NESTA
Developing equitable strategies
The problem
The National Endowment for Science, Technology & the Arts (NESTA) wanted to improve organisational diversity, inclusion and equity. They invited Versiti to support the leadership team and develop solutions.
Our approach
We reviewed strategies, policies, employee data and employee-led efforts to improve EDI. We then conducted workshops with the senior leadership team.
The workshops focussed on leaders’ ambitions about the societal impacts they wanted their activities to have - and on assessing what it would take to achieve those ambitions.
We shifted the discussion from an internal matter of human resources and centered it around the organisation’s outcomes.
Insight
Until EDI is connected to core activities and remains seen as an internal matter of employee diversity, it is not prioritised.
Until activities are focused specifically on reducing inequalities - not just improving outcomes for all - gaps continue to grow.
Until strategies embed closing inequalities in their BAU, organisations promote ad hoc initiatives and interventions that rarely yield significant changes.
Impact
The work emboldened the senior team to put social and health inequalities at the heart of their 10-year strategy, focusing on where innovation would have a disproportionately positive impact on closing key gaps:
A fairer start for every child
A healthy life for all
A sustainable future for people and the planet
