Case Study: Discover how the London Borough of Hounslow evaluated the alignment between leadership culture and its commitment to diversity and inclusion

by | Jun 1, 2025 | Case Studies | 0 comments

Context

Covering 23 square miles, stretching from Heathrow Airport in the west to Chiswick in the east, Hounslow is one of the capital’s most diverse boroughs and combines both town and country. The borough features modern housing estates, quiet suburbs, green belt villages like Heston and bustling and fashionable cosmopolitan districts such as Chiswick.

Hounslow is a real community of communities and one of the most culturally diverse areas in the UK. Over 250,000 people live in the borough. The borough is one of London’s most vibrant locations for business, which is not surprising considering its excellent transport links: the A4 and M4 run through the borough and the area has eight London Underground stations and seven mainline railway stations. Hounslow’s location is a real asset and, given their close proximity to London’s Heathrow airport, as London’s international gateway.

Following a formal procurement process The London Borough of Hounslow undertook Real World Group’s Embracing Diversity Inventory (EDI) to enhance its commitment to diversity, inclusivity, and refreshing its values. The goal was to understand employees’ perceptions of leadership culture across various demographics throughout the organisation such as race, gender identity, team, department.

Initial Intervention

The EDI organisational survey was tailored to address Hounslow’s unique challenges and opportunities and was aligned with their new values. It enabled a comprehensive analysis of leadership culture within teams and the broader Directorates. Following a comprehensive programme of communication supported by the Executive and a number of focus groups. The EDI was distributed electronically, and hard copies were used in areas where access might be difficult.

Results

The findings from the EDI led to significant outcomes:

Equality Strategy: Co-created with equality network groups and led by elected members, ensuring EDI informs all programs.
Local Action Planning: Facilitated by the Business Partnering team, focusing on best practices and areas for improvement.
Inclusiveness Activities: Implemented coaching and mentoring programs accessible to all employees.
Leadership Development: Launched initial leadership programs with more to follow, ensuring a talent pipeline.
Conflict Resolution Framework: Introducing sustainable ways to address and resolve conflicts.
Commitment to Listening: Firmly embedding safe spaces, zero tolerance to bullying and harassment, and proactive listening.

Impact

The EDI opened leaders’ eyes to the necessary leadership qualities for inclusivity and future readiness. It fostered a culture of belonging and respect, directly enhancing the employee experience.

Follow up Intervention

Seeing the EDI as an essential ongoing activity to ensure that Hounslow keeps moving forward with the EDI agenda, the survey was repeated in 2024.

The same questions were asked to allow comparison of findings from the initial data collection. In addition, new questions were added that added further depth to the information being gathered from employees across the Council including on new cultural interventions such as conflict resolution.

Once again, the survey was responded to well by Council employees, providing a rich database for reflection and action. The findings were picked up and acted upon by the OD team, with specific feedback workshops for Directorates and key Council groups to help ensure that the right people were seeing the data so that positive change can be created. This has also been an essential activity for underscoring the fact that EDI is everyone’s responsibility, not something that sits with HR & OD.

Hounslow recognises that they must never take the eye off the ball with ED&I, and so the survey findings will form the basis of OD activity over the coming months and years as the Council stretches to its full potential for the people of Hounslow.

Specifically, as a result of the EDI activity we:

  • are developing an equality strategy, which will be co-created with our equality network groups and led by our elected members, ensuring EDI informs all our programmes.
  • have facilitated local action planning, through our Business Partnering team, focusing on sharing best practice as well as tackling areas for improvement
  • have implemented a range of activities to embed a culture of inclusiveness and belonging, these include coaching and mentoring programmes accessible to all our people
  • launched the first of our leadership development programmes, with further to follow targeted at different levels within the organisation ensuring a pipeline of talent can be developed.
  • will be introducing a framework to consider how we best address and resolve conflict in an effective, sustainable way
  • are firmly embedding our commitment to listening, providing safe spaces and ensuring absolute understanding of our zero tolerance to bullying and harassment Positive Action.

Recommendation

“We applied Real World Group’s EDI as part of our commitment to ensuring we are a truly diverse and inclusive Council and in refreshing our values. We were keen to understand how our employees view the leadership culture of their team and wider Directorate, and to analyse the findings by a range of demographic factors that are important to us such as race, gender identity, level in the organisation and so on. The EDI was tailored for us to explore challenges and opportunities that are unique to Hounslow, organised under our exciting new values. The results have enabled us to create a comprehensive plan to build on the best of what exists in the organisation and to address areas we feel could be much more positive. They have opened the eyes of leaders across the Council to enable them to much better understand the kind of leadership we need not only to be more inclusive of underrepresented groups but also to be stronger and more fit for the future as an organisation generally. I would very much recommend the EDI to other organisations because Real World Group’s knowledge, expertise and insight coupled with their personable, responsive approach enabled us to better understand our organisation and make a real difference to the experience of our people.
Steve Whitehead, Director of People, Equality and Organisational Development 
London Borough of Hounslow

Discover how Real World Group’s Embracing Diversity Inventory (EDI) helped the London Borough of Hounslow create a values-led, inclusive culture and what your organisation could learn from their journey.