Your inclusion results are in: ten places to start.
The survey has told you that some groups feel less included than others. The temptation is to launch something visible. These ten starting points are less glamorous and more likely to change what people experience.
On this page
Read the results by group and find out what sits behind them; look at each stage of the employee lifecycle through an inclusion lens; then give the work an owner and say what you will do.
An inclusion survey is a map of where the experience of work differs between groups. It rarely tells you why. You will not do all ten of the points below at once: pick the two or three where your results point, and do them properly.
First, understand the results
Read the results by group, and protect small groups
Overall scores hide the story. Break results down by sex, age, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, religion or belief and caring responsibilities, and by team and grade where numbers allow. Set a minimum group size below which you do not report (groups of fewer than five are typically not reported), and keep to it; one identifiable response costs more trust than the insight is worth. Look at combinations where you can, because the people with the lowest scores are often at an intersection that single-category charts miss.
Find out what sits behind the scores
Run listening sessions with the groups whose scores differ, facilitated by someone neutral and with a clear promise about confidentiality. Ask what a good day and a bad day look like, what makes them feel they belong or do not, and what one change would make the biggest difference. You are looking for specific, fixable things: a rota pattern, a meeting culture, a policy applied unevenly.
Then look at each stage of the lifecycle
Points three to seven take the employee lifecycle in order, from the first impression to the exit, and ask at each stage whether everyone gets the same experience.
Attraction: who do you look like from outside?
Review job adverts, careers pages and social channels for tone, language and imagery. Check that your website and application process work with screen readers and on a phone, and that people can ask for adjustments before they apply. Look at where you advertise and who those channels reach.
Selection: make the process fair by design
Ask recruitment suppliers for balanced shortlists and put it in the agreement. Vary the make-up of interview panels. Use structured, job-related questions asked of every candidate and rated against agreed indicators – see how to run a structured interview. Offer adjustments at every stage without making people ask twice.
Onboarding: the first weeks set the tone
Agreed adjustments, equipment and access should be in place on day one, not week three. A buddy outside the line of management helps people ask the questions they would not ask their manager. Check whether new starters’ early experience differs by group; it can, and it is the cheapest point to fix.
Progression: follow the data, not the policy
Look at who applies for promotion, who gets it, who is in talent pools and succession plans, and who receives stretch assignments, by group. Publish the criteria for progression and how decisions are made. Progression is where an inclusion policy most often meets reality, and where people notice first if it does not hold.
Everyday experience, and leaving
Review benefits, flexible working, well-being support and facilities: accessible buildings, quiet and prayer space, changing facilities, how leave for religious festivals is handled. Then look at who leaves, why, and whether they leave unhappy, by group. In our experience, leaver data often shows a pattern earlier than the next survey will; the guide to exit interview questions covers what to ask.
Then own it, and say what you will do
Equip managers, and start with leaders
Anyone who hires, appraises or promotes needs to understand how bias shows up in those decisions. Awareness sessions help most when they start with the senior team, in a setting where leaders can explore the issues honestly before they are asked to lead them, and when they are paired with changes to the processes managers use. The evidence that awareness training on its own changes behaviour is weak (Dobbin and Kalev, 2016); pairing it with structured processes does more.
Give it an owner and consequences
An inclusion strategy needs an executive sponsor who speaks about it, governance that reviews progress against the survey and lifecycle data, and accountability that shows up in objectives and recognition. People in under-represented groups often say they want to see visible commitment from the top; a named sponsor and a published plan are how they see it.
A related duty is worth aligning with. Employers with 250 or more staff will have to publish an equality action plan, mandatory from spring 2027, subject to legislation, with the first plans expected in 2028. It is much narrower than an inclusion strategy – at least one action on the gender pay gap and one on menopause (see the Employment Rights Act timeline) – but your survey and lifecycle results by sex and age are natural evidence for it.
Say what you heard, and what you will do
Share the results, the themes from the listening sessions and the two or three actions you have chosen, with dates. Communicate overtly – a clear statement of commitment – and through what you show: real colleagues’ stories, told with their consent, on your careers site and internal channels. If you are not going to act on something people raised, say so and say why. And look outwards: what colleagues tell you about accessibility and belonging often applies to your customers as well, and it is insight most organisations already hold without using.
Then measure again
Re-run the same questions in twelve months so that the comparison is real, and add the lifecycle data – recruitment, progression and leaving by group – alongside it. The test of an inclusion plan is whether the gaps between groups narrow, not whether the overall score rises.
Drawn from great{with}talent’s recommendations to an organisation following its inclusion survey, generalised here; the organisation is anonymised. For inclusion measured across recruitment, onboarding, engagement and leaving, see ED&I.
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