What can we do about it?
Workforce and leadership development programmes need to be embedded in an organisation’s human resources strategy.
Good practice in promoting diversity in leadership is good practice for all staff and leadership development, and vice versa.
Diversity-promoting interventions fall into two broad categories of changing organisational culture and supporting individuals.
Organisational change includes adopting effective equal opportunity (EO) policies and giving life
to them through your practices, identifying a senior person responsible for change, reviewing recruitment practice and changing if necessary, establishing network/affinity groups, peer- to-peer mentoring, and ensuring there is staff development which takes into account an individual’s diverse needs.
The West Midlands region has a better rate of adoption of EO policies and many practices but there is a great deal of room for improvement.
Individual support includes targeted leadership development programmes, mentoring, coaching, work shadowing, succession planning, talent management and advice from role models.
There are also initiatives which encourage the next generation of leaders and to establish peer- to-peer groups across different organisations.
More attention needs to be paid to monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of leadership diversity initiatives.