IRC management response to the Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Baseline Report

Published on: 08/02/2022

During the summer of 2020, IRC released a statement in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. In that statement, we committed to starting an internal dialogue with our staff, and to undertaking a review of our diversity performance. 

We intended to publish our review by the end of 2020.  However, due to the disruption caused by COVID-19 and our decision to outsource the review to an external agency, we are only now sharing the results. The review was undertaken by independent diversity advisors, Triple C Advisory, and took the form of a survey, focus groups and individual consultations. The full performance review and summary report can be found in the Resources section to this article.

IRC’s management welcomed the baseline review of our policy and practice on all matters related to Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI), and recognised the key finding that: “IRC has a very inclusive culture and diverse team even though issues of justice and equity have not been adequately prioritised.”

While pleased that our staff felt that our culture is inclusive and diverse, we also acknowledged the findings that we should do more to structurally address issues of JEDI across the organisation and are determined to adopt and act on the reviews.

While IRC is committed to being anti-racist and against all forms of discrimination. As a thought leader on systems approaches within water and sanitation, we recognised the finding that we have not done enough to build anti-racism and anti-discrimination into our own systems. 

To address this, and as a concrete response to the baseline review, we, therefore, committed to the following actions:

• Publish a Policy Statement on JEDI that commits IRC to being an anti-racist and anti-discrimination organisation. This statement was published in the IRC Annual Report 2022 [link, p. 25]
• Examine the recommendations of the baseline report and, in the course of 2022:
  • Establish a JEDI system: The hardware and software required to translate our JEDI policy into practice.
  • Mainstream and safeguard JEDI across the organisation: standardise and enforce policies and minimum operating procedures for JEDI across the organisation.
  • Build JEDI into governance and accountability: ensure that good JEDI behaviours are built into all levels of governance and management, including through target setting and monitoring.

During 2022, IRC has been addressing all of the above actions and has been updating key governance documents, as we prepare to turn ourselves into a networked organisation by 2025. We will take the opportunity to ensure that JEDI, including key performance indicators, is mainstreamed into all our governance documents.

[last updated: 7 November 2023]