By Emma Owen (Chair of Active Gloucestershire’s Board of Trustees)

Building an Inclusive and Dynamic Board: Active Gloucestershire’s Journey Toward Diversity and Equity

Active Gloucestershire is the coordinating organisation for our county’s movement for physical activity called, we can move. We’ve made a concerted effort over the last five years to encourage a more diverse range of people to apply for a trustee role on our Board.

The benefits have always been clear to us. We know that decision-making is at its best when it is underpinned by a diverse range of skills and perspectives as well as a blend of professional and lived experience. Our goal is not just to secure greater representation on our Board, but rather to ensure we have a diverse mix of talented individuals who can utilise their skills and experiences in a way that benefits our work and the people that live in Gloucestershire.

Our journey is a credit to our trustees, both past and present, who’ve spent time considering what it takes to create a safe, challenging and fun working environment. We’ve been prepared to take a few risks along the way and do things differently, which has yielded positive results. As an example, several years ago, we worked with the Young Trustees Movement to target younger people as part of our Board recruitment process. We followed their advice and significantly adapted our approach to recruitment. In doing so, we were able to appoint several new trustees from a very strong field of applications all of whom brought fresh insight and innovative perspectives to our Board discussions. We shared our learning at the time via this short blog and we’ve since embedded some of this learning into our staff recruitment process.

Two years ago, we pledged to reach the standards set out in the Race Equality Code. By looking through the lens of racial equality we were able to identify several areas for development within our trustee recruitment process and have since addressed these so that we now have the right policies and approach in place to ensure that our leadership is inclusive and diverse.

As the demographics of our Board have changed so too have the responsibilities of our Board members outside of their roles as trustees. Today many more of our trustees have work commitments and many also have caring responsibilities of various kinds too. We’ve understood this need for greater flexibility and the need for board papers and presentations to be more concise and accessible, with a clear request or action for trustees. We now make sure that all trustees have plenty of time to consider papers before each Board meeting by making sure that they’re sent out early and we also do our best to avoid jargon and explain complex terms.

We’ve committed time to understanding some of the cultural and religious differences across our county and have considered how we use this knowledge to ensure the way we hold our meetings and the places we meet, are culturally appropriate. This forethought hasn’t taken much work but has had a big impact on our trustees – helping them to feel safer, more included and more confident to contribute to discussions.

Last year we started to develop a detailed and ambitious Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan with the support of our major funder, Sport England. Within it, we have outlined how we’ll continue to ensure Active Gloucestershire is a safe, fun and inclusive place for all our trustees and staff.

Of course, we don’t always get it right and we’ve made mistakes along the way, but that’s all part of the process. We’re prepared to be ambitious and encourage our trustees and staff to take more risks, all in the spirit of learning and improving.

The question we often get asked is what’s different about our Board and how we work together. This can be tricky to answer because it’s been a journey, and we’ve made incremental changes over several years.

However, as a Board, we’re united in our commitment to challenging inequality in sport and physical activity. This passion and commitment is evident at meetings, during which discussions are purposeful, interesting and thought-provoking. We’re also keen to deepen our understanding of the work that’s being done and enjoy hearing from staff about key developments in their areas of work. And when working with our executive and wider staff teams we make sure to blend positive challenge with a ‘coaching’ style approach to support. Significantly, we also take time to reflect on what’s gone well and spend as much time celebrating our achievements as we do considering our areas of improvement and the challenges we might face in the future.

Above all, we’re proud of the work we do at Active Gloucestershire – proud of our culture, the values we strive to uphold and the strong professional bonds and lasting friendships we’ve formed.