Highways England

Diversity Supply Chain Best Practice

Highways England commissioned EW Group by tender to provide diversity e-learning to their Project and Contract Managers. The specific aim for the project was to embed inclusive and compliant practice throughout the company’s supply chain.

Our custom-built online course focused on the strong business case for diversity in transport, engineering and construction.

Our consultants designed each module to highlight how best to spot good and bad practice in supplier procurement. The learning was reinforced by sector case studies, and demonstrations of the good work already being done in the sector. We developed these case studies by interviewing existing Highways England suppliers and by launching a call for evidence at their equality and diversity forum.

The resulting course featured a blend of content, including interactive quizzes after each module, pop-ups, graphics, audio, and a series of actor-based video scenarios to guide learners through the process of procuring a supplier.

Starting with an introduction to a fictional supplier, learners first establish its relative strengths, weaknesses and legal compliance, before working through equality action plans to build future good practice.

All Project and Contract Managers at Highways England have completed this good practice tool. To allow for further development, we also provided a resource bank, providing links to external websites and articles, as well as internal policies.

The original supply chain course proved so successful that Highways England engaged us again to revise and expand the e-learning package for all staff.

We completed this process, again in consultation with Highways England, and the e-learning is currently being rolled out to over 3,000 staff.

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