mpm included? So... what do you actually do, then?

I can’t start talking about what we do, without a bit of context about why I started mpm included, and how on earth I ended up deciding take on a second career (on top of having a first career in law and being Mum to two kids!) to work towards my dream of making the working world a better and fairer place.

Once upon a time…

Back in the mists of time, there was a little girl, from a very ordinary working/lower middle class family in Romford, who wanted to become a lawyer to change the world.  That was me.  I didn’t come from a family that was involved in the law, I went to a state comprehensive school and I was the first person in my family to go to university, and yet thanks to two (bemused but) incredibly supportive parents, and one or two amazingly dedicated and time-generous teachers at my school, I found myself, aged 18, studying law at Cambridge University.

Sidetracked

It would be great if the story then moved on to how I immediately found my calling in helping the fight against injustice… but the reality is that like many of my peers I followed the lure of the bright lights and the big City and signed up to work at a City law firm fresh out of law school.

In my 20+ year career, I’ve worked in City and national law firms, in-house at two huge global brands (in Financial Services and FMCG respectively), been a Partner at a boutique employment law firm and now, one of my jobs is as the Global Legal Director for employment and litigation at a German Tech Centaur.  Along the way I have experienced, witnessed and advised on a multitude of situations that arose from a fundamental lack of inclusion and equity.

Changing the world

So, how did mpm included start? In 2017, the Gender Pay Gap Regulations came into force in the UK.  Ever the solutions-focussed lawyer, I decided to go beyond just advising my clients on the law, and built a tool to calculate their pay gap for them.  That in turn led to a heap of work where people wanted to use my expertise to help them work out how to narrow the inevitable pay gap in their business – and I loved it!

The fact that the businesses I was working with were so willing to take steps to make positive change got me thinking about what more I could do to have a wider impact.  Not long afterwards, the pandemic hit, and as I struggled to survive the joys of being an employment lawyer (super busy time for us) and home schooling (still not over the trauma) I noticed that there was an increasing focus among my clients and in the world at large on inclusion and diversity… but there was also a significant lack of direction in the attempts my clients were making to tackle DEI in their businesses.

Changing the world… with data and logic

As I watched my clients desperately try to make change, expending time and resources with the very best of intentions, but fail to make any tangible progress, I became more and more convinced that there was a better way to deal with DEI than by basing initiatives on ‘feelings’, or a perception of problems. As a lawyer, I deal in logic and facts and I LOVE a process  - so why not translate that into DEI work?

Creating the Pathway

So, I decided that this was exactly what I was going to do.  I spent a good couple of years educating myself – reading, and listening, and attending conferences, and talking to professionals in this space (and I should say at this point that it was an entirely life enhancing experience – the generosity of the professionals who were prepared to give up their time to speak to me (you know who you are) and share knowledge was diametrically opposite to anything I had every experienced in the legal profession) and I gradually mapped out a way to deal with DEI that made sense to my logical lawyer’s brain – using data, and logic, and process, and measuring progress.

I was also incredibly fortunate along the way to have the support of my erstwhile managing partner and boss and now my business partner, Mark Minns (who often is found looking slightly bemused whilst being bombarded by my passionate tirades on what we have to do next as a business), and to meet and then welcome as the third of our merry trio, Rachel Edwards, who shares my deep passion for DEI, but combines that with an introvert’s reflective perspective and an analytical, data driven mind that sometimes makes me gasp in amazement as we work together to crack a problem or devise a new piece of tech.  What a team!

That’s great… but what do you actually DO?

Let’s flash forward to mpm included in 2024.  The quickest way to describe what we do is that we offer an end to end service that helps businesses create a more inclusive workplace, which in turn allows them to attract and retain talent that reflects our diverse society.  To put it more simply, we go into businesses and partner with them as what I often describe as an outsourced Head of DEI.  We call our approach the Pathway – because we know that DEI can seem like an impenetrable forest for many businesses, and our aim is to act as a guide and provide a pathway through that difficult terrain.

Scoping

Our work starts with understanding where a business is right now – what are its DEI challenges, and what work (if any) has already been done in this space?

We then work with our clients to start to build a picture, based on data, of their current diversity demographic and how included their people feel.  We have created our own technology platform and survey tool, which allows us to gather information direct from staff and present a clear picture of the areas that need the greatest focus  - we use this as a signpost along the Pathway.

Obviously, we can’t just march into a business and demand that their staff give us their private information (even though the beauty of our tool is that it does not allow any individual to be identified).  Instead, we work with the business to build employee trust in the process and in our firm through clear communication of the work we will be doing, the information we need, and what we intend to do with it.  We accept that we will not get a 100% participation rate for this first survey – anything around 60% participation is a great outcome - but we do what we can to maximise trust and therefore maximise participation, knowing that if staff see the work we are doing to make change, this will build confidence (and survey two will likely get a much greater response rate in due course).

Focussing

When we have completed the Scoping phase, we are able to identify which of the nine characteristics that we survey (each of those covered by the UK Equality Act plus neurodiversity and socio-economic background) that are most in need of attention, based on the score provided by the Pathway tool.

We recommend that businesses choose to focus on between one and three of these areas for their initial project.  One of the big mistakes we see businesses making is trying to be all things to all people straight away from a DEI perspective, and in our experience, trying to tackle nine different topics in the first year is a recipe for the project to fall over, and the staff to completely lose any faith in the process – which is not where we want our clients to be.

Focus, for us, is a deep dive into available data sources.  We partner with HR to look at the data available on HR systems and zone in on key stages in the employee lifecycle:  recruitment, appraisal/promotion, performance management, retention/exit.  At the same time, we speak to employees, either in groups or individually, to understand their experiences at this workplace and any barriers they may have encountered.

Changing

When we have mined the rich seam of quantitative and qualitative data available to us, it’s time to communicate our findings to the leadership team.

In our experience, it can be confronting for leaders to be faced with uncomfortable facts about the business that they are running.  Let’s face it, people generally set out to do their best and most people want to create a fair and equitable workplace, so it can be anything from irritating to devastating to discover that you haven’t achieved this yet.  That’s why a critical part of our work is with our excellent ‘founder coaches’ who we have worked with to build a framework to deliver hard messages, and to take leaders on a journey through their business’ results where rather than feeling defensive, they can understand and hopefully embrace the role that they have to play in making things better.

When we’ve finished talking to the leaders about their ideas for change, then we are in a great place to start to pull together a strategic plan to improve inclusion and diversity (in that order) using everything we’ve found.  We position this on a scale ranging from ‘quick wins’ (things that can be done right now to change things for the better) to how the business should look by 2030 (and beyond – this work takes time!) – and suddenly, we’re through the impenetrable forest… and standing in the sunshine shoulder to shoulder with our clients, within sight of our destination - a fair, equitable, diverse and inclusive workplace, with all of the people based and business benefits that brings.

Do you need our help?

If this sounds like something that your business could benefit from, then don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.  We love talking to people about inclusion and diversity, and we promise zero hard sell – just an exploration of how we might be able to work with your business to help you make it fairer and more inclusive.

About mpm included

With an intricate understanding of the particular challenges faced by businesses and our holistic approach to DEI, mpm included is committed to creating positive and long-term change in the workplace.

A solution-focused methodology underpinned by our comprehensive suite of services and our proprietary technology platform provides an end-to-end service for DEI. Our approach includes data and root cause analysis, leadership facilitation and coaching, and support for DEI strategy development and programme delivery that produces a clear plan, concise activities and defined measures for improving diversity, inclusion, and belonging in your organisation.

hello@mpmincluded.com

www.mpmincluded.com

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