Equality Diversity & Inclusion
Diversity is a business imperative. McKinsey’s 2020 research demonstrates that companies in the top quartile for gender diversity are 25% more likely to have above-average profitability, while those in the top quartile for ethnic diversity outperform competitors by 36%.
As organisations deploy AI systems, addressing algorithmic bias and ensuring equitable access to opportunities becomes critical. The UK Equality and Human Rights Commission (2025) emphasises that automated decision-making systems must be subject to rigorous equality impact assessments to prevent discrimination.
Every organisation is shaped by the behaviours of every person within it, and that makes EDI everyone’s responsibility. This introductory course gives all staff a shared language and a practical grounding in equality, diversity and inclusion, rooted in the realities of the Equality Act 2010 and the Public Sector Equality Duty. The day is built on conversation and reflection rather than presentation, and every delegate leaves with a concrete personal commitment to a behaviour they will change.
Topics include the protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010, conscious and unconscious bias, inclusive communication, micro-aggressions, and individual accountability for building an inclusive workplace.
Understanding the law is the starting point, not the finish line. This concise and accessible course ensures every member of staff understands their personal legal responsibilities under the Equality Act 2010 and the Public Sector Equality Duty. It provides the essential foundation that underpins all other EDI development within an organisation.
Topics include the nine protected characteristics, direct and indirect discrimination, the difference between prejudice, stereotyping and bias, individual accountability, and how personal behaviour connects to organisational legal obligations.
A psychologically safe workplace does not happen by accident. It requires every individual to understand what harmful behaviour looks like, how to respond to it, and how to report it without fear. This course equips all staff with the knowledge and confidence to recognise bullying, harassment, and discrimination in all their forms, including those that are subtle or easily dismissed.
Topics include the impact of harmful behaviours on individuals and teams, legal definitions of harassment under the Equality Act 2010, reporting routes and whistleblowing protections, bystander intervention, and the personal role each employee plays in embedding a culture of respect.
Leaders set the conditions in which inclusion either thrives or falters. This intensive programme builds directly on the EDI foundation courses and goes significantly further, equipping team leaders, managers, and senior officers with the skills and confidence to lead with genuine equity in every aspect of their role. Drawing on Landell Fraser’s CEA framework of Confidence, Empathy and Accountability, delegates develop a personal leadership identity rooted in equity and leave with a written action plan they are accountable for delivering.
Topics include power and privilege in institutional settings, inclusive recruitment and performance management, psychological safety in diverse teams, leading through difficult conversations, and accountability when things go wrong.
Awareness alone does not change organisations. This practical workshop moves managers from understanding to action, equipping them with the specific skills and confidence needed to translate EDI commitments into everyday decisions. Participants explore their legal responsibilities, develop capability to challenge bias constructively, and learn to use equality data to drive measurable change within their own teams and services.
Topics include specific managerial duties under equality legislation, leading inclusive recruitment and development processes, challenging bias and discriminatory behaviour, using data to identify and address disparities, and embedding anti-racist practice in day-to-day management.
The most significant moment of influence a manager has on team diversity is at the point of recruitment, yet bias enters hiring processes at every stage without deliberate effort to prevent it. This practical course equips hiring managers with the skills and structures needed to run fair, consistent, and legally compliant recruitment processes that actively promote diversity.
Topics include legal requirements in recruitment under the Equality Act 2010, inclusive job design and person specifications, structured and competency-based interviewing, blind and anonymised shortlisting approaches, equitable onboarding, and building a diverse talent pipeline for the long term.
When harassment or bullying occurs, how a manager responds determines whether an individual is protected or left further exposed. This course builds the practical capability managers need to prevent escalation, provide appropriate support, and apply disciplinary processes with confidence, consistency, and fairness.
Topics include definitions of harassment and bullying under the Equality Act 2010, the impact of harmful behaviour on individuals and organisational culture, duty of care and vicarious liability, de-escalation and early intervention strategies, and effective investigation and resolution procedures.
Policies do not change cultures. People with power and accountability do. This senior-level programme addresses the most complex and consequential dimension of EDI: how to embed inclusive practice at a systemic and institutional level. Using real-world case studies and facilitated peer challenge, senior leaders examine current equality data through a critical lens, identify structural barriers that perpetuate inequality, and develop a framework for sustainable culture change.
Topics include systemic inequality and institutional barriers, analysing equality data strategically, developing a credible culture change framework, communicating inclusion authentically to diverse stakeholders, and leading organisations through anti-racist and inclusive agendas that create lasting impact at every level.
Senior leaders shape the systems that either reinforce or dismantle inequality within their organisations. This masterclass for directors and heads of service focuses on the critical role of leadership in making EDI a lived strategic priority rather than a documented aspiration. Participants explore how to articulate a compelling vision for inclusion, lead authentic cultural change, and align organisational systems from performance management to procurement with EDI outcomes.
Topics include articulating and embedding an inclusive vision, leading authentic change beyond policy, equality impact assessment in strategic decision-making, inclusive service design and procurement with social value, and accountability frameworks for EDI at board and executive level.
Disabled people remain significantly underrepresented in many workplaces and continue to face barriers that reasonable adjustments could remove, yet many managers lack the confidence to have the conversation. This workshop builds both the legal knowledge and the practical skills needed to support disabled colleagues and service users effectively.
Topics include duties under the Equality Act 2010 including anticipatory obligations, understanding hidden and non-visible disabilities, communicating with and about disabled people with confidence, the reasonable adjustment process and documentation, and real-world case studies drawn from workplace and public service contexts.
People do not experience discrimination through a single lens. Race, gender, disability, class, sexuality, and age intersect to create layered experiences of advantage and disadvantage that a single-characteristic approach to EDI cannot adequately address. This in-depth workshop equips delegates to understand intersectionality in practice and respond to the complex, overlapping identities of colleagues and service users. Research documents how AI systems can exacerbate intersectional discrimination at scale, particularly for those who are already most marginalised, making this understanding critical in organisations deploying automated tools.[5]
Topics include intersectionality theory and its practical application, the compounding effects of multiple protected characteristics, identifying and challenging intersectional bias in policies and processes, and creating environments where everyone can contribute fully.
Good intentions without good data produce good-sounding reports rather than genuine change. This workshop builds capability among data analysts, service managers, and policy leads to use equality data as a genuine driver of improvement rather than a compliance exercise. It addresses the growing need to scrutinise AI-generated insights and algorithmic recommendations through an equality lens, ensuring that data-driven decisions meet the requirements of the Public Sector Equality Duty.[3]
Topics include collecting and categorising equality data ethically, interpreting workforce and service data to identify disparate outcomes, equality impact assessment of algorithmic and automated decisions, developing actionable EDI improvement plans from data, and communicating evidence to decision-makers with clarity and credibility.
Between 15% and 20% of UK adults are neurodivergent, yet most workplaces were not designed with cognitive difference in mind. This course moves beyond awareness to build the practical knowledge and confidence that managers and colleagues need to support neurodivergent people effectively, create inclusive environments, and unlock the distinct strengths that cognitive difference brings. ACAS research shows that proactive neuro-inclusion significantly reduces staff turnover and benefits everyone in a team, not only those with a diagnosis.[6]
Topics include what neurodiversity is and how it shows up at work, understanding ADHD, autism, dyslexia, dyspraxia, and related conditions, the legal framework under the Equality Act 2010, practical adjustments that do not require a formal diagnosis, creating psychologically safe environments where people feel able to disclose, and building a neuroinclusive culture across recruitment, management, and everyday team practice.
Unequal pay and blocked progression are not always the result of deliberate discrimination. They are often the accumulated effect of unchallenged systems, biased processes, and structural barriers that organisations have never named or examined. This course equips managers, HR professionals, and senior leaders to identify and dismantle those barriers with evidence, honesty, and a clear plan. The UK Government has committed to introducing mandatory ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting for large employers, making the capability to interrogate and act on pay data a legal as well as an ethical priority.
Topics include the difference between equal pay and pay gaps, how to read and interpret pay gap data, structural barriers to progression by gender, ethnicity, and disability, designing equitable performance management and reward processes, inclusive approaches to talent identification and succession planning, and building an accountable action plan that produces measurable change
Statements of commitment are not enough. Anti-racism requires organisations to examine their own systems, challenge the structural conditions that produce racially disparate outcomes, and take deliberate action to change them. This course gives delegates the knowledge, language, and practical tools to move from good intentions to visible, accountable progress on race equality. Research documents how algorithmic and human decision-making alike can reinforce racial disadvantage at scale, making this work urgent across every part of an organisation.
Topics include the difference between equality and equity, understanding systemic and institutional racism, the specific obligations of organisations under the Equality Act 2010 and the Public Sector Equality Duty, examining workforce data through a race equity lens, challenging racially biased processes in recruitment, performance management and promotion, and designing a credible anti-racist action plan with clear accountability.
Sexual orientation and gender reassignment are protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010, yet LGBTQ+ colleagues continue to report disproportionate experiences of exclusion, harassment, and the pressure to conceal their identity at work. This course builds genuine understanding and practical capability across an organisation, going beyond tolerance toward active inclusion.
Topics include the protected characteristics of sexual orientation and gender reassignment, the specific challenges faced by LGBTQ+ colleagues including intersectional experiences, legal obligations under the Equality Act 2010, inclusive language and communication, creating safe spaces for disclosure and allyship, examining and improving organisational policies and culture, and supporting transgender and non-binary colleagues through transition in the workplace.
Gender pay gap reporting tells organisations where inequality exists. This course builds the capability to understand why it exists and what to do about it. Structural barriers to women’s progression, occupational segregation, the impact of caring responsibilities, and bias in performance and promotion processes all contribute to pay gaps that reporting alone cannot fix. This practical workshop equips managers and HR leads to design systems that produce genuinely equitable outcomes.
Topics include how gender pay gaps form and persist, the difference between the gender pay gap and unequal pay, inclusive job design and flexible working, bias in performance management and promotion decisions, supporting women and carers at every career stage, and building a measurable gender equality action plan.
Religion and belief is one of the nine protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010, yet it is one of the least understood and least confidently managed in most organisations. This course equips managers and HR professionals to navigate faith-related requests, accommodate religious observance, and build genuinely inclusive environments for colleagues of all faiths and none.
Topics include the legal framework for religion and belief under the Equality Act 2010, what constitutes direct and indirect discrimination in this context, managing requests for prayer space, religious observance, dress, and dietary requirements, handling conflicts between competing rights sensitively and fairly, and fostering a culture of curiosity and respect across religious and non-religious difference.
Menopause affects approximately half the working population and typically occurs during the years when women are at their most senior and experienced. Yet most organisations have no framework for supporting colleagues through it, and many managers lack the language or confidence to have the conversation. This course addresses that gap directly.
Topics include what menopause is and how it affects people at work, the legal framework including potential disability and sex discrimination claims, manager responsibilities and reasonable adjustments, inclusive language and how to create space for open conversation, developing a menopause policy that is genuinely useful rather than a document that sits unread, and supporting all gender identities that may experience menopause.
Between 15% and 20% of UK adults are neurodivergent, yet most workplaces were not designed with cognitive difference in mind. This course moves beyond awareness to build the practical knowledge and confidence that managers and colleagues need to support neurodivergent people effectively, create inclusive environments, and unlock the distinct strengths that cognitive difference brings. ACAS research shows that proactive neuro-inclusion significantly reduces staff turnover and benefits everyone in a team, not only those with a diagnosis.
Topics include what neurodiversity is and how it shows up at work, understanding ADHD, autism, dyslexia, dyspraxia, and related conditions, the legal framework under the Equality Act 2010, practical adjustments that do not require a formal diagnosis, creating psychologically safe environments where people feel able to disclose, and building a neuroinclusive culture across recruitment, management, and everyday team practice.
Unequal pay and blocked progression are not always the result of deliberate discrimination. They are often the accumulated effect of unchallenged systems, biased processes, and structural barriers that organisations have never named or examined. This course equips managers, HR professionals, and senior leaders to identify and dismantle those barriers with evidence, honesty, and a clear plan. The UK Government has committed to introducing mandatory ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting for large employers, making the capability to interrogate and act on pay data a legal as well as an ethical priority.
Topics include the difference between equal pay and pay gaps, how to read and interpret pay gap data, structural barriers to progression by gender, ethnicity, and disability, designing equitable performance management and reward processes, inclusive approaches to talent identification and succession planning, and building an accountable action plan that produces measurable change
Statements of commitment are not enough. Anti-racism requires organisations to examine their own systems, challenge the structural conditions that produce racially disparate outcomes, and take deliberate action to change them. This course gives delegates the knowledge, language, and practical tools to move from good intentions to visible, accountable progress on race equality. Research documents how algorithmic and human decision-making alike can reinforce racial disadvantage at scale, making this work urgent across every part of an organisation.
Topics include the difference between equality and equity, understanding systemic and institutional racism, the specific obligations of organisations under the Equality Act 2010 and the Public Sector Equality Duty, examining workforce data through a race equity lens, challenging racially biased processes in recruitment, performance management and promotion, and designing a credible anti-racist action plan with clear accountability.
Sexual orientation and gender reassignment are protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010, yet LGBTQ+ colleagues continue to report disproportionate experiences of exclusion, harassment, and the pressure to conceal their identity at work. This course builds genuine understanding and practical capability across an organisation, going beyond tolerance toward active inclusion.
Topics include the protected characteristics of sexual orientation and gender reassignment, the specific challenges faced by LGBTQ+ colleagues including intersectional experiences, legal obligations under the Equality Act 2010, inclusive language and communication, creating safe spaces for disclosure and allyship, examining and improving organisational policies and culture, and supporting transgender and non-binary colleagues through transition in the workplace.
Gender pay gap reporting tells organisations where inequality exists. This course builds the capability to understand why it exists and what to do about it. Structural barriers to women’s progression, occupational segregation, the impact of caring responsibilities, and bias in performance and promotion processes all contribute to pay gaps that reporting alone cannot fix. This practical workshop equips managers and HR leads to design systems that produce genuinely equitable outcomes.
Topics include how gender pay gaps form and persist, the difference between the gender pay gap and unequal pay, inclusive job design and flexible working, bias in performance management and promotion decisions, supporting women and carers at every career stage, and building a measurable gender equality action plan.
Religion and belief is one of the nine protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010, yet it is one of the least understood and least confidently managed in most organisations. This course equips managers and HR professionals to navigate faith-related requests, accommodate religious observance, and build genuinely inclusive environments for colleagues of all faiths and none.
Topics include the legal framework for religion and belief under the Equality Act 2010, what constitutes direct and indirect discrimination in this context, managing requests for prayer space, religious observance, dress, and dietary requirements, handling conflicts between competing rights sensitively and fairly, and fostering a culture of curiosity and respect across religious and non-religious difference.
Menopause affects approximately half the working population and typically occurs during the years when women are at their most senior and experienced. Yet most organisations have no framework for supporting colleagues through it, and many managers lack the language or confidence to have the conversation. This course addresses that gap directly.
Topics include what menopause is and how it affects people at work, the legal framework including potential disability and sex discrimination claims, manager responsibilities and reasonable adjustments, inclusive language and how to create space for open conversation, developing a menopause policy that is genuinely useful rather than a document that sits unread, and supporting all gender identities that may experience menopause.
Delivering a fair and equitable service to every member of the public requires more than good intentions. It requires professionals to understand how their own assumptions shape the quality and consistency of service they provide, and to recognise the structural factors that make some groups less likely to seek, access, or receive the support they need. This course equips frontline and community-facing professionals to close that gap in their own practice. The Public Sector Equality Duty requires public bodies to have due regard to equality in the design and delivery of every service they provide.
Topics include the Public Sector Equality Duty and what it means in practice for frontline roles, identifying barriers that prevent equitable access to services, communicating effectively with people from diverse communities, navigating language and accessibility challenges, responding to and reporting discriminatory incidents, and embedding fairness into everyday professional practice.
Serving diverse communities well requires professionals to move beyond cultural awareness to genuine cultural competency: the ability to engage respectfully and effectively with people whose backgrounds, beliefs, values, and experiences differ significantly from their own. This course builds that capability through reflective practice, real case studies, and skills development.
Topics include the difference between cultural awareness, sensitivity, and competency, how cultural background shapes communication, help-seeking behaviour, and experience of services, working with interpreters and community advocates, recognising and challenging unconscious assumptions that affect professional judgement, navigating religion, belief, and cultural practice in service delivery, and building trust with communities that have historically had poor experiences of public services.
Professionals who work with people at their most vulnerable, whether in crisis, in poverty, in fear, or in the aftermath of harm, need an understanding of trauma that goes beyond sympathy. Trauma-informed practice changes how you ask questions, how you structure interactions, and how you make decisions that affect people’s lives. When combined with an equity lens, it ensures that the most marginalised people receive care that is both compassionate and fair.
Topics include what trauma is and how it affects behaviour, communication, and engagement with services, the six principles of trauma-informed care, how poverty, racism, abuse, and displacement intersect to deepen trauma, adapting professional communication and processes to minimise re-traumatisation, legal obligations when working with vulnerable adults and children, and building a trauma-informed approach within teams and services.
Inclusion is easiest to maintain when there is time, resource, and stability. The test of an organisation’s genuine commitment to EDI comes when teams are under pressure, decisions must be made quickly, and the temptation to fall back on instinct is strongest. This course is designed for professionals in high-demand, high-stakes environments where that pressure is constant. It equips them to maintain equitable standards of judgement and conduct even when conditions are difficult.
Topics include how cognitive shortcuts and stress increase the likelihood of biased decision-making, the legal and ethical standards that apply regardless of operational pressure, maintaining procedural fairness and consistency under time constraints, recognising and managing group dynamics that undermine inclusion in high-pressure teams, accountability and oversight when decisions are made quickly, and building a team culture where fairness is a professional standard, not an aspiration.
The duty to conduct equality impact assessments is one of the most widely misunderstood and inconsistently applied obligations in the public sector. Many organisations treat it as a retrospective documentation exercise rather than a genuine tool for improving decisions before they cause harm. This course changes that. Delegates learn to use equality impact assessment as an active, analytical process that makes better policy, better services, and better procurement decisions.
Topics include what equality impact assessment is and what it is not, the legal requirement under the Public Sector Equality Duty, step-by-step guidance for conducting a robust assessment, using quantitative and qualitative equality data effectively, engaging affected communities in the assessment process, documenting and publishing findings with transparency, and what to do when an assessment reveals a decision that would cause disproportionate harm.
Every decision made in an organisation, from who gets hired to who gets promoted, from how a complaint is handled to which resident receives priority support, is shaped by bias. The question is not whether bias is present. It is whether we are willing to examine it. This course gives delegates the knowledge and the practical tools to recognise bias in their own thinking and in the systems around them, and to make fairer decisions as a result. Research across multiple disciplines consistently shows that the gap between people’s stated values and their actual decision-making is widest where bias is least examined.
Topics include the difference between conscious and unconscious bias, how bias forms and why it is resistant to good intentions alone, common cognitive shortcuts that distort professional judgement, the impact of bias on recruitment, performance management, service delivery, and discipline, practical strategies for interrupting biased decision-making in real time, and building fairer processes that reduce reliance on individual judgement.
A psychologically safe workplace is one where every person feels able to speak up, ask questions, raise concerns, and bring their full self to work without fear of ridicule or reprisal. Research led by Amy Edmondson at Harvard Business School identifies psychological safety as the single most significant predictor of team performance, innovation, and wellbeing.[2] This course helps managers and team leaders understand what psychological safety is, why it is so easily damaged, and how to build it deliberately within their own teams. It connects psychological safety directly to inclusion, showing how people from marginalised groups are disproportionately affected when it is absent.
Topics include what psychological safety is and what it is not, the conditions that create and undermine it, the specific barriers faced by people from underrepresented groups, how to create space for honest conversation and constructive challenge, practical leadership behaviours that signal genuine safety, responding well when things go wrong, and measuring the psychological safety of your own team.
Most professionals are aware that equality law exists. Far fewer understand how it applies to their specific decisions, responsibilities, and day-to-day role. This course moves beyond awareness to genuine legal literacy, giving delegates the confidence to apply equality law correctly and to recognise when it may be being breached. Understanding the law is the starting point, not the end point, and this course treats it as the foundation for better, fairer practice rather than a compliance exercise.
Topics include the nine protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010, direct and indirect discrimination, harassment and victimisation, the duty to make reasonable adjustments, the Public Sector Equality Duty and what it requires of public bodies and their staff, positive action and its limits, the legal consequences of non-compliance, and practical scenarios drawn from real workplace and service delivery contexts.
Automated systems do not make neutral decisions. They reflect the data on which they were trained, and that data carries the assumptions, inequalities, and historical patterns of the human systems that produced it. This course gives professionals the understanding they need to question, challenge, and escalate AI-driven decisions that may be producing discriminatory outcomes, whether or not those outcomes are visible or intentional. Research published in the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory documents how algorithmic systems can amplify existing inequalities at scale, disproportionately affecting the people already most disadvantaged.
Topics include how bias enters AI systems at the design, data, and deployment stages, real-world examples of algorithmic discrimination in hiring, policing, benefits assessment, and healthcare, the legal framework under the Equality Act 2010 and UK GDPR, the right to human review of automated decisions, equality impact assessment of algorithmic tools, and practical steps every professional can take to question AI-generated recommendations before acting on them.
People do not experience the world through a single identity. Race, gender, disability, class, age, sexuality, and faith intersect to create experiences of advantage and disadvantage that are layered, overlapping, and often invisible to those who do not share them. Intersectionality, a concept developed by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, provides a framework for understanding that complexity and responding to it with genuine equity rather than one-size-fits-all policies that inadvertently exclude.[4] This course equips leaders and managers to see the people they lead in their full complexity and to adapt their approach accordingly.
Topics include what intersectionality is and why single-characteristic thinking falls short, how overlapping identities shape the experience of work, recognition, and progression, leadership practices that respond to complexity without singling individuals out, designing policies and processes that work across intersecting identities, applying an intersectional lens to recruitment, performance management, and wellbeing, and moving from intersectional awareness to intersectional action.
The duty to make reasonable adjustments is one of the most frequently discussed and most inconsistently applied obligations in equality law. Many managers know the principle but struggle with the practice: what counts as reasonable, who decides, what process to follow, and how to handle disagreement. This course builds practical competence and confidence in implementing adjustments that genuinely work for the individual, without fear of getting it wrong. The Equality Act 2010 places a proactive duty on employers to anticipate the need for adjustments and not to wait for a diagnosis or formal request before acting.
Topics include the legal definition of the reasonable adjustment duty, who it applies to and when, the difference between anticipatory and reactive duties, working with individuals to identify adjustments that genuinely help, adjustments for neurodivergent, disabled, and chronically ill colleagues, documenting adjustments and reviewing their effectiveness, managing the process fairly when a request is declined, and creating a workplace culture in which asking for support is normalised rather than stigmatised.
Most organisations can tell you what EDI activities they have delivered. Very few can tell you what difference those activities have made. Measuring EDI impact requires moving from counting inputs, the number of training sessions delivered, the policies published, the statements issued, to examining outcomes: whether the experience of marginalised groups has actually improved. This course equips data leads, HR professionals, EDI practitioners, and senior managers to design meaningful measurement frameworks and to communicate evidence to decision-makers in ways that drive real change.
Topics include the difference between EDI activity data and EDI outcome data, designing an EDI measurement framework from scratch, workforce representation data and how to interpret it, pay gap analysis and what it does and does not reveal, service user and community feedback as an EDI evidence source, equality impact assessment as a monitoring tool, presenting EDI evidence to senior leaders and boards with credibility and clarity, and building a continuous improvement cycle that keeps EDI moving rather than stalling.
