When one of the biggest credit ratings agencies in the world labels a D&I strategy credit positive, you know that there is a seismic shift in corporates’ attitude towards diversity coming.
Last month Moody’s said that Lloyds Banking Group’s Race Action plan was “credit positive” as it would “improve staff diversity at all levels and reduce Lloyds’ exposure to social risk”. It was a statement that may not have struck many people as particularly revelatory. Diversity has long been touted as something that is critical to the success of a business. Numerous reports have been published showing that a diverse board leads to a stronger bottom line. But only now, since the onset of a global pandemic and the increased volume around the Black Lives Matter movement following the tragic killing of George Floyd in the US, has real, widespread action started to be taken by corporates around the world.
At CBRE, the journey to become a more diverse and inclusive business started many years ago. And this week the business has managed to secure a re-accreditation of EY’s National Equality Standard, a tough and not inexpensive independent analysis of just how well – or not – the business is doing when it comes to diversity.
An essential journey
For CBRE UK & Ireland chief executive Ciaran Bird, it has been an intensive, eye-opening but entirely essential journey.
The firm started on its journey to become accredited in 2016 and became the first agent to achieve the NES in 2018. Cushman & Wakefield has since also secured the standard.
The UK National Equality Standard sets clear equality, diversity and inclusion criteria against which companies are independently assessed. Companies are assessed against 35 separate competencies focused on key topics such as governance, culture, HR policies and processes, business planning, inclusivity, flexible working, leadership commitment and accountability data, as well as external relationships and the firm’s supply chain. It is not an easy standard to obtain and many companies do not pass first time round.
“When we first entered into the process [of getting NES accredited] we knew no agent had been there before and we knew that our industry was behind, but we wanted to hold ourselves accountable to world-class, global organisations,” says Bird. “We were putting all the effort, time and investment [into D&I] and we weren’t getting the results we needed. We needed to challenge ourselves in a more focused and more accountable way.”
The beauty of the NES, says EY’s director of culture, diversity and inclusion, Simon Feeke, is that it has been created specifically with business in mind and places an emphasis on the return on investment of any D&I strategy.
“There’s a whole section in the NES around review and measurement and it is an area [in which] organisations tend to struggle. There have been many years of investment in programmes and interventions and so on. Some of them pay off, some of them are yet to demonstrate much of an impact. But what we test is an organisation’s approach to ROI,” says Feeke. “In these times, when every penny is being scrutinised for what it is being spent on, in the eyes of some organisations D&I is still a cost to be cut. It is still the first thing to go. What we encourage organisations to do is to think about how they create a return on investment. If you are introducing a new policy around parenting or carers, how do you then measure what the uptick is in employee sentiment and retention? If you are investing in D&I more broadly, how do you start to correlate diversity data with business performance data and if you are investing in network groups, how do you measure the return on investment there in terms of getting the right talent, cutting down recruiter fees, etc? If you don’t do that, then it is always going to be something that can be cut.”
He adds: “The NES applies a business lens on diversity and inclusion in a way that hasn’t been done before. It is designed by business for business and talks in business and commercial terms. We don’t just look at the workforce, we think about clients and other stakeholders too. We look top down at the extent to which diversity and inclusion is integrated, not just into the HR plan, but the business strategy as well. It is about the culture, it is about the existence of role models, it is about policies and benefits that support different needs. We assess all of that and give a more holistic view on what is working and what isn’t.”
Industry-wide buy-in
For CBRE’s Bird, this focus on the business element is what he hopes will see more of the real estate industry commit to the NES so it can be used as somewhat of a benchmark for the sector as it continues on its journey to becoming truly inclusive. And while he admits that the NES is both financially costly and time-intensive, making it a difficult standard for smaller firms to access, he is hopeful that more of the larger agencies – many of which are already taking giant leaps forward in terms of their D&I practices already – will consider applying for accreditation.
Feeke agrees. He says that if more of the real estate sector applied for the accreditation, it would give EY the ability not just to benchmark but to provide some useful industry-wide D&I analysis.
Whether the industry gets behind the standard or comes together in other ways to improve its inclusivity, Bird says he is committed to making sure that CBRE’s dedication to D&I continues. And, while achieving the accreditation for the second time gives the business reason to celebrate, Bird knows there is still a long road of action ahead.
“I have always had a personal passion around diversity because I have felt so frustrated that so many people from so many backgrounds have never been given the opportunity to get into this incredible industry. So we just have to improve on this,” he says. “Culture does not change overnight. You need a long-term plan and you need passion from top to bottom, bottom to top. Everyone needs to buy into it and you need to create a vision that people can relate to.”
And, while even Feeke says that the NES may not be the way to create that vision, he says it is a way for companies to demonstrate their enduring commitment to D&I in a way that is externally verified, independently checked and backed by the UK government.
To send feedback, e-mail samantha.mcclary@egi.co.uk or tweet @samanthamcclary or @estatesgazette
