Introducing our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion strategy

Without them, our work for the animals lacks integrity: we cannot truly fight against injustice for animals while propping up unjust systems that harm fellow people, animals and the planet.

Our vision is to have a fair, effective, and inclusive organisational culture where everyone can bring their full selves to work. We want to be a truly humane league of individuals, where everyone who comes into contact with us comes away with a sense of what we stand for and DEI is truly embedded into how we work. Our new DEI strategy will help us achieve this.

To help us develop the best strategy we could, we worked with an external consultant, Diverse Matters, to audit all of our processes, policies, and interview our staff.

Is Humane League UK a diverse organisation?

While there were a lot of positives, the report from Diverse Matters found that we needed to do better in supporting and training our team on DEI, specifically neurodiversity. We also needed to work even harder at our ‘speak out’ culture to fully support employees to feel comfortable when speaking up about DEI matters.

The report also found that, while we were doing a lot of work internally on improving DEI, we weren’t doing as well at reflecting this internal commitment to furthering DEI externally.

Finally, and something we are acutely aware of, the report recognised the lack of diversity in our workforce, a challenge that is reflected across the animal protection movement.

The findings provided us with a direction of travel, leading to our DEI strategy. Three key objectives underpin our DEI strategy.

What is Humane League UK's DEI strategy?

1) An inclusive organisational culture and organisational climate

Organisational culture refers to ‘the way things are done around here’; the policies, practices, systems, and behaviours that make us who we are when we come together.

Organisational climate refers to the ‘feeling or atmosphere people have in an organisation’¹.

Our goal is to ensure our organisational culture and climate is inclusive and welcoming. We commit to treating everyone with dignity. People feel heard, seen, and empowered to participate in a meaningful way.

To achieve this, we will:

• Address the under-representation and improve the inclusion of racially minoritised staff, LGBTQ+ staff, and staff with disabilities in our workforce, particularly at leadership levels.
• Nurture an organisational culture where people working with us feel respected and comfortable being themselves, free from discrimination, and free to speak up when they feel something is wrong.
• Manage disagreement constructively so staff feel optimistic, listened to, and empowered.
• Align how DEI is reflected and addressed in the delivery and content of all of our departmental, team, and individual objectives.
• Ensure we are accessible and inclusive for our supporters. This means both online through accessible digital content and ways to get involved in our campaigns for animals, and offline at our meetups and protests.
• Expand the opportunities for under-represented groups to participate in the animal protection movement and contribute to shaping our organisational culture, for example by offering a paid internship.

The result will be an organisational culture that is experienced as more inclusive, fair and anti-racist. It will allow for speaking up at all levels to all levels.

2) Developing capability and leaders

As a small and effective organisation, we seek to empower all staff to think like leaders in their specialism, working collaboratively to deliver outcomes for the animals.

We will focus on developing engagement, role models, and leadership capability in DEI, ensuring accountability and investment in DEI at the highest levels of the organisation.

To do this we will:

• Train staff so that they are able to promote DEI as an integral part of the movement.
• Increase accountability so that staff are both supported in, and measured against, their contribution to DEI.
• Ensure the way we deliver on DEI is SMARTIE (Specific, Measurable, Ambitious, Realistic, Time-bound, Inclusive, Equitable).

The result will be more confident, competent, and committed leaders who visibly buy in to DEI, particularly at senior levels.

3) Measuring performance, impact, and legal compliance

To ensure our words are followed by action, tracking the progress of our strategy is crucial. As an effective organisation, we want to take an evidence-based approach, as we’ve done with all of our other core work, so that resources and priorities are focused where they are most needed, risk is managed, and good practice is widely shared.

To achieve this we will:

• Measure our progress to ensure DEI is always prioritised and we are continually kept accountable.
• Ensure we comply with our legal obligations and, where possible and appropriate, go beyond the legal minimum required by Equality and Anti-discrimination law in the UK.
• Anticipate and manage any DEI related risks.

To view our full DEI strategy, click this link.

This is the beginning of a new chapter, an ongoing journey to be truly just, humane, and inclusive. Whilst we know we have a lot of work to do, we are committed to this work and know we - and ultimately, the animals we fight to protect - will be better for it.

^{1. CIPD, Organisational Climate and Culture, October 2022.}