Reflections on DEIB Week: Belonging – From Action to Impact

After months of meticulous planning, we delivered our annual DEIB Week last week — and what a week it was.

I’ll admit, I always begin with a few nerves. Have we chosen the right topics? Will our external speakers resonate? Will colleagues show up, engage, and lean in?

I needn’t have worried.

We ran 10 sessions across the week, with over 6,000 colleagues joining from around the world. The timing couldn’t have been better. Against a backdrop of growing scepticism and backlash towards DEIB, our people showed up ready — ready for bold, challenging conversations, to share lived experiences, and to connect across borders.

Here are five reflections that stood out most:

Be bold. Always.
We didn’t hold back — and nor did our colleagues. A standout session on Religious, Faith & Spirituality Inclusion explored both what unites us and what can divide. The richness of discussion proved that when we open the door to complexity, colleagues walk through with courage and curiosity.

Global DEIB isn’t one-size-fits-all.
In Belonging Beyond Borders, we unpacked how cultural context shapes the way belonging is understood across our 120-country footprint. It was a powerful reminder that regional nuance must be central to any global DEIB strategy.

If you don’t have an age strategy, you don’t have a growth strategy.
That line from our Rethinking Over 50s session really stuck. The link between DEIB and business value was front and centre — and age inclusion is still too often overlooked.

We all have the power to be ChangeMakers.
Sal Naseem opened the week with a moving reminder that real change starts with each of us. Through storytelling and lived experience, he showed how we can all step into action — calling out discrimination wherever we see it.

Courageous conversations can’t wait.
Gisele Marcus wrapped up the week with a challenge: what difficult conversations are we avoiding? If something doesn’t feel right, it’s on us to call it in — with empathy and conviction.

It was an energising, inspiring week. And most of all, it showed what’s possible when DEIB is not a side conversation, but a business-critical one.

I’d love to hear how others are engaging colleagues in meaningful DEIB conversations — and connecting that work to commercial impact.