Well, quite a lot actually!
A recent study by Eleanor Road and colleagues examined 78 research studies aimed at increasing active travel.
Active travel is when physical activity is incorporated into travelling. The most common methods include walking, wheeling (using a mobility aid such as a wheelchair) and cycling. Active travel is good for people’s mental and physical health and that modal shift from private car use is essential to reduce a range of health and environment inequalities.
The research highlighted 5 recommendations from their research and we can translate these recommendations into valuable lessons when we consider how we can change the behaviour of individuals within organisations to create more equitable, diverse and inclusive workplaces.
Recommendation #1: Infrastructural improvements are necessary to increase levels of walking and cycling, but social/behavioural/policy interventions also have their place. The majority of social/behavioural/policy interventions implemented without infrastructure change had minimal impact, and any impact that was achieved required ongoing enforcement.
Recommendation #1 for EDI: Identify what infrastructure changes can be made to support your EDI objectives? Examples include introducing anonymous CVs when recruiting and mandating no meetings before 9.30 am and after 3.00 pm.
Recommendation #2: Identifying groups within the population who wish to change behaviour, or who are at a ‘teachable moment’ and can be useful to demonstrate the potential for increasing active travel.
Recommendation #2 for EDI: Identify your catalysts for inclusion: those individuals who are already deeply committed to driving EDI and invest in their development to upskill them to lead inclusively. Gather data to showcase the impact of working in this way to the rest of the organisation.
Recommendation #3: Availability of high-quality public transport and e-bikes is important in shifting from private car use to active travel.
Recommendation #3 for EDI: Access to systems and processes that support EDI are crucial otherwise people will default to business as usual. Therefore implement infrastructure changes to make it more difficult to work less inclusively and make working inclusively as easy as possible. For example, introduce a ‘licence to hire’ which requires hiring managers to complete inclusive leader development. By making this the default requirement for hiring managers, the formal process supports inclusive working.
Recommendation #4: Any intervention needs long-term funding to ensure sustainability.
Recommendation #4 for EDI: This recommendation needs no translation! Long-term change cannot be expected without long-term financial support. The EDI strategy must be calibrated with financial planning to ensure the required level of support is provided.
Recommendation #5: Greater consistency in measurement tools for active travel interventions is needed.
Recommendation #5 for EDI: Ensure that your EDI data strategy is in place to measure progress. This includes at the macro and micro level. Capture data on the organisation as a whole (in terms of employee identity characteristics and experiences of inclusion) as well as at the individual level (collect data to understand leader inclusive capability). This will enable you to understand where you are starting from and which areas require attention.
You can access the full paper here.
