Imagine your organisation as a ship. No matter how grand its size, without anchors, it drifts aimlessly at the mercy of the tide. What holds you in place during storms? What keeps your values from capsizing?
This is where we introduce our anchors, the 5Cs, 5Ps, and FREDDIE frameworks, not as checklists, but as living, breathing systems for embedding equality, equity, diversity, and inclusion into your everyday actions.
The 5Cs: Staff Commitment Anchors
- Commitment – Make your values visible in behaviour, not just branding. Are your leaders accountable?
- Communication – Speak with clarity, transparency, and courage, especially when it’s uncomfortable.
- Culture – Create environments where inclusion is the default, not a diversity add-on.
- Challenge – Address bias, microaggressions, and injustice when they happen,not after. Proactivity is the key to removing barriers within the workplace/community.
- Competence – Train, invest, and upskill staff at every level continually in EDI knowledge and lived experience.
The 5Ps: Organisational Anchors
- Policies – Are they reviewed with an equity lens and co-designed with diverse voices?
- Processes – Do they remove barriers or quietly reproduce them?
- Procedures – Are they followed fairly across all levels, especially in complaints and grievances?
- Practices – Is inclusion reflected in your hiring, promotions, discipline, and daily decisions?
- People Development – Who are you developing? And who continues to be left behind?
FREDDIE Principles: Values that Steer Your Ship
- Fairness
- Respect
- Empathy
- Dignity
- Diversity
- Inclusion
- Engagement
These are not feel-good words, they’re essential tools. They are how you build trust, show up meaningfully, and shift from ticking the box to changing the culture.
Let the Data Speak
Only 1.5% of senior leaders in FTSE 100 companies are from ethnically diverse backgrounds.
- 0.02% of venture capital goes to Black women founders.
- 1 in 4 Black employees have felt overlooked for promotion.
- Over 50% of ethnically diverse workers say they feel their workplace lacks racial equality in practice, despite policy.
Words didn’t change those numbers. Actions will.
What Can You Do Right Now?
- Audit your workplace policies AND your workplace culture by using anonymous surveys, external audits, and feedback loops driven by diverse staff and community voices.
- Ask your staff how safe and valued they feel, and act on what you hear by embedding their feedback into leadership KPIs, adapting systems, and showing public commitment to outcomes.
- Update your training programmes to include anti-racism, anti-ableism, and trauma-informed practices that reflect lived experiences and are delivered regularly, not just at induction.
- Speak up when others go quiet model speaking truth to power, even if you’re the only voice. Create psychologically safe spaces for others to do the same.
- Use the 5Cs, 5Ps, and FREDDIE not only as internal tools but as public accountability anchors. Publish your EDI metrics, review them quarterly, and co-produce solutions with those most affected.
How to use the 5Cs/5Ps and FREDDIE frameworks proactively:
Use the 5Cs to assess leadership accountability, communication consistency, inclusive culture audits, readiness to challenge bias, and EDI competence across roles.
Apply the 5Ps to stress-test your systems:
- Are your policies co-produced?
- Are your procedures trusted?
- Do your practices reflect equitable outcomes?
- Who are your rising stars, and who is being left behind?
FREDDIE values should guide your decisions, comms, and leadership tone: are they lived daily, or only referenced during crisis?
How to
- Audit your workplace policies AND your workplace culture.
- Ask your staff how safe and valued they feel, and act on what you hear.
- Update your training programmes to include anti-racism, anti-ableism, and trauma-informed practices.
- Speak up when others go quiet.
Use the 5Cs, 5Ps, and FREDDIE not only as internal tools but as public accountability anchors.
Final Reflection
This isn’t about perfection. It’s about courage, morals, values, humanity, and standards. It’s about standing up even when others sit down. And it’s about understanding that the most powerful leadership is not performative. It’s persistent, consistent, and accountable.
It is about safeguarding your staff and service users from trauma and mental ill health.
It is about them feeling as though they are valued.
It is about belonging, seeing people like them in the workforce at every level, and knowing that the images on your posters, websites, and walls are a promise, not a performance.
They say: You are welcome. You are seen. You are heard.
Equality is not a poster. It’s not a once-a-year event. It’s not a performance after tragedy. It’s the daily decision to act, especially when no one is watching.
If your organisation says it’s committed to inclusion but fails to act when injustice occurs, you’re not anchored. You’re adrift. And your silence speaks louder than your statements. (Silence is compliance.)
This isn’t about perfection. It’s about courage, morals, values, humanity, and standards. It’s about standing up even when others sit down. And it’s about understanding that the most powerful leadership is not performative. It’s persistent, consistent, and accountable. It is about safeguarding your staff and service users from trauma and mental ill health, it is about them feeling as though they are valued, it is about belonging, seeing people like you in the workforce at every level and images on your poster, websites, and more say you are welcome as you are seen and heard
Let’s stop the ship, which is your business, from drifting. Let’s anchor EDI within the ship and safeguard all regardless of their lifestyle, ethnicity ability/disability, religion/belief, marriage or civil partnership, gender reassignment, age, sexuality, pregnancy/maternity, sex.