Graham McMillan

28 November 2024

Inclusive Engineering at Redgate

In mid 2024, one of Redgate’s coaches, Clare, pulled together a team to focus on improving inclusivity within Redgate’s Engineering organisation. This group was designed to work alongside the wider company initiatives, under the guidance of Engineering leadership.

Inclusivity is a very broad topic, and the group wanted to avoid becoming overwhelmed with all the possible options. They initially decided to focus on two areas: supporting neurodiverse colleagues and improving the gender balance within Engineering.

One of the core activities for the group has been reaching out to other parts of the business to talk about diversity and offer help. This has usually involved ‘pushing against an open door’, with teams such as Talent Acquisition and Communications already deliberately focusing on inclusivity as part of their work.

The Inclusive Engineering group have consistently connected with Redgate’s existing learning and continuous improvement mechanisms, and their activities this year have included presenting a talk about allyship (“From bystander to upstander”) at the annual Engineering internal Level Up conference, and running a stand at the internal Engineering Expo to gather feedback about diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging.

In late September, the group brought in external speakers Susi Bauer and Nellie Allsop to share their expertise around neurodiversity at work, offering information and advice for the organisation and for individuals. This session was opened up to the whole company, and was enthusiastically attended, delivering one immediate, tangible outcome: the creation of a grassroots Slack channel for neurodivergent Redgaters.

In October, the Inclusive Engineering team promoted Ada Lovelace Day talks internally and organised a bring-your-children watch party at Redgate’s Cambridge office. Ada Lovelace Day formed part of a week-long program of Women in Engineering content, which included presentations from external experts along with blog posts and lightning talks from our own engineers about their experiences. We couldn’t have done this without the support we received from Redgate’s Talent Acquisition team.

As well as organising events, the Inclusive Engineering team aims to be part of Redgate’s continuous improvement efforts on diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging in general. Part of their remit involves reviewing the feedback we receive from regular satisfaction surveys and personal discussions, and sustaining the DEIB conversation with Engineering leaders and decision-makers.

Overall the team has found that feedback on inclusivity so far has been good, and opportunities for improvement have been small and incremental. It’s comforting that the trends we see in the data indicate that things are improving, too.

As 2024 winds down, the group is looking forward to attending a few final external events: the Women of Silicon Roundabout conference and a Women in STEM career evening in Cambridge. Looking forward to 2025, the team is currently supporting Engineering leadership in building our DEIB strategy, and beginning to brainstorm and plan events for next year.