London Underground

At the time, this was the UK’s largest diversity management programme of its kind

London Underground brought in EW Group on a £1.3m contract to train 2,000 managers over three years. The diversity agenda was critical to the Underground’s mission “to be a world-class tube for a world-class city”.

Our challenge was to produce and roll out a Managing Diversity Competence Programme that would yield tangible improvements in people management and service delivery. In practice, this meant enabling all participants to:

• Manage diverse teams effectively
• Set and maintain high standards
• Challenge unacceptable behaviour
• Tackle unconscious bias in decision-making and performance management
• Implement action plans that made a measurable difference.

We equipped 2,000 managers with the skills to implement major cultural change.

Every senior and operational manager – from duty managers to Directors – took part in a two-day training course. This was book-ended with 1:1 coaching meetings with an EW Group consultant for diversity action-planning. This process allowed London Underground to track changes and progress. It also empowered the managers to make an immediate impact on their own areas of operation.

The programme won the public sector category at Business in the Community’s Opportunity Now Awards.

An independent programme evaluation by Hay Group showed that both large-scale and incremental changes had taken place across the organisation. We then mainstreamed the MDCP further using the train-the-trainer model. We built internal capacity in the Operational Learning department, allowing them to roll the programme out to over 13,000 staff.

EW Group has also provided training and consultancy for London Underground on:

• Recruitment and selection
• Discrimination, bullying and harassment
• Equality Impact Assessments
• Conducting exit interviews
• Training and e-learning design.

“When we estimated the business case in advance of starting this programme, we thought it would at minimum break even and probably save us twice what it was costing us in negative behaviour, tribunals, disciplinary, wasted working time, etc. The actual result was an absolutely enormous saving of 12 times the cost of the programme.”

Mike Strzelecki, Director of Transformation at Transport for London