London Underground: Managing Diversity Competence Programme

The Equality and Inclusion agenda is paramount to London Underground’s (LU) mission “to be a world class tube for a world class city”. It sits well with its strategic objectives for customer service, people and stakeholders. In order to meet LU’s mission, a number of projects were put in place to improve service delivery and people management. The Managing Diversity Competency Programme (MDCP) was one of these projects. Its aim was to transform the organisational culture and equip managers with the skills to implement the necessary changes.

Equality Works were commissioned by LU to design and deliver the MDCP. Over a three year period Equality Works coached and trained approximately 2,000 LU managers at senior and middle levels. This innovative training programme was, and still is, the largest mainstreamed managing diversity project in the UK.

The key aims of the programme were:

• To provide managers with the necessary awareness, skills and knowledge to become competent in managing Equality and Diversity;
• To enable managers to set and maintain high standards which included challenging unacceptable behaviour; and
• To enable managers to implement action plans that made a measurable difference.

The programme included senior managers and operational managers. Key to the success of the programme was how we took the diversity of these managers into account in designing the programme and engaging with the delegates.

Each manager had a coaching meeting with an Equality Works consultant before and after a two-day training course. The objective of the pre course meeting was to assess starting levels of skill and knowledge as well as provide support. In the post course meetings, our consultants worked with the managers to develop an action plan with objectives and targets relating to the Equality and Inclusion competencies. These objectives and targets were then implemented by the manager with support from the consultant and the manager’s own line manager.

The action planning allowed LU to track tangible changes and progress. It also empowered managers to make a real difference in their own areas of operation. A programme evaluation which was completed by an independent consultancy showed that both large-scale and incremental changes took place within the organisation.

As a result of the impact of the programme at operational level, it was extended to other areas of the business. Equality Works were also commissioned to build capacity within LU’s Operational Learning department so that the course could be mainstreamed into LUs programme of training. Equality Works devised a train-the-trainer programme which took 145 of LUs trainers through a similar MDCP and then, through assessment, identified “subject matter experts” who could deliver future Equality and Inclusion training.

The MDCP also secured LU the top spot in the public sector category at the prestigious Opportunity Now awards hosted by Business in the Community.