Our team
Everyone in our team plays an important role in helping to build the foundations of a healthier society.
We believe better health for all is within our reach and by becoming a more diverse, equitable and inclusive organisation together we can achieve this.
We are working to embed diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) into everything we do. Two years ago, we set an agenda for our approach. This underpins how we manage our assets, who we employ and partner with, and how we make decisions.
We made our commitment to DEI not only because it is the right thing to do, but because we genuinely believe it will enable us to be more effective in driving health equity.
Better health for all is within our reach. However, to achieve this, we need people from a range of different backgrounds and experiences to inform our organisational culture and practice. Therefore, removing barriers and taking bold actions to ensure our own organisation is equitable, diverse and inclusive, is central to this aim.
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 legacy. Most importantly, we use our influence as a foundation to encourage and enable others to do the same.
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 enterprising, collaborative and delivery minded.
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.
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.
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.
Using as a guide the pillars of stronger foundation practice from the Association of Charitable Foundations, we have identified three areas of focus to drive forward our diversity, equity, and inclusion practice. These are:
We have much to learn and more work to do. However, a review of our strategic approach has already led to positive, practical changes in the way we work. For example, we have:
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.
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.
Like many organisations in Britain, slavery is part of our history. We believe we have a duty to address its legacies. Therefore, as a health foundation and the owner of a large arts and heritage collection, we are committed to tackling the impact of racism on health inequalities, and to supporting greater diversity within our organisation and work.
We are working to build a better understanding of our heritage and the impact of that legacy on health and healthcare today. We are partnering with a broad range of organisations to help us explore and share what we learn with others. For example, we: