What equality, diversity, inclusion and belonging means to us

From day one at Money and Mental Health we have strived to be absolutely ‘best in class’ when it comes to inclusion of people with mental health problems —in our workforce, our board, our advisory board, and through representation in our research and every aspect of our external communications. There’s always more to do, but we like to think we’re doing pretty well on that front: 71% of our team and 38% of our board have personally experienced mental health problems, and 100% of team members say we have a supportive culture and care about their wellbeing. 

We have lived experience speakers at every event we organise, and our Research Community is the UK’s largest mental health research panel – 5,000 people with experience of mental health problems (ranging from mild to severe). They take part in our research every week, share their experiences in the press, and even guided the development of our organisational strategy.

But even for those of us with experience of mental health problems, that’s only one aspect of our identity. Our ethnicity, gender, sexuality, physical disability, age and a whole range of other factors also play into whether we feel welcome and included at work, and affect our experience of money and mental health problems. 

Two years ago we decided to dedicate more time and conscious effort to making sure that our charity is an inclusive place to work for everyone, and that our research really represents the full range of experiences of people with mental health problems – including those who face multiple layers of disadvantage. 

We knew without doing this we were missing out on talented people who could help us to have the impact we’re here to deliver. We also knew that we can’t fully break the link between money and mental health problems if some people’s experiences are not reflected in the research or addressed by the recommendations.

With the support of Impact on Urban Health, we were grateful to work with a consultancy called New Ways who facilitated a process of learning and reflection for our team. This resulted in a new EDIB strategy that we’re now working to deliver.

You’re probably familiar with the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion acronym – we added the ‘B’ for ‘belonging’ during the process, to reflect that we don’t just want to include people in ‘our’ organisation. We want people to really feel like they belong, and that the organisation is something that belongs to all of us.

Through the process we identified five key areas of focus:

1. Team and culture – including ensuring we have a diverse team and a culture and policies that enable everyone to thrive
2. Research – including ensuring our Research Community membership reflects the population of people with mental health problems, that our methods are inclusive and our research topics include a focus on those facing multiple layers of disadvantage
3. Leadership – including making sure that we have a clear plan to deliver our EDIB strategy, with accountability and that our leadership team has the right training and objectives
4. External voice – including making sure our external communications, website and tone of voice are inclusive
5. Expertise – including making sure that we all have ongoing opportunities to learn and grow our understanding of the experiences of a wide range of groups of people.

Being an inclusive organisation is a process of continual work – there will always be more to do. But we’re proud of some of the things we’ve done so far. Here’s a few examples:

• We improved our recruitment processes to use an anonymised platform that reduces bias, advertising roles in a wider range of places, clearly communicating about flexible working and benefits in our job adverts, improving our job packs and removing the requirement to have specific qualifications from almost every role. This has already had an impact: 38% of our team is now not White British, with 19% from a minoritised ethnic group excluding white minorities
• We improved some of our internal policies. For example we now offer a rent deposit loan scheme to make it easier for people without savings to relocate to London for our roles and cover relocation costs for our interns (as well as paying London living wage). We also now offer paid carers leave, a healthcare package and improved maternity pay.
• We have made our flexible working arrangements even more flexible. The team work core hours of 10am-3pm and beyond that flex their hours through the week, to accommodate everything from childcare to medical appointments, caring responsibilities and rest. This trust in our team is rewarded by a commitment to delivering the goals we set, and we find it works well for all of us.
• We have changed our policy so that team members can opt not to take the Christian bank holidays off work at Christmas and Easter, but instead move those, including to mark other religious celebrations.
• Our internal EDIB group has held discussion sessions on a wide range of topics to broaden our knowledge, and apply the learning to our work.
• Our Research Community is becoming more representative – with the percentage of younger people particularly improving, now at 13%, up from 8% in January – although we still have work to do to build greater representation of people from minoritised ethnic groups
• We are about to publish a research report on the experiences of people with mental health problems from minoritised ethnic groups, produced through participatory research supported by Toynbee Hall.

We’re ambitious in all our work, and our EDIB strategy is no exception – so there’s plenty more in there for us to be doing. But we’re proud of where we’re got to so far. And while we certainly won’t always get it right, our shared commitment to being an organisation that is inclusive – and to doing work that is inclusive – now feels baked into how we work.