Becoming a beacon of equality, diversity and inclusion within the Cell and Gene Therapy sector

CASE STUDY

Becoming a beacon of equality, diversity and inclusion within the Cell and Gene Therapy sector

Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult prides itself on having a diverse, inclusive and balanced workforce and aims to create an environment where people are fully supported and feel that they can be themselves at work, irrespective of skin colour, age, sexuality and disability.

Mental Health First Aiders trained across the business

55%

of employees are female

employees are part of the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult’s Diversity and Inclusion committee

Incorporating

equality, diversity and inclusion into the brand values

Supporting employees’ mental health and wellbeing

As a result of the restrictions imposed because of the Covid-19 pandemic, Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult recognised that their employees had to learn to adapt quickly to the pressures of different social and working environments, including the potential stress of working from home isolation.

The Catapult responded by implementing an end-to end approach that looks at mental health more holistically, actively engaging in additional ways of supporting their employees’ mental health and wellbeing by offering a number of industry recognised support tools.

This has involved training a dedicated group of 20 Mental Health First Aiders from across the business which included their CEO, 3 senior managers and 16 employees split equally across their three sites. This is in addition to the company’s Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) that is already in place. The Catapult is also implementing a mental health and wellbeing platform to enable its employees to have the use of a peer-to-peer, clinically managed online platform to assist them in looking after their own mental health.

Embedding a culture of inclusivity as part of the brand values

Supporting their employees’ mental health and wellbeing is just one example of the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult’s evolving equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) strategy. The Catapult is working within a fast-evolving industry that has been growing very quickly over the past few years. Statistically within the biotech industry, the overall gender balance has evolved from 50:50 in 2014 to a higher level of female representation at more than 53% in 2020. This is in comparison with the overall level of female representation compared to the US biopharma industry study which showed only a 46% female representation¹.

The Catapult has worked hard to ensure that the diversity of employees across all levels reflects the true position within the UK. Currently the Catapult’s male/female employee balance sits at 55% female employees to 45% male employees which is well above the industry standard.

As part of their longer-term EDI strategy the Catapult is conducting a project aimed at evaluating the current position across the organisation to help inform progressive changes and improvements to their approach. As part of this project, the Catapult has:

Set up a cross functional Diversity and Inclusion Committee consisting of 17 employees from across all three sites at all levels to help inform and deliver Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult’s EDI initiative.
Created a Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult lexicon of approved and unacceptable vocabulary.
Created an EDI dashboard on Cascade (the Catapult’s Human Resource Management system) so that the organisation can gather employee inclusion data to help support their initiatives and monitor progress.
Created a topic calendar so that each month the organisation can focus on an inclusion theme.
Worked closely with the Catapult’s marketing and communications team to ensure EDI is a key part of a brand refresh project, incorporating important inclusivity values in to messaging.
Reviewed internal policies and practices including the inclusion of EDI into their shared values and in particular their ‘People value’.
Promoted unconscious bias training via Kallidus Learn, the Catapult’s Employee Learning and Development Platform.
Completed a diversity and inclusion audit with Inclusive Employers for submission.

Having initiated the project to evaluate where the organisation is on its EDI journey, the Catapult has set out key aims that they want to achieve through these initiatives. These are to:

Create an environment where people feel that they can be themselves at work, irrespective of skin colour, age, sexuality, disability etc.
Demonstrate both internally and externally that the Catapult is committed to being a diverse and inclusive employer;
Create an environment where employees can be honest and speak up on matters important to them; and
Integrate EDI into their ‘people value’ so that everybody displays the same diverse and inclusive behaviours.

1. Measuring Diversity in the Biotech Industry: Building an inclusive workforce