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Historic Royal Palaces

Changing history through diversity

Historic Royal Palaces is the independent charity that looks after the Tower of London, Hampton Court, the Banqueting House, Kensington Palace and Kew Palace. While an excellent employer, it’s fair to say that a gender and race equality strategy hadn’t figured largely in their history. So it was time for a historic change. Enter Penna Barkers: to help recruit a workforce which would better represent today’s multicultural society.

The solution

This would involve research, planning and talking to lots of people - including employees, partners and local communities. We organised focus groups to identify strengths and areas for improvement, and discovered over 100 ways to make a difference: from bespoke training to better written communications. Not only were we able to help create a diversity action plan, we also launched it through posters, emails and ambassador events.

The result

By getting people to talk, we helped break down barriers. The response was extremely positive. Events led to further successes in engaging with local communities and people from minority backgrounds. One of HRP’s aims was to increase the ethnic diversity of employees. This is steadily being achieved. Equally important, negative perceptions have been consigned to history.