REACH Network at HS2

A number of leaders in our workforce who self-identified as being part of an ethnic minority in the UK understood the urgency to respond to urgent questions of race and ethnicity following episodes of racism and on a global stage, galvanised and relaunched our REACH network. Key to success was securing our CEO as the Executive Sponsor of the Network, and his invitation to all our Senior Leadership to participate in its book club, reading and analysing the celebrated book Reni Eddo-Lodge “Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race”.

The CEO also signed up our organisation to the Race Equality Charter.

The Network produced:

• 23 Internal Website article
• 10 #social media Feature articles, showcasing BAME employees and what inclusion means to them
• They’ve achieved a astounding 17,346 views of their article on our internal website
• They have launched an Allies programme with the other employee Networks (Disability, Gender Balance, Armed Forces and Onboard LGBTA+ Network )
• They have 225 employees registered as members
• They have established Diverse Interview Panels with the Gender Balance and Disability Networks to ensure presence of a diverse member of the Interview Panel to help support diversity representation when recruiting internally or externally
• Delivered multiple workshops a day taking part in the UK’s first Race Equality Week
• Commemorated Stephen Lawrence’s day with an online event
• Delivered our very first BAME Bookclub, a stellar number of 40 book club meetings took place in a year with over 170 attendees (and all our Executive and Senior Leadership Team attended), & delivered 9 live virtual Courageous Conversations with staff from HS2 and our supply chain
• An astounding 3000 internal and external event attendees altogether since the network relaunched.