Better health for all through diversity, equity and inclusion

The importance of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion to our mission

We are committed to becoming a more diverse, equitable and inclusive organisation not only in what we do, but how we do it because we genuinely believe Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is a key enabler to achieving our mission of driving health equity.

Better health for all is within our reach. We believe that becoming more diverse, equitable and inclusive is not just the right thing to do but will help us achieve our mission of driving health equity faster. By focusing as much on how and who we work with as well as what we work on  fund and invest in.

We’re committed to removing barriers and taking bold actions to ensure our own organisation is equitable, diverse and inclusive. To do this, we not only look at our internal practices. We also support a diverse pipeline of partners and suppliers and take intentional action to ensure our actions today leave behind a fair and equitable foundations of a healthier society and reduce inequality in health.

Our definitions of diversity, equity and inclusion

As an organisation, we have collectively crafted our own definitions of diversity, equity and inclusion. These reflect the needs of our mission to build the foundations of a healthier society and reduce inequality in health. They underpin our cultural values: being inclusive, enterprising, collaborative and delivery minded.

Diversity

For us, it means:

Recognising and taking account of everything that makes us unique as an individual. It is not just the categories that are protected by law. It is our backgrounds, the way we live, our personality types, our ways of thinking and the variety of our perspectives. Along with this, diversity describes the positive value of the rich tapestry of experience. This helps us to look at things from different angles to make an impact in the communities in which we operate.

Equity

For us, it means:

We consider individual needs to create fair access, opportunities, and advancement for everybody. While equality means sameness, to us equity means acknowledging we all have different starting points. As a result, we act with transparency, compassion, and trust. We create conditions for everyone to thrive and reach their full potential.

Inclusion

For us, it means:

We embrace, celebrate and value difference within the workplace. Our organisational effort and practices ensure we remove barriers. Therefore, all groups or individuals are culturally and socially welcomed and valued equally.

Our approach to achieving greater diversity, equity and inclusion

Our DEI Strategy is a significant step in our efforts to become a more equitable and inclusive organisation, and one which better represents the Boroughs of Lambeth and Southwark in which we work. Since 2018, we have made real progress in defining how we think about DEI.

DEI is an enabler to the Foundations mission. It is embedded into all aspects of our work – as an employer, in the way we partner, with suppliers and in who and what we invest into allow us to contribute to a more equitable society in practice as well as in mission. Our revised strategy will build on that progress and will guide our efforts to become an organisation which respects the diversity of people, partners and suppliers we work with, and acts in a more, equitable and inclusive way.

We have developed a strategy which sets out five impact goals that we want to achieve by 2027. These goals are based on the different routes to impact we will take through the breadth of our work at Guy’s & St Thomas’ Foundation, Impact on Urban Health and our three NHS charities (Guy’s & St Thomas’ Charity, Evelina London Children’s Charity and Guy’s Cancer Charity) . They outline the change we want to achieve in the world and what a more diverse, equitable and inclusive Foundation will look like and how it will act in the future.

Our impact goals are:

• Funder of Health Equity – by 2027, we will have aligned our funding activities with the needs of those in our boroughs who are disproportionally impacted by poor health outcomes to achieve the universal goal of health equity, with a particular focus on the largest inequalities of race and income.
• Influencer and Advocate – by 2027, we will be equitable and inclusive in the voices we promote; we will support others to influence for health equity; and we will share our insight and learning with others on a similar journey.
• Investor and Custodian – by 2027 we will act responsibly to advocate for and embed diversity throughout our investments and portfolio and undertake direct corporate engagement actions in mission relevant sectors.
• With historical endowment – by 2027, we will have clearly articulated the origins of our wealth. We will have decided how this might shape our future actions.
• Employer of Choice – by 2027 we will have built an inclusive culture that truly reflects the diversity of Lambeth & Southwark, where our employees feel they belong and have equal opportunity to develop and deliver on our mission to build the foundations of a healthier society.

We are committed to making continual progress and taking concrete actions to achieve these goals across the years to come. Our strategy sets out how we will measure progress against them. Our progress will be guided by an action plan, based around SMART (Specific, Measurable, Agreed, Realistic, Time-bound) actions to drive continual progress. This will be reviewed as part of our quarterly business meetings and progress will be measured and reported on to our internal DEI core group and our external DEI oversight board.

This is a crucial step in the right direction to drive long-term positive change. We are constantly learning about ourselves and from others. As we progress through the plan, we will update, adjust and iterate to ensure that all actions drive us towards the impact we’re aiming for over the next four years.

In addition, we are committed to being a fair and inclusive employer and transparent in our reporting. For instance, we are a Living Wage employer and support flexible working, parental leave, part-time roles and job shares. We report annually on gender and ethnicity pay gaps of our staff and leadership.

Understanding our heritage and its impact today

Part of moving our DEI commitment forward is working to understand our organisation’s history, the health of the people who live in our communities, the history of our place and the legacy we want to leave behind. We are working to build a better understanding of our heritage and the impact of that legacy on health and healthcare today.

More information on our work on addressing the impact of our legacy is available on our legacy work page, and information on our project to contextualise the statues of Thomas Guy and Sir Robert Clayton that the Foundation owns is available on our statues page.