Culture+ platform for diversity and inclusion

Culture+ is an Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) platform designed to support startups, scale ups and SMEs to build inclusive cultures from the outset. It is the only platform of its kind developed to help identify and overcome individual and organisational barriers to an inclusive workplace.

How can Culture+ benefit you?

• Greater investment potential: inclusive organisations are more innovative with better prospects to attract and retain great talent, grow fast and become profitable
• Maximises time efficiency: ready-made 'EDI Roadmaps' chart resource allocation across your organisation's growth phases
• Recruitment support: gives you the tools and insights to recruit and retain diverse and talented teams
• Impact measurement: Culture+ is data driven, allowing you to measure and track individual and organisational progress on culture and inclusion in real-time
• Increased knowledge and skills: upskills entire organisation on inclusive behaviours through training cells
• Subsidised access: the first year on the platform is subsidised by the Royal Academy of Engineering to all company employees of Enterprise Hub Members and awardees.

Your pathway to an inclusive team

When your company chooses Culture+, each team member will begin by rating their own inclusive behaviours. Then an anonymous feedback report from your team will indicate where to focus your efforts and provide learning content to develop these skills.

• Organisations with diverse and inclusive leaders are 70% more likely to have captured a new market in the past 12 months and 45% more likely to have increased market share compared to organisations with few or no diverse and inclusive leaders.
• Over 90% of the employers asked by PwC about the value of LGBTQ+ to businesses believe that being out in the workplace has had a positive impact on their talent's ability to do business and engage with customers.
• The potential benefit to the UK economy from full representation of Black, Asian and minority ethnic groups across the labour market through improved participation and progression is estimated to be £24 billion a year, which represents 1.3% of GDP.
• When employees feel their organisation is committed to diversity and they feel included, the ability to innovate is increased by more than 80%, responsiveness to changing customer needs is increased by more than 30%, and team collaboration is increased by more than 40%.

About Culture+

Created in partnership with The Honeycomb Works, Culture+ ('Culture Plus') is a one-stop shop that takes a holistic approach to equality, diversity, and inclusion. The platform hosts a library of articles, templates, and action lists that are specifically designed to meet the needs of small and growing businesses in engineering.  With individual 'EDI Roadmaps,' devised to provide the right resources and advice when you need it, Culture+ provides long-term support to businesses as they grow.

Culture+ also provides individual training through dedicated learning cells, which incorporate a 360 feedback approach. Each cell highlights specific, observable, and repeatable behaviours in everyday interactions that will embed an inclusive culture across an organisation.

The Royal Academy of Engineering subsidises the first year on the platform to all company employees for Enterprise Hub Members and awardees.

Background

In 2019, the Royal Academy of Engineering embarked on a research project looking into the diversity and inclusion needs and resources available to small and medium sized engineering organisations in the UK. The suggested SMEs and micros (start-ups and scale-ups) have very different needs and a different level of understanding of diversity and inclusion when compared to larger companies. They often lack resource, have significant competing priorities and struggle to understand how to make diversity and inclusion the focus of their work. Despite accounting for 99% of all private sector businesses our analysis suggests that SMEs and micros are underserved when it comes to diversity and inclusion support, meaning that a huge proportion of workers and companies are not realising the benefits that greater diversity can bring.

As part of the Royal Academy of Engineering’s commitment to support organisations embed more diverse and inclusive cultures, we have partnered with The Honeycomb Works to produce a robust EDI Platform, Culture+, to be used by start-ups, scale-ups (micros), and SMEs in engineering. ​