Our Pledge to an Inclusive Future

Inclusivity is one of Tapestry’s core values and our commitment is such that we have signed up to the MRS Inclusion Pledge to ensure we maintain these standards at the highest level.

In alignment with MRS, ‘we believe that a sector that provides insight and evidence about human behaviour and society should be representative of the world it serves’.

Our joint MDs Ian Wright and Kevin Thompson outline why they were keen to sign the pledge, as well as implement the practices as part of our daily routine:

They say ‘Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI) have always been at the core of our working practice and our DEI team keep us fully informed and aligned with the Pledge. How much further we can develop is an exciting, rather than daunting prospect. We’ll continue to listen, and we’ll continue to learn so that we can better anticipate and enable improvements over time.’  

Good intention is one thing, but putting your name down for a genuinely good cause matters little unless we put into practice what we preach. We regularly undertake training courses, including ‘Modern Slavery’, ‘Unconscious Bias’, and ‘Autism in the Workplace’, to raise awareness within Tapestry. Whilst we seek out a team which is inherently inclusive, we want to go further than box-ticking, to truly understand any nuance we may have overlooked, or misunderstood.

So, what do we need to do to live up to the Inclusion Pledge?

There are five key points that organisations like Tapestry, who sign up to the Pledge, commit to working towards. They include: 

• Transparency over pay, and the removal of any pay disparity due to gender and ethnicity.  
• Building a team that is fully representative of the diversity of our business locations, welcome a fully representative recruitment programme; create paid internships and actively consider apprenticeships and support school, university, and other outreach programmes.
• Aim to achieve appropriate government targets for the representation of women and minority ethnic groups at senior levels.
• To design and conduct our research projects which allow representation for all; ensure inclusive research designs and methodologies and communication throughout the process.
• To create safe and welcoming workplaces and practices for all: considering accessibility, communication, visible and invisible disability. To develop a proactive culture that supports whistleblowing, and publish clear policies to support this, whilst nurturing a culture which actively supports good mental health and wellbeing.

To give you an idea of how we are already implementing some of the points raised above, we have just joined the 10,000 Black Interns Foundation programme, and will welcome our first interns this summer. (Watch this space!)

We also participate in regular outreach with schools including the annual Aspirations Evening at St Thomas the Apostle College, in south east London, and volunteering further afield with VEX, in Kent. We build upon these relationships, year on year, in the less altruistic hope that some of these remarkable students choose to join Tapestry in the near future!

Our Senior Data Analyst Owen Nwanebu joined Tapestry in March 2023. We were thrilled when he pretty much summed up our attitude towards inclusivity at his first Team Awayday in October. Six months later, we’re very happy to see that this has continued. He says:

Signing up to the MRS Inclusion Pledge is a celebratory moment for us. We want to be the best for our team and our clients alike. This is one way to set and maintain a gold standard of trust, essential for everyone’s future.