How Marsh united leaders to embed psychological safety and inclusion

MindGym carried out rigorous research to uncover the current state of Marsh’s culture. This involved: 

• Conducting a total of five interviews to develop hypotheses about Marsh’s culture to inform an online culture survey.
• The design of a comprehensive online culture survey sent to all employees to identify strengths and ‘cultural hotspots’ – the topics that needed most attention. The key topics of the survey were leadership, inclusion, ethical behaviour, respect, performance, customer-centricity and commercial behaviours. 

Marsh selected inclusion as the first area of focus. The survey revealed that Marsh was heading in the right direction with some positive inclusive behaviours already being shown – in particular, role-modelling by senior leadership. 

It also highlighted opportunities to build greater consistency across teams, including: 

• Further empowering colleagues to speak up and address exclusive behaviours when they arise; 
• Strengthening psychological safety so people can acknowledge and learn from mistakes; and 
• Increasing transparency around career progression to reinforce fair, equitable practices.  

To gather further behavioural examples, Marsh decided to run a focus group to triangulate these findings with the Colleague Council Committee (representatives from across the business). 

With the diagnostic phase complete, MindGym and Marsh designed a behaviour change programme to start shifting and embedding inclusive behaviours across the business. 

The programme began with a kick-off event (a 60-minute Virtual Go Large) for all managers on the topic of inclusion, co-facilitated by Marsh’s CEO and a MindGym coach. The event: 

• Revealed the high-level findings from the survey. 
• Shared pre-recorded videos of employees telling personal and vulnerable stories of when they’d been included or excluded. 
• Focused on the key behaviours required to enable inclusion as a manager. 

This was the first time in Marsh's recent history that all managers had come together along with senior leadership, signalling Marsh’s commitment to the change. 

Following this kick-off, all managers attended a two-hour deep-dive session called Leading Inclusively. 

This session helped all people leaders understand their unique position as role models for inclusive behaviour and how to create an environment of psychological safety, unearth visible exclusion and effectively manage bias. In total, this session was run 76 times to 50 managers over a 4-month period. 

Managers also received a digital Activation pack of exercises, tools and discussion prompts to help them talk about inclusion with their direct reports and start shifting team norms. 

This is just the first chapter in what Marsh sees as a ‘cultural journey’. MindGym is partnering with Marsh to build on the positive behavioural shifts taking place across the business – continuing to build psychological safety, helping individuals manage work pressures and de-biasing people decisions.