Martin is CEO for Zenith Commercial, and Group Strategy Director, and was kind enough to share details of the EDI agenda at Zenith.

What does the Equality, Diversity & Inclusion agenda mean for Zenith and its employees, and how has it benefited the entire business?

At its heart it’s about valuing the difference in all our people and ensuring we reflect the customers and communities we serve. To do that you need to have a clear appreciation of what ED&I is. In the planning process of our People Strategy ED&I we spent time really thinking about that. It's about making sure people understand there is a difference between diversity & inclusion – diversity is about representation; inclusion is about the act of valuing difference – and both elements are important.

Even at this early stage of the journey I think the impact on the business has been quite profound – we’ve done a huge amount in a short space of time. Credit is due to our CPO Stuart Price, the lead architect of the programme, for that. We’ve invested heavily in learning and on educating and we’ve encouraged constructive dialogue around ED&I; we’ve tried to focus on understanding impact and helping our colleagues understand impact.

We talk a lot about wanting to ensure that our people feel that they can be their true selves at work. For people to be able to feel like that you have to create an environment and a culture that is supportive of that – to ensure there are role models and people in positions of leadership to whom they can aspire. You have got to make sure they know their opinions matter and that the organisation listens to its people.

It’s important to be able to demonstrate that opportunity is genuinely open to everybody. There is a difference between having equality and having equity – the same opportunity for all is not the whole answer; you’ve got to make sure that there is opportunity for people who have very specific needs and for those who are under-represented in the organisation to have appropriate opportunity as opposed to equal opportunity. We’ve come to see there’s so much learning in ED&I for everybody at every level at Zenith.

I think that the way in which we have designed and mobilised the program has been key to its success. A key principle was to resist the temptation to set up committees and groups lead by a director. Our philosophy has been that whilst ED&I needs to be absolutely sponsored at highest level in the organisation, embedding ED&I and mobilising the program has been led by people from within the business who have been empowered.

There are six elements to the programme – Gender; Age; Race, Religion & Ethnicity; Sexuality & LGBTQ+; Disability, and Neurodiversity – and there is a Focus Group for each area chaired by someone in the business with 8-12 members including a board sponsor. So straight away we’ve created 70+ ED&I ambassadors within the business. I think this has been hugely significant for us in helping us to engage our colleagues. It’s probably been the single most significant impactful enabler of change.

What have been the major rewards and challenges in rolling it out?

The most significant reward for me personally has been to watch the Focus Group chairs and their teams, engage, develop and step up, then take their programmes and ideas forward. Seeing them come to fruition with the engagement that they achieve from colleagues in the business around their activities –  all of that has been hugely rewarding – it’s moved the dial in such a significant way.

Also, the trust that I see colleagues have in what we’re doing and their willingness to be open is a major reward. To measure this we conducted a voluntary census – the level of participation is 70% – which tells us that people have a degree of trust in Zenith to give that information, something that is re-enforced by the fact that fewer people chose ‘prefer not to say’ than in the UK Census in every category. We will be publishing some of the insights from it in our Annual Report in July. It’s so powerful, it allows us to see where we are and if we reflect the communities we serve by comparing to the UK Census across these different elements of society. That trust says a lot.

Our people increasingly have the confidence to speak up and share experiences – I saw a powerful example of this first hand during our Neurodiversity Week when we went out to each site and engaged with colleagues in small groups. I went to support the Neuro group who took a colleague from the commercial division who has recently been diagnosed with autism. To see her stand up in front of 30 mainly male truck technicians and talk about her experience and what her diagnosis means for her was so powerful; they were fully engaged and I remember speaking to those same technicians for the first time after we acquired the site two years ago, talking about wanting to build their depots and workshops into centres of excellence with a diverse & inclusive culture and I think they wondered what I was on about to be honest!

We can see that our ED&I programme has already had a tangible difference impact on our culture, but we are in the early in the stages still and like any organisation we do have challenges. Perhaps our most significant is around Race, Religion and Ethnicity. Our census has shown us that we attract people of colour at an entry level, but we are not managing to retain and develop them meaning despite a UK population that has 18% representation of under-represented ethnic groups, we have 0% on our board or amongst our director population and only 8% in ‘Head of’ roles and yet we have 19% in team member roles. This is a key priority for us going forward with our programme and we’re going to need to be bold if we are to address this properly.

What is the biggest misconception of ED&I?

Based on my own experience, the biggest risks I see for business leaders is not fully understanding ED&I or appreciating its nuances and complexities. I came to Zenith believing I knew quite a bit about inclusion and diversity, having already been on a journey at Deloitte – who have invested heavily in ED&I – but I realise now how much I still had to learn and still didn’t really understand or appreciate.

The way we’ve broken it down into those 6 core elements has really helped. I went on a learning journey much steeper than I thought it would be and I’m still learning, so I think the risk is seeing ED&I as being one-dimensional or focusing just on one element. For organisations to really grasp ED&I and benefit from the cultural and economic dividends that come from being truly diverse and inclusive, you need to fully understand it, set out a vision and build a holistic programme of change to achieve it. The value of education and learning for senior leaders on ED&I cannot be underestimated.

What has been your own personal journey and how have you upskilled yourself on ED&I?

My eyes were first properly opened back at Deloitte through a mandatory inclusion workshop which built another level of self-awareness. My ED&I lens on self-awareness was not well tuned until that point. I went through the process of learning and understanding how to move from your start point and how to address the challenges once you’re aware of them.

Being confident that I had the support of my organisation was very important. That’s one of the reasons that Zenith has made the progress that it's made – because people like me and other leaders in the business including the 70 ED&I Ambassadors, have confidence that the organisation is serious about this and wants to change and make a difference.

It's a journey of continuous learning, of staying tuned in and being self-aware of how my own behaviour and mindset, whether conscious or unconscious, is playing into how people experience me as a leader and how it’s playing into the decisions I make.

The other part is asking myself ‘what can I personally do to make a difference? How do I use my voice to support my colleagues?’ I like to think about the 3 A’s – Advocacy, Allyship and Action. I try and reflect regularly on what I have done from an advocacy or allyship perspective and what action I have taken. For example, in relation to Gender it’s about speaking up for female colleagues and acknowledging the positive influence female colleagues have had on me. Listening to their experiences has really helped me develop a better understanding of the bias that women still face and has helped me improve my own self-awareness around that. I try to embrace the differences amongst my colleagues and to reflect that in my leadership team.

For your team and for Zenith as a Group, how are you measuring progress on your ED&I strategy?

We have a series of KPIs – there are certain things we can measure, quantify and track; and we publish those. For example in my own focus area of Gender – 42% of our Directors and 38% of our ‘Heads of’ are now women, 54% of all promotions were female with 63% of senior leadership appointments (Director and HO) going to women. This is in a sector that has 24% women overall! (Source: Deloitte Automotive Report).

We also evolve – this is a learning journey so as we develop the programme we learn more about what we can measure and track. It also goes back to listening – you can do this through structured and unstructured means. We place a significant weighting on structured engagement surveys that we undertake every 6 months, and we will also look to repeat the Census periodically. Getting the right mix of quantitative and qualitative methods is key.

What would be your first piece of advice to anyone making a senior hire in their business and how do they get the ED&I strategy right?

I believe it’s as important, if not more important, to explore and really understand the behavioural qualities and values of a candidate as it is their technical abilities, competence and experience. That is my first filter - do we have good cultural alignment? When you ask people to talk about what drives and motivates them and what their values are, you learn an awful lot from that and it should absolutely embrace the ED&I agenda.

In some recent recruitment with Pratap Partnership, I was clear about my ideal outcome from the process albeit with the obvious overlay that we have to recruit the best person for the job. That assignment shows that striving to build a diverse and inclusive leadership team need not conflict with the imperative to hire the best person for the role. I am confident we have genuinely recruited the best person for the job and we were able to meet the ED&I objective we set at the outset.

Outside of your day job you have had a number of charity commitments personally; this is also something we are interested in championing in our business with our colleagues. Has this impacted positively on your work life too?

I’ve really benefited from being involved in voluntary work outside of my job. It’s something I’ve done for over 20 years and I’m a big advocate of it. I started doing voluntary work on the finance committee of a charitable organisation and it was such a stark contrast to the day job for me. It brought me into contact with people from very different backgrounds, with completely different priorities to the ones I have in my daily role; I found it such a positive developmental experience. I have learnt about aspects of life that I’m not immersed in day to day which is a good release from the pressures of work. I find it very rewarding to feel I can use my skills and experience to make a difference and have learned a lot from it.

I have 2 roles these days – I’ve been Chair of Yorkshire Board of Maggie’s, a cancer charity for 8 years; and I’m a Trustee at the Leeds International Piano Competition; two completely different exposures to charity - health and the arts. I get a huge amount from both. I don’t play the piano myself although I’d love to say that I do! I am a great lover of classical music though. I’m there primarily with a finance hat – I serve on the audit and finance committee of that charity. My role with Maggie’s is broader and includes fundraising and supporting the team in the Centre who do incredible work.

Zenith were forward thinking enough when I joined them to agree that I could continue with these two roles. Occasionally it’s a bit of a challenge to juggle them with the full-time executive responsibilities that the day job brings, but I think it’s part and parcel of being the best leader I can be – making time to give to those two charities and giving something back to the wider community. It’s amazing how many people in Zenith ask me about them. I work with some fantastic people in both charities – they are hugely fascinating, challenging and yet rewarding areas to be involved in. It’s a privilege to be able to do it.