Workplace communication as a catalyst for inclusion and racial equity
By Sally Pritchett
CEO
Discover how intentional communication can drive real inclusion and racial equity in your workplace.
To mark the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, in partnership with Race Excellence we hosted a powerful conversation exploring how communication can drive inclusion and racial equity in the workplace.
The session offered valuable insights into the role communication plays in creating fairer, more inclusive environments – where everyone feels heard, respected, and empowered.
Here are some of the key takeaways:
Make space for timely conversations
Having open, honest conversations at the right time matters. When significant events happen – globally or within your own organisation – your team are affected. Proactive communication helps people feel supported and creates space for reflection, empathy, and action.
Bring the right voices into the room
Involving senior leaders, subject matter experts, and individuals who can influence others ensures conversations lead to action. To create meaningful change, the right people need to be in the room – especially those with the authority to make decisions.
Prioritise active listening
Sometimes the most powerful part of a conversation is the silence. Good communication isn’t just about what you say – it’s also about how well you listen. Give people space to think. Avoid jumping in with answers. Create opportunities for reflection and let quieter voices be heard.
Choose your channels carefully
Communication isn’t one-size-fits-all. Consider how best to reach your audience – whether it’s workshops, one-to-ones, shared documents, or live conversations. Be thoughtful about the tools and platforms you use.
Keep your messaging clear and constructive
Whether you’re talking about policy change, allyship or team culture, everyone should leave the conversation knowing what comes next. Avoid jargon, lead with clear questions and make sure conversations end with actions.
Maintain respect
Respect should sit at the heart of every conversation. Even when opinions differ, it’s possible to challenge constructively and keep doors open. Communication that focuses on shared goals, solutions and unity is far more effective than blame or defensiveness.
Communication shapes inclusion
Words matter, so when language is restricted or policed, the impact can be exclusion, disconnection, and fractured identities. In many workplaces, race is still seen as too complex or risky to talk about – leading to silence, self-censorship, and missed opportunities to understand each other.
Communication done well, though, can flip that script. It can become a tool for liberation – making space for lived experiences, validating identity, and giving employees permission to bring their full selves to work. Inclusion doesn’t come from silence, it comes from stories, language, and meaningful dialogue.
Telling isn’t enough
Workplace communication often defaults to telling – issuing updates, sharing top-down messaging, or rolling out policies. But simply telling people what to do or believe isn’t enough to create change. It can even do more harm than good if it overlooks how people are really feeling.
To make a real impact, communication needs to do more than inform. It needs to listen, educate, inspire, and reassure. It needs to raise awareness in a way that connects with people’s emotions – not just their inboxes. It needs to make space for difficult conversations, reflection, and vulnerability.
Say the thing. Don’t dodge it.
One of the biggest communication challenges in DEI is avoiding “the elephant in the room.” Whether it’s a disbanded ERG, a delayed strategy, or an external event that’s affecting your teams, silence creates space for mistrust and disengagement.
Filling that silence with open, honest, human communication – even when the message is tough – builds credibility and trust. Employees are adults. Treating them as such by being transparent about decisions, even when there’s no perfect solution, goes a long way.
Surface the human library
Your organisation is full of unseen stories. These lived experiences are powerful, personal, and valuable. When people share them, they create connection, understanding, and culture change. But those stories don’t surface on their own. You need to make space for them, and ensure people feel safe and supported to speak up.
Culture and communication go hand in hand
If you want honest conversations, you need a culture that supports them. That means:
- Being clear on the purpose of conversations
- Making sure the right people are in the room – especially those with decision-making power
- Building psychological safety so people feel confident to speak up
- Leading with questions, not assumptions
- Ending with action, so people know what’s changing and why
When we use communication intentionally, we create momentum. When we pair that communication with inclusive culture, we create change.
We’d like to thank Ann and Gifford from Race Excellence for sharing their insight. Race Excellence partners with organisations to embed diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging into the heart of their business – supporting CEOs, Boards, employee networks and HR leaders to take a sustainable and innovative approach to inclusion. Learn more about Race Excellence.
If you’re looking for support with harnessing the power of communication to create a more equitable workplace, then talk to us.
Watch the webinar: Communications – a catalyst for inclusion and racial equity
The key trends shaping happy and high-performing teams
By Sally Pritchett
CEO
To celebrate B Corp Month, our CEO, Sally Pritchett, joined a panel of B Corp leaders and industry experts at Uncommon Holborn to explore just that. In conversation with Bleddyn Harris, Head of People and Culture at B Lab, the discussion revealed key trends shaping the future of work and what businesses can do to create thriving, engaged teams.
Rethinking workplace culture
Too many businesses are still stuck in an outdated industrial mindset – viewing employees as cogs in a machine that need to be optimised and replaced when they break. But workplaces are ever-evolving living ecosystems, filled with diverse identities, ideas and experiences.
To create a culture where employees thrive, businesses must:
- Listen deeply – go beyond surveys to understand the real undercurrents shaping employee experience.
- Make change an engaging process – design change communications to be creative, inspiring and participatory.
- Enable flow states – consider how workspace design, communication styles and celebrations contribute to culture.
- Embrace conscious leadership – leaders should create a positive and collaborative environment where everyone can thrive.
Tackling loneliness
Loneliness has become a big and unfortunate trending topic, but it is important to know that it is not caused by remote work – it’s caused by fractured cultures. Return to office mandates are part of the loneliness problem; what could be lonelier than feeling disconnected from your colleagues while sitting in a buzzy office? Communication plays a vital role in bridging that gap.
Valuing feedback
Surveys, suggestion boxes and employee groups may seem like standard tools – but they only work when they are inclusive and transparent.
Key principles of effective feedback include:
- Providing multiple ways to contribute – recognising potential language and other barriers, offering different ways to feedback.
- Appointing spokespeople – ensuring non-native speakers and those not comfortable with speaking up can have a voice.
- Creating a genuine feedback loop – sharing all survey results, addressing difficult feedback and being honest when changes aren’t possible.
- Targeting disengagement – where you are seeing signs of disengagement, for example low survey response rates, investigate the cause. Would tailored training or perhaps surveys in multiple languages or formats help?
Communicating through change
During times of change, clarity and consistency are everything. Strong leadership voices, regular updates and a visible presence – with an example given of a CEO spending time working from reception – can create a sense of stability.
Humans are natural storytellers. If leaders don’t shape the narrative, employees will create their own – and that’s where misinformation can spread. Tapping into the stories that drive purpose fuels both innovation and productivity.
Creating human-centric work environments
A desk and chair are no longer enough. The spaces we work in play a crucial role in collaboration, focus and connection. The venue itself, Uncommon’s Holborn location, is a perfect example of how human-centric design, greenery and calming aesthetics can enhance workplace wellbeing.
Modern workplaces need to provide flexibility, offering spaces that support both deep work and collaboration. Thoughtful design can create an environment that facilitates productivity and meaningful interactions.
Supporting volunteering programmes
Businesses offering paid volunteering days is on the rise, but offering the benefit doesn’t automatically result in take-up – businesses need to actively encourage participation.
Volunteering isn’t just good for the individual – it strengthens engagement, productivity and workplace culture. It tackles loneliness, builds community and enhances wellbeing. The key is making it easy for employees to get involved.
Want to see how we helped a client inspire over 120,000 employees to volunteer? Find out more here.
Overcoming communication overload
Communication tools like video calls and instant messaging were meant to streamline work. Instead, they’ve created a culture of constant communication – where employees are drowning in notifications, meetings and distractions. The workplace is now like a crowded room where everyone is talking at once. It’s affecting productivity, wellbeing and relationships. To fix this, businesses must:
- Set clear communication guidelines – establish expectations for response times and message urgency.
- Encourage mindful communication – leaders should model concise, purposeful messaging.
- Reduce unnecessary noise – assess which platforms are essential and eliminate redundant ones.
Communication: the key to workplace happiness and performance
At the heart of all these trends lies communication. Getting it right means understanding what, when and how to communicate – ensuring efficiency without overload. Talk to your teams, listen to what they need and create a workplace where communication fuels success rather than hinders it.
A happy, high-performing team isn’t built overnight. But with purposeful communication, inclusive culture and thoughtful leadership, businesses can create environments where people truly thrive.
At Something Big, we help businesses communicate with clarity, creativity and inclusivity – making workplaces fairer, healthier and happier. From shaping strategy and change programmes to fostering wellbeing and inclusion, we work with some of the world’s best workplaces to engage leaders, managers and frontline teams through impactful communication.
Ready to build a thriving workplace? Let’s talk.
Green Monday 2025: Catch up on the sessions
By Sally Pritchett
CEO
Green Monday was a big success!
We said goodbye to Blue Monday – the so-called “most depressing day of the year” – and had a day dedicated to positivity and sustainability.
Together, we NetWalked, tackled the biggest challenges to business change, discussed how to bring stakeholders along the sustainability journey, and explored the power of impactful reporting. And a big thank you to our speakers for their thought-provoking contributions, and to everyone who walked, listened, shared, and connected.
Catch up on Green Monday
Breaking down the 3 big obstacles in business change
Discover how communications can help overcome the common challenges to change and sustain momentum through the ups and downs.
Bringing your stakeholders on the sustainability journey
Learn how to engage employees, customers, investors, and communities with authentic ESG communications.
Creating clear and credible corporate reports
Explore how impactful reporting can build trust, inspire action, and showcase meaningful progress.
Your sustainability story deserves to be told
See how we can help you create beautifully designed reports that inform and inspire your stakeholders while driving meaningful progress.
B Corp insights: Delivering and scaling impact
By Sally Pritchett
CEO
B Local Surrey is a network run by local B Corps, fostering a community of purpose-driven businesses and individuals committed to building a better world. It brings together certified B Corps and those aspiring to join the movement through networking and information-sharing events, empowering businesses to grow their impact.
At the newly B Corp-certified Denbies Wine Estate, this vibrant community gathered for an inspiring conversation on scaling up and doing business better. A quick show of hands revealed a diverse audience – seasoned B Corps, newly certified businesses, and those curious about joining the movement.
The keynote speakers, Anuradha Chugh, former CEO of Pukka and B Lab UK Board Member, and Douglas Lamont, CEO of Tony’s Chocolonely and former CEO of Innocent, shared powerful stories of leading purpose-driven brands.
Putting purpose at the heart of business
Anuradha spoke passionately about building a culture that sustains purpose through growth, challenges, and change. She likened it to being a farmer – constantly tending, listening, and nurturing the culture of the business to ensure values are deeply rooted. Her reflections on how purpose, culture, and courage intersect were a reminder that real solutions often emerge from within, empowering teams to lead the way.
Douglas took us on a journey into Tony’s Chocolonely’s mission to eradicate exploitation in the cocoa industry. He reminded us that being mission-first isn’t just a business strategy; it’s a way to drive systemic change. Through innovation, like sharing their open supply chain, Tony’s Chocolonely exemplifies how a purpose-led model can be both impactful and profitable.
Showcasing local B Corps
Members from of our Surrey B Corp community also shared their inspiring stories. Tad Ostrowski from Artington Legal explored the balance between time, cost, and quality, emphasising how aligning your values with how you spend your time can maximize your impact.
Kate Gibson of Gibson Games reflected on her family business’s 100-year legacy of creating joy and connection, sharing that consistent, everyday actions toward positive change are often what drives the greatest impact.
Dan Webber from Chimney Fire Coffee shared how they build equitable supply chains through long-term farmer partnerships. By staying true to the business’s founding mission of fairness and sustainability, they’ve maintained their values while growing the business.
Finally, Matthew Wood from Millwood addressed wellbeing in the construction industry, a field known for its challenges. He discussed how even small efforts – like trying to do just 1% more – can lead to significant and transformative changes.
Key insights for driving and scaling impact
Here are some standout takeaways from the event speakers on scaling impact effectively:
- Drive culture: A mission-led culture attracts top talent and motivates teams to achieve extraordinary results. It creates a positive cycle: purpose draws in exceptional people, who drive success and amplify impact, which in turn attracts even more talent. Culture is the foundation of impact.
- Collaborate for solutions: Form coalitions and explore partnerships, even with competitors, to address shared challenges. Movements like B Local Surrey demonstrate the power of collective effort and knowledge sharing.
- Aim to inspire others: Look for solutions that are clear, simple, and easy to replicate that can scale beyond your business or the B Corp movement. By empowering others to adopt your approach, you amplify your impact.
- Have patience: Change rarely follows a straight path – it ebbs and flows like the tide. With persistence and purpose, even small steps build momentum over time.
- Bring joy to your mission: People respond to connection and positivity, not lectures. Communicating your purpose in an engaging, relatable way encourages action and builds understanding.
- Sign the Better Business Act: Commit to driving change at a systemic level by supporting initiatives like the Better Business Act, which aims to ensure all businesses prioritise people and the planet alongside profit.
These are undeniably challenging economic and globally turbulent times, testing the resolve and potential of purpose-driven businesses. But staying transparent and honest – both with your team, customers, suppliers and wider community – is vital. Sometimes, protecting your mission may mean making tough decisions, like scaling back projects that don’t fully align with your impact goals. What matters is staying true to your values, making a difference where you can, and being upfront about the challenges along the way.
What’s next?
For more opportunities to connect and collaborate, join the B Local Surrey LinkedIn group. Plans are already underway for the next B Corp Month event in March.
And for another dose of inspiration, save the date for Green Monday on 20 January 2025, where we’ll transform Blue Monday into a day of sustainability and optimism. Packed with networking sessions and thought-provoking panels, this event is designed to inspire action. Find out more.
Big Difference: £20K pro bono support for fairer, healthier, happier workforces
By Sally Pritchett
CEO
As part of our mission to create fairer, healthier, and happier workplaces, we are excited to launch our new programme, Big Difference. In 2025, we will support one UK charity or not-for-profit by providing £20,000 worth of pro bono strategic, creative, and communications expertise to a successful applicant.
For more details, please see our entry criteria below and don’t miss this great opportunity to tap into expert support.
Entries are open now and close on 31st January 2025.
Programme details and application guidelines
We are seeking a UK-based not-for-profit organisation or charity to receive pro bono creative communications support.
Campaign Objective:
All applicants must have a campaign with one or more of the following objectives:
- Workplace Fairness: Promote equitable practices and eliminate discrimination within workplaces.
- Workplace Health: Improve employee wellbeing and mental health.
- Workplace Happiness: Foster positive work environments and employee satisfaction.
Eligibility:
- UK-Based not-for-profit: Applicants must be a registered charity or non-profit organisation operating within the United Kingdom. Open to both regional and national organisations (operating region does not need to be limited to the Surrey / South East base of Something Big).
- Campaign Focus: The proposed campaign must align with the stated objectives of workplace fairness, health, or happiness.
Campaign Scope:
The budget the campaign will be £20,000 plus VAT, and will sit within the following scope:
- Creative Strategy: Development of a comprehensive campaign strategy, with the objective of making workplaces fairer, healthier and/or happier.
- Design and Copywriting: Creation of all necessary design assets and written materials.
- Campaign Management: Oversight and execution of the campaign.
Timeline:
- Entry Period: December 2024 – 31 January 2025
- Winner Announcement: 28 February 2025
- Campaign Launch: March – September 2025
Terms and Conditions:
- Intellectual Property: Campaign intellectual property will remain with Something Big.
- Out of scope: No external costs including paid media placement, printed materials or skills out of the scope of the Something Big team are included.
- Awards Submissions: Something Big reserves the right to enter the campaign into relevant awards.
- Pro Bono Value: The maximum value of the pro bono work will not exceed £20,000+VAT.
- No Entry Fee: There is no cost to submit an application.
- Selection Process: Applicants will first be shortlisted based on the selection criteria outlined below. Those who meet the criteria will then be voted on by Something Big employees. After the vote, a final small shortlist will be created, and the selected applicants will proceed to the interview stage to determine the winning applicant.
Selection Criteria:
- Campaign Impact: The potential for the campaign to make a meaningful difference in improving workplace culture.
- Alignment with Objectives: The extent to which the campaign aligns with the stated objectives of workplace fairness, health, or happiness.
How to Apply: Complete entry form.
If you have any questions, get in touch.
Great for women, great for all
By Sally Pritchett
CEO
We’ve been ranked in the top 10 UK’s Best workplaces for Women (Small Businesses), alongside 330 companies including industry-leading and global brands. This achievement is a team effort, not based on management promises, policies and words on an entry form, but on day-to-day actions leading to genuine and personal team feedback through Great Place to Work’s independent employee survey. Data analysed looks at how well organisations have removed barriers to female career advancement and created workplaces where all employees can flourish, regardless of gender.
Whilst we’re delighted to have achieved this incredible accolade, our mission is to create workplaces that are fairer, healthier and happier for all – both at Something Big and in the organisations we support.
Our journey to this achievement hasn’t been about giving women special treatment. It’s been about driving a positive and inclusive workplace culture, for everyone, which means breaking down barriers for women in particular.
Regardless of where we want to be as a world and society, we’re not there yet. The world is still patriarchal, unconscious bias continues to be a challenge, there are still not enough visible female role models and gender pay gaps remain a problem.
‘”Parity in the workplace remains a work in progress.”
Great Place to Work
Positive change is visible on the horizon though. In the UK’s Best Workplaces for Women, 42% of C-suite positions are held by women versus just 28% in FTSE 350 organisations. Pay gaps are narrowing in the UK, with women earning 92p to their male counterparts £1, and companies ranked in this list have closed that gap further, with the UK average of female employees agreeing they are ‘paid fairly for what the work they do’ at just 53%, in the Top 5 UK’s Best Workplaces for Women a whopping 83% of female respondents agreed they were fairly paid.
The UK’s Best Workplaces for Women are also proof that delivering work/life balance is possible, whilst the UK average stands at 60% for ‘people are encouraged to balance their work life and personal life’ in the UK’s Best Workplaces for women, a significantly higher 84% of employees agree with this statement.
What are we getting right at Something Big to earn our 8th place ranking?
#Flexibility
Flexibility isn’t a buzzword, a policy or a broad commitment – it’s a huge undertaking that takes a team effort to deliver. According to GPTW’s report, 40% of women not working say that access to flexible work would mean they could take on paid work and 77% said they’d be more likely to apply for a job if it advertises flexible working options.
At Something Big, flexibility is a way of life. From changing and flexing working hours around ever-changing care arrangements to sabbaticals mean that work can fit around life, rather than squeezing life around gaps in work.
Our tip: Delivering flexibility successfully isn’t just about senior leadership commitment, it’s also about peer-to-peer support. Working alongside colleagues on different hours or shorter days/weeks can be tough, it takes empathy, great communication skills and respect for boundaries to make it work without sacrificing quality, productivity or pace. Support and nurture your whole team to make flexibility work for everyone.
#Appreciation
Everyone wants (and deserves) to feel appreciated. For women, this is especially critical, when outside of work their effort and contribution can often feel invisible and taken for granted. In the workplace, there’s a disparity between genders when it comes to feeling that management shows appreciation for good work and extra effort. 64% of men feel appreciated versus 58% of women. Unsurprisingly, this gap is closed in companies featured on this list, with both genders scoring equally and with higher appreciation levels, with both genders scoring a significantly higher 85%.
Our tip: Appreciation often costs nothing. We believe it’s as critical a component as other rewards are often overlooked or left to busy line managers who might not always have time. Set up structures that encourage regular peer-to-peer appreciation, celebrate awareness days like Employee Appreciation Day, even when budgets are under pressure try to make space for fun.
To find out more about what it takes to create a workplace where women can thrive, you can read the full report here or talk to us about our journey and how we’re helping the organisations we’re supporting.
Celebrating two years as a B Corp agency
By Sally Pritchett
CEO
As we celebrate our second B Corp anniversary, it’s a great moment to reflect on what has been a big year for Something Big.
We believed we were already living the values of B Corp long before the movement was even formed, so our expectations of how much it would impact our business were low. However, as the movement has expanded to over 2,000 businesses in the UK alone, and brand awareness has grown – with 38% of surveyed individuals recognising or having heard of B Corp – it has become hard not to get caught up in the excitement.
In fact, within the global B Corp community, the UK is the fastest-growing country with the highest brand awareness, although the movement started in the USA all the way back in 2006. It might be hard to pinpoint why this is, but what we can say is that as part of this growing community we’ve been caught up in a snowball of progress and impact.
Highlights from our second year as a B Corp agency
1. Speaking up
Having set out to help make workplaces fairer, healthier and happier, we’ve not only helped our numerous clients improve their employee communications, but have also inspired over 1,300 DEI, wellbeing, HR and communications professionals in our growing community through our series of free, virtual webinars. If you’re getting FOMO, sign up to our LI newsletter to stay in the know.
2. Forming alliances
Never ones to sit back, we’ve actively got involved in the B Corp community, creaing and driving a series of alliances with other great B Corp businesses, building partnerships and growing our network.
3. Always learning
Living our values to the max, we’ve been making mistakes and learning from them, check out our Impact Report where we share our learnings.
5. Measuring and tracking
We’re excited to have finally found a robust and sustainable way of measuring our full carbon emissions and a genuine way to move the dial on reducing them, thanks to Ecologi Zero.
5. Bigger goals
As we’ve gained our confidence, we’re keeping up the progress with some bigger plans to make a meaningful difference. This year we’ll be helping organisations engage their employees in their sustainability journey, continuing to support the DEIB agenda, and helping organisations provide better support for employees living with cancer. We’re only just getting started.
If you’re looking to partner with great people, experts in their field, who care about being responsible and looking after our planet, then we have the B Corp agencies for you… Find out more
How does being a B Corp make us a better business?
Beyond being better for the planet and our people, we believe being a B Corp has made us a better business to work with, from our clients to our supply partners. From better service levels to better relationships here’s what you can expect when you work with a B Corp.
Want to join us in our journey of making a meaningful difference?
Whether you’re looking for a new agency to work with, you’re another B Corp looking to join one of our alliances, or just want to keep in touch with our progress, talk to us.