‘No silver bullet’: DEI strategies require broad initiatives for real impact

An effective DEI strategy needs everybody to be engaged in the conversation, says Jonny Briggs of Aviva.

Openly setting targets for diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) helps to demonstrate that an employer has ambitions in this space, which is beneficial for their employer brand.

This is the view of Jonny Briggs, group head, talent acquisition at Aviva. But, he says, there is no single answer if you want to make your DEI strategy effective and ensure its long-term impact.

Any DEI strategy requires an organisation to actively create initiatives across a whole range of activities because making an impact is about the bigger picture. “There is no silver bullet, no one answer,” Briggs says.

“We’re having to be more clever about bringing people into those conversations.” Jonny Briggs, Aviva

“We have to be clear about the fact we have set ourselves a target, not a quota. We’ve set targets for leaders for both gender and ethnicity. And we’ll publish those internally and externally, so everybody knows we have ambitions in this space. That makes a difference to your employer brand because then prospective candidates can see we’re taking this seriously. So from my perspective, it’s important to be upfront and clear about what your targets are.”

In 2023, Aviva’s targets were to increase representation of ethnically diverse senior leaders to 13 percent by 2024 and to increase the number of women in leadership roles to 40 percent by 2024. The employer achieved its gender target in November 2023.

Targets are a helpful driver, but Briggs is an advocate for partnering on DEI. “It’s important to partner—not with everybody, you have to choose your partners and go in deep with them.”

Aviva is working with Race at Work charter and has introduced a number of initiatives, from enabling career progression to capturing ethnicity data. The insurer is a founding partner of Change the Race Ratio, which has fed into setting targets for its ethnically diverse senior leadership. In terms of gender, the company partners with Women in Finance Charter and the 30% club. Aviva’s CEO Amanda Blanc is the UK government’s [RB1] champion for women in finance.

The bigger picture

When it comes to thinking about the role DEI strategies play in identifying, attracting, and retaining previously underrepresented talent, Briggs says it’s important to think about DEI in the context of the broader company.

“It’s important that every bit of an organisation can feel that our ambitions are for them and that representation is for all. For example, we will talk very clearly about our targets around gender and ethnicity. If you’re a middle-aged, white, straight man, who plays golf—which a lot of people in insurance are—we want to make sure you’re engaged in this.

“We don’t want anyone to feel or believe they’re not part of the conversation—they’re absolutely part of the conversation.”

Briggs explains that when he talks to people he emphasises that while they do prioritise gender and ethnic equality and inclusion, the employer has a whole host of other important DEI initiatives that Aviva needs everybody to be involved in.

“Internally, we have six inclusion communities, which are also called employee resource groups. They are set up so everyone in the organisation can be interested in at least three of them. They cover areas such as caring responsibilities (which for us includes children), age, ethnicity, and sexual orientation.

“We want to make sure everybody is involved and we’re having to be more clever about bringing people into those conversations.”

For Briggs, this can look like an initiative around sport that will interest people and help them to understand how the company’s DEI initiatives affect and help them.

He says the inclusion community that stands out in this space is the one centred on carers’ responsibilities. This encourages people, particularly men, to talk about the kind of responsibilities they have for a child or other family member.

“Having a space where anyone and everyone can share their experience of caring responsibilities, for whatever reason, has created a huge community of people who share the same challenges. That could be getting into work or getting out to do things.

“We now have 35 hours of leave for caring responsibilities each year, which you’re allowed to take on the basis that you have responsibilities for somebody else. Getting unfamiliar faces into the conversation is absolutely key,” he concludes.

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