Places, Spaces, Policies, Practices and People

Whether it’s your place of work or somewhere that you visit to shop, access entertainment or eat – it’s essential to offer an inclusive business experience for everyone who uses your premises.  This means thinking about and removing barriers that could exclude a potential customer or visitor or disadvantage or discriminate against an employee.

Wherever you are on your accessibility journey we can help you. Our experienced access auditors can work with architects and facilities teams at the beginning of a design project or review existing premises to advise on essential and recommended accessibility improvements. And to keep accessibility standards high, we can arrange Mystery Visits to review your access provision in a real world setting. 

You can find out more about our Access Services by clicking the links below.

Access audits

Mystery visits

Following Covid-19 and the associated lockdowns where digital engagement became a necessity, we’ve seen many organisations continue to embrace online delivery as an alternative business or community space. When it comes to developing good digital practice, we believe that a combined focus on accessibility and inclusion is the key to engaging the widest possible audience.

Following best practice on accessibility has also been shown to improve the user experience for non-disabled people, for example parents with prams may benefit from better physical access or visitors with slower internet connections may find that accessible websites work much faster. 

You can find out more about how we review your online spaces below.

Digital diagnostic

Inclusive communications review

In a truly inclusive business, EDI will be referenced across policies and processes from HR to Customer Service.  We can help you to understand how your polices impact the experience of your people, volunteers, customers and visitors.

These are some of the policy areas that we can review:

• Recruitment and Retention 
• Workplace Adjustments
• Customer Service
• Facilities Management

We can also deep dive into process areas from interviews to events management and we're experienced in helping public sector organisations to review Equality Impact Assessments

Read more about our policy review service

For other EDI specific HR advice find out about our EDI support service.

When it comes to creating an inclusive culture and environment, it's vital that you hear directly from your greatest assets - your leaders, colleagues, customers and stakeholders. 

We do this in a safe and confidential way, using  a combination of surveys, focus groups and 121 interviews to understand how effectively EDI is embedded across your organisation. 

We then share this insight to help you to build EDI Practices that are informed by the lived experience of the people that you work with and serve.

Organisations across all sectors increasingly recognise the vital role that Employee Networks or Employee Resource Groups can play in embedding an inclusive culture. 

Read more about our lived experience reviews

Find out more about how to work effectively with Employee Networks or Employee Resource Groups 

At EMBED, we pride ourselves on developing and facilitating EDI learning experiences that engage both ‘hearts and minds’ resulting in participants making a personal commitment to take pragmatic next steps as a result of taking part.

Depending on your organisation's needs, we can design and deliver interactive face to face or online sessions as well as bespoke e-learning programmes. These are some of the topics that we cover:

• Inclusive leadership & culture change
• Building accessible events and environments
• Bias, behaviours and micro-aggressions
• Mental health and wellbeing
• Managing difficult conversations

Read more about our learning experiences.