Our progress in equity, diversity, and inclusion is a shared achievement resulting from the commitment and efforts of different colleagues. The following work relates to a range of areas at Nesta, from recruitment and progression to culture, research and mission projects. We're grateful to all our staff who have dedicated their time to advancing these goals over the past years.

Four years ago, we published an ambitious equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) strategy with measurable goals. We believe that holding ourselves publicly accountable is essential to embody our values and commitment to inclusion. For this reason, we regularly publish progress and reflections on our EDI strategy.

This update outlines our progress to date, shares key data, and refinements to our strategy as we move forward.

Goal 1: Tackling gender and ethnicity pay gaps

Original wording: By 2027, we will have eliminated our gender and ethnicity pay gaps, at all levels of the organisation.

We have not yet met our goal of eliminating pay gaps. While we have made progress in recent years, our latest data from July 2025 shows that there is still significant work to do.

• Our median gender pay gap has risen to 7.9% (from 5.7%). This remains below the 9.1% charity sector average.
• Our median ethnicity pay gap is 14.2%, a slight decrease from 14.7%.

We recognise that extending our 2027 deadline indefinitely risks strategic credibility. Therefore, we have refined our approach to ensure we make consistent, measurable progress.

We have updated this goal’s wording to:

We will aim to eliminate our gender and ethnicity pay gaps, reducing them by at least 2% every year across all levels of the organisation.

This new target allows us to track progress realistically, accommodating for fluctuations from staff joiners and leavers. To accelerate this, we are using recruitment agencies that specialise in talent from underrepresented groups for senior roles (Band 6 and above).

Goal 2: By 2027, at a minimum, we will be representative of the UK on ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation and gender.

Goal 3: By 2027, at a minimum, we will be representative of the UK for staff from more disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds.

We are pleased to report that our efforts in recruitment, including our internship programme with the Social Mobility Foundation, are having a positive impact. Over the past year, we have seen improvement in staff diversity across all measured characteristics, meeting or exceeding our 2025 targets in most areas.

*This means the respondent indicated that either the highest earner in their household was in a working-class occupation (eg, technical or routine occupations) when the respondent was 14 years old, or they were receiving free school meals if born in the UK after 1980.

While celebrating this progress, we continue to focus on areas that require more attention. We need a more focused effort to attract, recruit, and retain disabled staff. We are now actively advertising roles on disability-oriented job boards like Evenbreak.

We also conclude that our data collection needs to be more specific. The aggregate "BAME" figure, for example, can mask relative underrepresentation of specific ethnic minority groups. Similarly, our current socioeconomic background questions are not well-suited for our international workforce. To address this, we will launch a revised EDI questionnaire in 2026.

Goal 4: By 2027, all our employees will feel they belong and are included at Nesta, irrespective of their background.

Our 2024 employee survey showed mixed results on belonging. While the sense of belonging improved for Black employees (+17pp to 50%), it declined for Asian employees (-20pp to 55%) and remains below the all-staff average for those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds (57% vs 71%).

We have several initiatives to address this:

1. Employee resource groups (ERGs): we will provide ERGs with clear roles, development support, and better integration with our internal communications to foster an inclusive culture.
2. New wellbeing programme: this EDI-informed programme moves beyond a one-size-fits-all model to proactively support the diverse needs of all staff.
3. Three-nation approach: we will enhance collaboration to ensure our people-related initiatives are inclusive of our devolved nation offices.

As part of our strategy review, we have made some important changes to ensure our goals are impactful and achievable.

Supply chain: we have retired the goal to have "50% of suppliers led by people from minoritised groups". Our reliance on fixed, long-term contracts makes this goal impractical to achieve in a meaningful timeframe.

Investments: we have refined our investment goal to be more focused and measurable by stating that "We will use our position as an investor to support EDI and aim for 25% of venture investments to be led by people from underrepresented groups".

Mission impact: we have ramped up our internal tools to help project teams identify and address ethical considerations in research from the outset. Our updated process prompts us to consider aspects like research participant characteristics, data sensitivity, and well-being in our research design and project outcomes. We will make better use of tools like equalities impact assessments.

Communications: we will use internal platforms like 'Lunch & Learn' or similar staff events, as well as a new series of fireside talks that will be embedded in our all-staff meetings from 2026, to amplify diverse identities and experiences internally.

Our priorities for the next 12 months are clear:

1. Revise pay gap targets to a continuous, year-on-year percentage reduction.
2. Improve senior recruitment by using specialist agencies to source talent from underrepresented groups.
3. Enhance data collection with a more detailed EDI questionnaire in 2026 to move beyond broad aggregates.
4. Support our employee resource groups to foster an inclusive culture.
5. Strengthen strategic alignment between our mission teams and our EDI priorities to improve impact and accountability.

We are always keen to learn from other professionals and organisations. If you’re interested in learning more about anything we’ve covered in this report, please do not hesitate to reach out to [email protected].