleagues and include their diversity expertise when training client teams.
- Including diversity topics in my Making the Path by Walking newsletter.
- Seeking out and amplifying the voices of people from marginalised and minority groups.

I have not been able to mentor at least one person of colour, via IEMA or SocEnv. I would still like to do this.

I am still keen to collaborate with others in the sustainability and facilitation professions to learn, to challenge and to improve.

In 2023:

It’s high time for our profession to become a place where everyone can thrive, be listened to and have their skills and expertise recognised. I’m keen to learn and to do what I can.

I will uphold this commitment by:

- Mentoring at least one person of colour, who is interested in working in sustainability, either via IEMA or SocEnv or in some other way.
- Continuing to work with She is Sustainable / She is Still Sustainable to support women, including women of colour, disabled women and LBTQ+ women, who work in sustainability.
- Explicitly considering diversity and inclusion when designing and delivering work for clients.
- Including diversity topics in my Making the Path by Walking newsletter.
- Seeking out and amplifying the voices of people from marginalised and minority groups.
- Collaborating with others in the sustainability and facilitation professions to learn, to challenge and to improve.

Wildlife and Countryside Link

Wildlife and Countryside Link (Link) is the largest environment and wildlife coalition in England, bringing together 57 organisations for the protection of nature.

In 2022:

Wildlife & Countryside Link is committed to supporting the environment sector in becoming a more diverse and inclusive movement. This year, we have published a route map for increasing ethnic diversity in the sector, and continued to host a Peer Support Network for people of colour. Now, we will turn our attention to implementing the route map ourselves, and supporting environmental charities in implementation

In 2023:

This year, we will aim to support our members and the wider environment sector in implementing the first steps in the route map for ethnic diversity, particularly focusing on (1) training; (2) data and reporting; and (3) peer support.

Woodland Trust

In 2022 our achievements include
- continuing to develop knowledge and understanding including through a new internal Diversity and Inclusion sharepoint , "Active Bystanders" course and "Confidence in conversation about race" webinar and discussion and celebration of key dates such as National Inclusion week, Black History Month, LGBT+Pride. International Women's Day and neurodiversity awareness dates
- initiating a network of trained Inclusion Allies in every Directorate, country and region with increased ability to "call in" non-inclusive behaviours, words and actions
- anonymising our employee recruitment, and investing in trialling different ways to reach a wider spectrum of society in our senior and trustee appointments
- threading diversity and inclusion through our new people strategy and organisational values
- re-developing our brand and communications involving those underrepresented in our current supporters to better resonate with a wider spectrum of society
- being a key part of sector-wide initiatives including signing up to the race and ethnicity route map and RACE report
- launching a staff-wide inclusion survey, feeding the findings along with other insight, to inform 10 year D+I strategy scheduled to be launched in 2023

Working Well Matters

Working Well Matters are a black-led organisation that have been working in the wellbeing sector for some years, helping others to overcome the stigma of both racism and mental health. Our founder, Mike, proudly identifies as a black man and has numerous experiences from within the manufacturing, educational and wellbeing sectors of how institutional and structural racism work within UK society. Mike is our lead trainer and enjoys helping organisations encourage people of all identities to feel able to give of their best.

In 2022:

Have delivered anti-racism training.
Have worked with organisations in the foundation Industries regarding EDI.
Have spoken at Conferences on the subject of D&I.

In 2023:

To increase targeted training that seeks to make a difference for other members of the DSI, not just to discuss EDI in general terms.

Wunderkind Consulting Nigeria Limited

Wunderkind Consulting Nigeria Limited, registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC)-Registration No: RC1553155 is into the provision of consultancy, auditing and training services on internationally recognized management system standards.

Our services include Management System Standards consultancy & training services.

In 2022:

We have provided expert advice and successful guidance to client organization(s) such as GB Foods in the year under review, by ensuring that practices, processes, procedures and templates needed for the effective implementation of DEI priorities for an equitable workplace were considered and established during the implementation of environmental management systems and sustainability standard (ISO 14001:2015) at their Africa (Nigeria) Site.

In 2023:

We are committed towards providing mentorship to at least one person of colour in their early career stage, supporting progress in the environment and sustainability profession.