The problem:
Lloyds Bank approached our Diversity, Equity & Inclusion team and asked them if we could help address a bit of an entrenched issue within their engineering communities.

For years we've all taken it for granted that the language we use to describe certain things is set in stone, but is it? When you think about it so many words and phrases used in common language are very biased and some even hark back to slavery. Even the word Robot means slave, who knew?

The solution:
To raise awareness of the issue, without forcing it down people's throats, we came up with a simple but effective way of promoting the initiative by creating a name and logo (using engineering typography), placing messaging on Teams and Zoom call backgrounds, and creating seasonal social media posts (see below) as nice little creative reminders. We also appointed inclusive language advocates within each engineering team to promote awareness, cross-collaborate, and own the initiative from the inside out. These advocates would regularly meet to ensure that the initiative stays on track.

The result:
The results were remarkable, with a complete shift in the appreciation of this completely overlooked, and often perceived as offensive, area of the business. Engineers can be pretty competitive and we played to this trait with each team treating the initiative almost like a competition to be the first to update their script.