Today, most organisations have started their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) journey. Yet, overall progress in diversity has stalled. Organisations and decision-makers face barriers such as generic inclusion programmes that are often ineffective, a lack of evidence-based insights and gaps in leadership skills to support the cultural shift required to ensure employees feel included and engaged in their organisation.    

To leverage the productivity gains of diversity, employees need to feel included at work. It is crucial to create workplace cultures in which all talent can be heard, respected and recognised. To do this we need more inclusive leaders.

The Inclusive Leadership Expert Hub was created by Dr Grace Lordan, director of The Inclusion Initiative at LSE. In collaboration with her colleagues at The Inclusion Initiative. Based on the experience and research insights of The Inclusion Initiative, we form partnerships with organisations and use behavioural science and data science tools to:

• Create inclusive leaders;
• Quantify the relationship between diversity, inclusion, and business outcomes;
• Diagnose the gaps and barriers for all talent to be heard, applied to specific firm contexts;
• Develop evidence-based interventions that can be tested, implemented, and measured to drive inclusion and better business performance.

Why behavioural science?

As organisations embrace the benefits of a diverse workforce, a behavioural science perspective can help identify enablers and constrainers of inclusion and inclusive leadership.

A behavioural framework allows firms to gain insight into the challenges and obstacles that prevent all talent from being included, as well as identify the behavioural change needed to make significant impacts on organisations. By establishing key decision areas, changes on different levels can be designed and tested experimentally, based on relevant metrics that can be tracked over time or across business units. Interventions can then be rolled out to enhance inclusion and inclusive leadership through cost-effective modifications that balance the predicted magnitude of the change with the costs of implementing it. Actions based on behavioural science insights can also contribute to leadership building and the acquisition of negotiation skills, as well as transforming decision-making to avoid the negative impact of groupthink.

Areas of expertise

Our team at The Inclusion Initiative is multi-disciplinary by design, with experts specialising in big data, behavioural science, economics and psychology. We make use of different methodologies, including applied econometrics, field experiments and computational models, as well as qualitative data collection through interviews and focus groups.

We produce relevant research focusing on solutions across five main areas to improve firm and societal outcomes:

• Inclusive Leadership
• Measuring inclusion, and its associated return on investment
• The Future of Work
• Effective Decision Making
• Diversity