Creating future-ready Inclusive Cultures:

As business leaders, managers and HR are increasingly required to deliver on diversity, equity and inclusion, the future of inclusive change in organisations will depend on equipping these leaders with the skills to embed it into everyday decisions, systems and culture.

This is the sixth article in our wider series of articles focusing on the book Charlotte Sweeney OBE co-authored with Fleur Bothwick OBE, ‘Inclusive Leadership’ over a decade ago.

The tide has certainly turned in some organisations, where dedicated Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) roles and teams have been reduced or absorbed into broader HR, culture or leadership portfolios. In others, the language has shifted subtly towards belonging, inclusive culture, leadership accountability or employee experience.

DHR Global’s 2025 executive survey found that only 33% of organisations had a senior leader dedicated to inclusion, with responsibility often distributed across HR or line leadership.

The shift does pose a risk as well as an opportunity.  The risk in that inclusion becomes everyone’s responsibility in theory, but no one’s responsibility in practice. The opportunity in that, if delivered effectively under new models or structures, inclusion could become more deeply embedded into the way organisations design roles, make decisions, allocate resources, develop leaders, manage change and measure performance.

As the above shifts, many HR and inclusion leaders will not have the luxury of more hours, bigger teams or greater budgets to deliver a broader scope. Leaders will therefore be asking, “how do we build inclusion into the work that is already happening”?

This requires equipping leaders, managers and those in HR with the skills to apply an inclusion lens throughout the work they already do, such as in workforce planning, organisational design, recruitment, performance, progression, leadership development, change programmes and technology adoption.

The bigger question now becomes, in practice, to what extent are organisations providing these leaders, managers and HR with the capabilities required to truly deliver sustainable inclusive change and amplify impact?

Skills and Capabilities needed for the future

Charlotte and Fleur’s book shared, when it was published in 2016, the core competencies required for an effective DEI leader which were originally created and published by The Conference Board in 2008 (these are included in the link at the end of this article).  Many of these competencies are still critical to this day for anyone wanting to create inclusive change. However, the context in which leaders are expected to apply these competencies has evolved significantly.

The foundations of effective change leadership, such as change management, cultural competence, business acumen, influence and communication all remain critical.  However, leaders are increasingly applying these within organisations experiencing unprecedented levels of technological, cultural and organisational change. 

A decade ago, many inclusion professionals were focused on building the business case, establishing programmes, creating awareness and influencing organisational commitment. Today, professionals are required to embed inclusion, fairness and governance into systems and decision-making. This demands the ability to think systemically, identifying how organisational structures, processes, policies and technologies interact with each other to create fair or unfair outcomes.

The requirement of influencing others, effective communication and building trusting relationships is also evolving, with greater focus today on the ability to create and instil shared ownership across the organisation rather than a dedicated ‘DEI team’ driving inclusive performance. This requires much stronger skills in executive-level influencing and coaching to enable accountability across stakeholders and functions. Appropriate governance design is also critical to amplify shared ownership and position it as an expectation rather than an optional extra.

Psychological safety has become a more prominent capability than it was a decade ago, amidst a backdrop of an increasingly polarised and ‘insular’ world. The ability to build trust, encourage constructive challenge and support high-performing, inclusive teams is becoming a defining culture leadership skill in itself

Leaders, managers and HR practitioners are now being asked, and expected to, influence broader cultural transformation in addition to the original remit of their ‘day jobs’, often with reduced resource and less dedicated time.

When resource is constrained and expectations remain high, the ability to prioritise becomes a critical capability. Looking ahead, the leaders best placed to embed inclusive change will be those who are able to pause, cut through the noise and strategically design programmes and activities that truly embed inclusion into systems and decision-making. Often this might involve ‘moving slower’, requiring an individual discipline to go against an instinct of fast-paced delivery that has been shaped by ‘high productivity’ organisational culture.

View the list of DEI Leader Competencies here. (themes highlighted within The Conference Board’s 2008 Report)

This article is co-authored by Charlotte Sweeney OBE and Liz Pawson-Poon.

Sources:

DHR Global, 2025, ‘Inclusive Leadership in 2025’: https://www.dhrglobal.com/insights/inclusive-leadership-in-2025-what-executive-leaders-are-reporting/

The Conference Board, 2008, ‘Creating a Competency Model for Diversity and Inclusion Practitioners’: https://www.conference-board.org/publications/creating-a-competency-model-for-diversity-and-inclusion-practitioners