True Diversity feat. Osita Madu

As part of our True Diversity blog series, we chatted to Osita Madu.

Osita is a qualified HR professional with 18 years’ experience in both private and public sector organisations such as BT Group, HS2, Nationwide Building Society, BBC, and a number of local authorities. During which he has established a track record in Diversity Management, Training and Development, Recruitment, Employee Relations, Policy research and Business Development.

Tony: Hi Osita. Please could you give a little introduction about you, your role and your experience?

Osita: Yeah, sure. So, I guess if I go back – probably a good 16 years ago now – I’ve been working in diversity and inclusion for that long. It’s one of those things that, by default, a lot of people get into through different backgrounds and professions. I came in through the route of generalist HR, then moved into recruitment and training. At the time I was working in local authority, and we started to hear about the Equality Act 2010.

That was my first entry into this area – looking at what that meant, exploring it more, and getting involved with the compliance measures that came with that legislation. From there, I moved on within Basildon Local Authority, and since then everything has developed in different sectors I’ve worked in.

Over the last 16 years, the remit of the work we do has changed massively. It’s much wider now. I like the challenge of having to be a change agent – because that’s what I see diversity and inclusion professionals doing. It’s about creating an organisational culture shift – from less inclusive and less diverse to more inclusive and more diverse. That’s never an easy thing.

It’s about taking leaders on the journey with you, even if they don’t fully believe in it or see the vision. So, that need to influence is crucial to doing the job well.

Currently, I’m with BT Group. There are lots of changes happening – as a big FTSE 100 company, BT goes through massive restructures pretty much every year, but with the aim that in the next five years, it’ll be more streamlined, more UK-focused, and more focused on its core business rather than the broader remit it’s had.

With any massive changes, the impact is directly on people. So there’s a need to look at how you attract people into roles they wouldn’t typically come into – whether they’re women, ethnic minorities, or those with disabilities – and also things like retention and future skills.

Sixteen years ago, the challenges were different. It was more about compliance: are you meeting the legislation? Are you defining disability the right way? What does your workforce look like from a diversity standpoint? It was really basic at first, and a lot of the focus was on educating people about these issues.

Now, that’s shifted. If you look at many large companies, I’d be surprised if people didn’t know what diversity and inclusion is about or what you’re doing in that space. So, those are the changes I’ve seen over the years.

Tony: Excellent — thank you. That’s a really nice intro. So, we’ll get into the first question then. Starting with the need for diversity and inclusion – what’s your take? Why is it so important?

Osita: It’s important on many levels. From a political perspective, the legislation aims to remove barriers and underrepresentation for particular groups who traditionally couldn’t access certain roles or organisations – whether that’s women, people with disabilities, or, more recently, the LGBTQ+ community, especially since legislation has tightened in that area.

So, from that perspective, having more people included in the workforce means fewer legal challenges and issues – there’s that element of protection.

From a corporate point of view, it’s about different things. Some companies use diversity and inclusion as a marketing tool: “Look how good we look; we can attract people who are different from us.” There’s nothing wrong with that – it works well for attraction, and you see it in corporate brochures, online marketing, and policies. If you become an expert or win accolades in this area, it’s something you can talk about – so from a marketing and attraction perspective, it’s powerful.

Those who go beyond the marketing piece really care about representation and inclusion. For them, it’s about understanding the history of who’s been impacted and knowing that, to be relevant in the future, you need to attract people with the right skills.

If you’re fishing from the same pool – say, a straight white male of a certain age – you’re never really going to fill your skills gap. So, from that angle, there’s a critical business need.

Also, if your services or products mostly reach underrepresented groups, you want your workforce to reflect that. Having that synergy is really important.

Tony: Great answer, thank you. Can you share a bit about your processes? How do you address team diversity specifically? What do you do in your role?

Osita:  Sure. So, I’m a Senior Inclusion Business Partner within BT. Our team, compared to where I’ve worked before, is quite large. We have a global lead – our Chief Diversity Office and then it’s myself and another Senior Inclusion Business Partner.

We look after the big areas of the business. I cover Business Unit, Corporate, Digital, and Networks. We support them with various initiatives and programmes.

It starts with understanding where you’re going corporately – what’s the commitment for the next year, two years, three years, and beyond? Everything you do in diversity and inclusion must align with that objective. If it doesn’t, there’s no point.

Second, it’s about bringing senior leaders on board. They’re your key stakeholders. If you want to make a difference in career progression, for example, you need to work with talent acquisition, recruitment, and all the key leaders who can unblock challenges.

Data is critical. The more robust your data to demonstrate the problem, the more likely leaders are to get on board.

You also need the voice of employees. Employee resource groups, or networks, are really valuable. They’re safe spaces for particular groups to express themselves when they might not feel comfortable doing so openly. We have that at BT – it helps us keep our work relevant and makes sure leaders know what’s going on.

Leaders will challenge you too. They’ll say, “Six months ago, we thought we were doing well around performance measures. Why are we seeing a higher number of women being rated underperformers? What’s going on?”

That challenge back is important. It shouldn’t just be a one-way conversation where you’re telling leaders what to do. They should challenge you back, too.

Tony: Brilliant. That’s a really important link and I think that’s missing in a lot of businesses. Mind if I throw in an extra question?

Osita: Yeah, go ahead.

Tony: You work a big organisation. Do you think it’s harder or easier for smaller businesses to have that feedback loop between leadership and the workforce? Are there advantages or disadvantages to being bigger or smaller?

Osita: Good question. There are challenges if you’re a bigger company. Globally, BT has close to 100,000 people. What tends to happen is that you operate, to some extent, which we’re trying to address in silos.

For example, Networks alone has about 20,000 people. So leaders in that area want to know, “What are you doing for Networks?” They see themselves as a business within a business. That can be a barrier because they care about what makes their division shine, sometimes at the expense of what’s happening in other divisions.

So, you have to consistently communicate with all leaders and get feedback. We have stand-up meetings or leadership forums, where diversity and inclusion topics are built in automatically, so nothing gets missed. Every month, we have those discussions – “Where are we at? What are you doing?” so we can keep the momentum going.

In smaller organisations, the issue is often that people think they know what to do. Sometimes there aren’t formal processes to agree what should go forward.

For example, years ago, I worked at a housing provider within Basildon Council. It was a standalone role. I reported directly to the Chief Exec, but there weren’t really any formal ways to share information. The challenge was getting buy-in – people would think, “You’re doing the job, so we don’t need to do anything else.”

So, smaller organisations can struggle to build those formal structures and governance processes. On the plus side, it can be easier because you don’t have to jump through as many hoops, but they might not see the need to create that formality, which can hold things back.

Tony: Thank you — that’s really good. OK, next: from a business perspective, what do you consider the potential consequences of a lack of diversity and inclusion?

Osita: Lack of diversity and inclusion will simply lead to more grievances and tribunal cases. People feel impacted by bad behaviour, differential treatment, or discriminatory treatment.

You might have someone who applied for an internal role and didn’t get promoted, if they feel that’s because they’re a woman or have a disability, that could end up costing the business in tribunals and courts.

So, legally, organisations want to stay on the right side of the law.

There’s also reputational damage. If you’re a big company with a known brand and you get a reputation for discriminatory practices, people won’t want to join you. They’ll think twice, or protest.

If people are crucial to your business, then doing the right thing is also good for business. You want to attract different people and manage them well because of the benefit that brings.

We talk about return on investment – McKinsey has done reports about the business case for diversity and inclusion, saying diverse companies perform better. But since those reports were written, things have changed.

More businesses are asking harder questions about how you directly demonstrate return on investment. Some of the business cases are true, but indirect. It’s hard to show a direct correlation that D&I alone drives performance. It contributes to it but doesn’t drive it on its own.

Senior leaders now ask harder questions about ROI. Some companies, like Accenture UK, have cut back on diversity and inclusion initiatives, which I think is a shame.

But others, like the big financial services firms or news agencies like Bloomberg, are still driving it forward and making public commitments.

What I’d love to see is those companies demonstrating direct ROI at the senior level and encouraging others to follow. A couple of years ago, you had a lot of investment banks and regulators sign up to do better on gender across the whole financial services sector. They wrote an agreement about how they’d shift the dial.

More sectors need to do that. We often look at what a single company is doing, but very few look across the sector. If engineering, construction, or media telecoms did that, we’d shift the dial much more quickly.

It’s saying, “This is an industry problem. We’ve come together, made a commitment, and in five years, this is what we’re going to achieve.” If everybody’s on board, it’s much more aligned.

Tony: Absolutely. That’s really interesting. We were talking before this about B Corp’s new assessment criteria, which now includes Collective Action. How do we, as an industry, drive positive change together? It takes organisations to stop thinking about the competition and share the good stuff collectively to move things forward.

Osita:  Exactly.

Tony: What will D&I professionals need to do to equip themselves to be effective for the future?

Osita:  In this changing landscape, having worked across sectors, I think we need to think about whether attraction is really the biggest challenge. Often, the focus is on representation – “How do we attract more diverse talent?” But honestly, that’s not the biggest challenge.

At BT, for example, our employee value proposition is strong. We do really well attracting Black, Asian, female candidates, etc. The bigger challenge is retention and progression.

Progression is more than just representation at senior levels. It’s about taking talented people in your talent pool and progressing them through the organisation – recognising, rewarding, and valuing them properly. That’s much more rewarding for people than just their job title.

More importantly, the way we design jobs is changing. AI will impact many operational roles. So we have to move away from thinking only about job titles and think more about the skills that are relevant for the industry.

There are lots of roles you can transition into, even if you didn’t train specifically for them. I’ve done that within HR, from employee relations to recruitment, training, talent management, mediation. There’s a whole range of skills you can build.

So, in the next five years, I think companies will be more skills-focused than role-focused. If you train people around skills, it has a bigger impact. And you can see transferable skills – communication, digital, influencing, leadership – that can move across roles.

For D&I professionals, the ability to be influential will be a core skill. Stakeholder management is critical. You have to be a strong relationship-builder. If you can’t influence senior leaders, you won’t be able to drive change.

So, influence, data literacy, storytelling, and understanding business strategy will be crucial skills for the future.

Tony: Thanks so much, Osita. I’ve really enjoyed hearing your perspective. Much appreciated!

If you are a part of an initiative, brand or company that proactively champions diversity and would like to be featured as part of the “True Diversity” series please get in touch with Tony.

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