We are setting out to become a more inclusive employer and innovator. To hold ourselves accountable for the changes we seek, we translated our ambition into nine measurable goals and concrete actions that span everything we do at Nesta.
Our nine goals
- By 2022, Nesta will have eliminated our gender and ethnicity pay gaps, and by 2025 our gender and ethnicity progression gaps, at all levels of the organisation.
- By 2025, Nesta’s staff profile will, at minimum, be representative of the UK on the following characteristics: ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation and gender.
- By 2025, the proportion of staff from more disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds will, at minimum, be representative of the UK.
- By 2023, all our employees will feel they belong and are included at Nesta, irrespective of their background.
- By 2025, 25 per cent of our investees and 50 per cent of our suppliers will be led by people from minoritised and disadvantaged groups.
- By 2025, the majority of our innovation missions’ endowment funding will be spent on activity to improve the circumstances of people from minoritised and disadvantaged groups, and will not widen inequalities.
- By 2021, all Nesta missions will actively consider and measure the impact of our work on minoritised and disadvantaged groups throughout the innovation process.
- By 2022, we will be actively using our platforms to raise the voices of minoritised and disadvantaged groups, and contributing to a wider movement for more equitable, diverse and inclusive practices.
- We will take an empirical and creative approach to embedding equity, diversity and inclusion throughout our work. By 2025, we will have generated evidence supporting five ways of working that effectively address issues of discrimination and exclusion.
In keeping with Nesta’s overall approach, we will take an experimental, adaptive and impact-led approach to advancing EDI. This means that, while we will hold the goals and outcomes expressed in this document constant for five years, we may add – or drop – ways of working based on new data or evidence about what is effective, and what additional behavioural, cultural and structural changes or resources are required.
Our timeline for change
In the immediate future, our focus is on the first four EDI goals – which relate to our people and internal culture – as we build an organisation that is fit to deliver our new strategy. In the first year, we seek to improve our recruitment practices, create clear routes for professional growth, and ensure we reward all our people fairly. At the same time, we will set the foundation to advance all of our EDI goals, setting quarterly milestones for our work.
