Dive In: Embracing diversity and inclusion with the head of culture at Lloyd’s

One of the big drives within organisations around the world in recent years has been the embedding with their ranks of diversity and inclusion (D&I) programmes – initiatives to be more welcoming to voices from what are deemed to be underrepresented backgrounds.

Many organisations, as part of a D&I remit, now employ people whose sole purpose is to foster atmospheres of inclusion, working to ensure that every employee feels appreciated and able to progress, regardless of characteristics such as race, religion, gender or sexual orientation.

This role within Lloyd’s, falls to Mark Lomas (pictured), the corporation’s head of culture, who joined in January 2022 after six years performing a similar role at HS2. This followed similar stints at the Law Society of England and Wales, the BBC, and Muchwork. He recently sat down with GR, just before the 10th edition of the Dive in Festival, which has championed the D&I message in the London market and, increasingly, beyond.

“We’ve got people participating from over ninety countries this year,” he said, “The global reach is absolutely huge. We generally expect more than 30,000 attendees, so it’s a massive global audience. The themes, topics, and events really reflect what’s important to people in their own region, so there’s discussions around mental health, neurodiversity, intergenerational working, racial inclusion, disability inclusion, and domestic violence. It’s a huge range.”

His work for the Dive In festival, for which he is a spokesperson, dovetails perfectly with his role at Lloyd’s, he says. There, Lomas says that he is responsible for everything involving diversity, inclusion, leadership, capability, wellbeing, and employee engagement. He also takes on responsibility for overseeing within the market of Principle 13, alongside market engagement of D&I.

Principle 13 is an edict from Lloyd’s that its managing agents should be diverse and create an inclusive, high-performance culture through five objectives: demonstrating leadership focus; fostering inclusive behaviour; fostering psychological safety; ensuring diverse representation; and understanding their employee population.

Lomas has been working in this area for more than twenty years, and believes that the conversation around D&I has moved on leaps and bounds in that time.

“The Dive in Festival in 2015 was in one room,” he says. “It’s now in 48 countries, and it’s driven an understanding of topics such as mental health, domestic violence, neurodiversity, and the multigenerational workforce amongst others. And the Lloyd’s market has been deliberate about its culture work, in terms of education and holding firms to account, through cultural oversight and upskilling programmes. The festival consolidates all of that.”

He goes on: “It’s one of the things that’s made a huge difference to both individuals and their managers who can often be curious about this topic. The latter can turn up to a session and learn something that they didn’t know, then take that back to their teams. It’s the Dive in Festival that’s started lots of these new conversations and I think that’s why it’s still relevant and continues to evolve.”

Critics of D&I initiatives sometimes accuse them of prioritise feelings over performance, or question their link to the purpose of the organisation as a business. Lomas contends, however, that neither of these is the case.

“It’s about the practises that enable high performance at individual, team, and organisational levels,” he says. “It’s about enabling high performance, and the Dive in Festival plays a key role in raising awareness of the best practices across the globe. We live in a world that’s increasingly complex, and where the risks in terms of insurance are more interrelated and intertwined than they have ever been. You need a variety of perspectives to come up with those effective solutions.”