<span id="test" class="kool-class" style="color: #00c0c3;" fs-test-element="test"><b>For those of you that are signed up to our newsletter*, you will have seen our marketing manager <u>Bronte's</u> brief thoughts on 'Why is Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) no longer on the agenda?'</b></span>

On reflection, I felt this was slightly presumptuous, as for many of the clients we are working with, EDI is still very much on the agenda.

However, the sentiment of the newsletter alludes to the tangible anti-EDI rhetoric that has been strongly increasing in the last 12-18 months, which has been strengthened through messaging from the media, central government and various factions across the United States.

Being quite analytical, I tend to use moments like this to really assess whether there is any truth in what we are seeing - and with most things in life, it is hard to find and maintain a perfect balance. I sense the anti-EDI rhetoric is an overcorrection to account for the various hyper critical activist types that will always see a problem without any credible solutions.

In simplistic terms the anti-EDI rhetoric seems to conclude that "EDI doesn't work, so we're not doing it anymore". There's so much nuance to this summation, so I thought I'd unpack it over a series of posts, as I doubt I'll do any justice to this conversation. If you'd prefer a TLDR summary, please see below why I personally think people have made the lazy assumption that EDI doesn't work:

1. They have no clear idea of what "success" looks like from an EDI perspective.
2. They didn't appropriately resource their EDI functions, in line with 1.
3. If they had 1 and 2, they didn't create an environment (i.e. systems, processes and procedures) that would deliver.
4. If they had all of the above, they prioritised their activities and interventions inappropriately.
5. If they had all of the above, they didn't give their plans enough time and support to see the desired outcomes.

But to end where I began, if our newsletter title was quite presumptuous and EDI is very firmly still on the agenda at your organisation, please share what you're focusing on at the moment and any successes you're seeing. One of the ways that we can combat the anti-EDI rhetoric is by being visible and proactive in sharing success stories and evidence of impact.

* For those of you that aren't, what are you playing at... Seriously. It's an award winning** newsletter, so you'd be silly not to sign up!!

** Ok, it hasn't won any actual awards, but plenty of people have told us that they look forward to receiving our newsletter and that they routinely send the newsletter to their teams and other acquaintances.

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