Finalist

EDI Community Engagement Initiative of the Year Award

Leading Lancashire - building a more equal, diverse and inclusive (EDI) workforce in management and leadership roles

Finalist of the EDI Community Engagement Initiative of the Year Award

Edge Hill University - United Kingdom

"Building capabilities in individuals and businesses through inclusive community engagement"


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(SME Productivity & Innovation Centre)

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Summary

The Leading Lancashire project (LL) was a community-engagement initiative designed to identify individuals from groups under-represented in leadership and management positions and support them through formalised training to improve their labour market status.

LL delivered flexible and accessible Chartered Management Institute (CMI) leadership and management professional development courses to improve the skills, capacity and confidence of all participants. LL supported 924 individuals from 392 SMEs.

There is an increasing body of evidence of the positive business impacts from building a more equal, diverse and inclusive (EDI) workforce, including in management and leadership roles.

The LL initiative goes beyond current practice: First, the LL project proactively drove efforts towards the much-needed step-change in embedding the principles of EDI within employers. Secondly, LL employed innovate methods for engaging with so-called communities of ‘hard-to-reach’ SMEs. Finally, LL used innovative approaches in teaching and learning to remove known barriers for individuals to access support (e.g. consideration for those with childcare and caring responsibilities).

LL demonstrated outstanding success in engaging with under-represented communities. LL achieved 924 participants enrolled onto professional leadership and management qualifications. 61% of participants identified as female; 14% from Black, Asian, or minority ethnic communities; 7% identified a physical disability; 5% identified as being a single parent household.

Key People


Professor Simon Bolton
Associate Dean & Director
Faculty of Arts & Sciences (Enterprise & Employability) SME Productivity & Innovation Centre,  Edge Hill University



Michael Banford
Associate Director
SME Productivity & Innovation Centre,  Edge Hill University



John Mercer
Associate Director
Faculty of Arts & Sciences Business School,  Edge Hill University



Nina Soni
Business Development Coordinator
SME Productivity & Innovation Centre,  Edge Hill University



Kathryn Connell-Welsh
Marketing Coordinator
SME Productivity & Innovation Centre,  Edge Hill University



Rosie Addison
Compliance Coordinator
SME Productivity & Innovation Centre,  Edge Hill University


Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the wider teaching team at Edge Hill Business School
University of Central Lancashire and Lancashire Further Education partners
Department of Work & Pensions
This project was part-funded by the European Social Fund

Images

Blackpool Grand Theatre - Case Study Pg. 1

Blackpool Grand Theatre - Case Study Pg. 2

Blackpool Grand Theatre

Raised Floor Solutions - Case Study - Pg. 1

Raised Floor Solutions - Case Study - Pg. 2

Rosettes Direct - Case Study Pg.1

Rosettes Direct - Case Study Pg.2

Edge Hill University - Business School

Senior Social Worker - Case Study

IMPACT STORY

Impacting lifes

Blackpool is a seaside town in the North West of England and home to some of the most deprived communities in the UK. Blackpool Grand Theatre is an anchor cultural asset at the heart of the community, which delivers a range of programmes to engage young adults, school children and the community in the arts to strengthen wellbeing, personal resilience and improve literacy levels across the town.

Covid-19 had a devastating effect on the Theatre as the doors closed to all community engagement and professional productions. As a result, Celine Wyatt, Head of Creative Learning at Blackpool Grand, engaged in the Leading Lancashire programme to develop her coaching and mentoring leadership skills and embed these new capabilities into the Theatre for the benefit of those they support. Celine is a key decision-maker within the Theatre and someone all the staff and stakeholders looked towards to provide leadership through this incredibly challenge time. Celine drew confidence and new skills from the Leading Lancashire programme to encourage and motivate her teams to create solutions to keep the Theatre connected to the community. Celine also went on to facilitate and encourage all the staff to enrol onto the Leading Lancashire programme to help build their confidence and resilience in tackling the challenges that they faced.

Celine said: “The work that we do is driven by the needs of the community… Leading Lancashire has been great for morale, individual motivation and has given staff a new, fresh approach to their work.”

LEARNINGS

Lessons learned

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) was at the core of the Leading Lancashire (LL) programme. Key learnings arise from the principles and practices which can be translated and adopted by a range of future projects. This relates to:

1. Proactive identification and engagement to encourage participation. The novel use of labour market EDI data ensured target communities could be identified quickly. Representation (ethnicity, gender, disabilities) through case studies and community champions increased engagement. Business impact case studies helped unlock participation in ‘hard-to-reach’ sectors.

2. Removing barriers to study. Digital and flexible delivery methods, combined with a careful balance of tutor and self-directed study, ensured participants with a variety of auditory and visual learning needs, physical disabilities, and caring responsibilities could participate unhindered.
.
3. The importance of representation within the programme’s governance structure. Core representation of the wider community within the Steering Group ensured the embedding of EDI principles within all aspects of the programme.

4. Data monitoring and evaluation. Capturing EDI data enabled effective reporting to achieve inclusion targets. The data creates a growing evidence repository for use by the University’s SME Growth Research Group, creating new avenues of academic research.

5. Network development. Building relationships with specialist interest business groups and networks enabled a two-way flow of insights to affect continual improvement.

The learnings are now feeding into an entirely new Inclusion Framework for Project Design. This will transform the way all projects – e.g. business support, knowledge transfer, skills and workforce development – are envisaged.

FUTURE PLANS

What's coming?

The University has developed a commercial and investment model for its leadership development CPD offer, which will sustain the provision as a key pillar in the SME Productivity & Innovation Centre’s support offer. This creates an attractive, output and impact driven model, which can accommodate investment either from direct private sector sources, public-body co-investment, or direct grant funding. The Edge Hill team will continue to engage effectively with policy makers and other universities across the region to ensure local and regional leadership and management priorities are being met.

Participants and SMEs who successfully completed LL programme will also be prioritised to offer places to progress onto higher level CMI qualifications to continue their professional development. We will widen participation to SMEs and individuals beyond Lancashire into Liverpool City Region.

The Inclusion Framework for Project Design will also ensure the key learning from the programme can be embedded across all our business support strands: workforce development, leadership development, growth and technology adoption to enable us to reach SMEs and individuals from hard-to-reach communities.

KEY STATISTICS

924

Total number of participants

392

Hard-to-reach SMEs engaged

61%

Female participants

14%

Black, Asian or minority ethnic communities

7%

Physical disability

5%

Single parent household

Triple E Awards

The Triple E Awards are a global recognition of efforts toward the quest for entrepreneurship and engagement in higher education. It is the first award to focus specifically on different dimensions of the universities' third mission. Implemented regionally, the Triple E Awards aim to foster change in universities and to emphasize their role in their communities and ecosystems.

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