Background

Prior to working with Diversity Marketplace, The Legion had been mainly in the compliance space for some time with D & I – beginning work to define our culture began the thinking around how Inclusive we were and so that’s when we felt we needed to have a full review to understand the journey ahead.

Approach

The Legion is a complex charity, with a number of stakeholders with very different views that in some cases are in conflict with one another. The Legion is built on many traditions, loyalty and roles that are seen to bastions of the military culture – we recognised we needed to change and keep pace and relevance with the current and future stakeholders of the Legion.

We needed someone who really understood what we wanted to achieve and where we were coming from and having been through a tender process, Gamiel really chimed with the values of the Legion, provided positive and insightful challenge and had a clear grasp on how to review our activity that would be a positive process.

Delivery

The support and training from Diversity Marketplace ranged from 1-2-1 coaching, advice, guidance, engagement with a range of our senior leaders and Trustees through to full staff webinars and awareness raising sessions.

The key support was the audit that they did to establish both whereas an organisation we were in terms of inclusion and where we wanted to be in the future.

The audit was done via analysis of our people data to see how diverse our people are at RBL, the GDIB benchmarking exercise to see where we sat on the development of our inclusion agenda and finally and probably most importantly, the research via focus groups to understand the experience people have had being an employee, a volunteer and a member of the legion.

These three aspects of the audit were key to bringing a holistic view of our current state and future ambition for developing a more inclusive culture.

Support

The knowledge and commitment we receive from Gamiel was, and still is, vested in RBL as an organisation and passionately believes in its purpose and vision.

His experience across a range of differing organisations and charities was broad, his knowledge of the armed forces was also very helpful and his expertise in Inclusion is extensive.

What has impacted us most is the focus groups and webinars where staff have been able to talk openly about both what their experiences have been but also what they want to see and can do to move the culture forward.

Impact

There hasn’t been an opportunity for them to do this before and this has opened up a whole new dialogue with staff that we didn’t have before.

We feel very positive and recognised for what we had achieved in this space, also the passion from staff to help make the changes going forward.

It has felt far more of a partnership than a consultant working with us – he remains a close partner and will do for a long time to come, I am sure.

Summary

Gamiel has committed 110% to this work for the Legion and we have reaped the rewards in a wealth of insight and research that we can work with.

It has been the catalyst for a longer-term strategy, a commitment from right at the top of the Legion to commit to moving forward and becoming an inclusive and diverse charity which has space for everyone.