www.ktn-uk.org
Medicines Manufacturing Challenge
EDI Survey Briefing Webinar
Friday 12th November 2021
Medicines Manufacturing Challenge Community

Agenda
Time Topic Presenter
11:00 - 11:05 Welcome and introduction Karen Wilkinson (Medicines Manufacturing Lead, KTN)
11:05 - 11:15 Overview of Innovate UK’s EDI
Strategy and Vision
Katy Petherick,
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Programme Lead (Embedding), Innovate UK
11:15 - 11:30 Medicines Manufacturing EDI
Survey
Pav Tiwana (Programme Manager, Medicines Manufacturing Challenge,
Innovate UK)
Alex Bacon (Workplace Inclusion Coordinator, Diversity and Ability)
11.30-11.45 Panel Q&A Katy Petherick, Pav Tiwana, Alex Bacon, Andreea Iftimia-Mander (Innovation
Lead Medicines Manufacturing Challenge)
11:30 - 11:45 Survey Pav Tiwana
11:55 Close Karen Wilkinson

Inclusive
Innovation
Katy Petherick
EDI Programme Lead

At Innovate UK, we are
committed to
encouraging diversity
and inclusion in
business innovation

§ The best ideas for innovation can come from anyone - to access the full
talent available across the UK we need to increase the visibility and
accessibility of our support.
§ Diversity within businesses is proven to contribute to enhanced
performance and commercial success and we can help businesses to
benefit from this.
§ If we encourage businesses to consider diversity and inclusion in their
approach to innovation the economic and societal impacts that are
delivered through our programmes will be maximised.
Why?

£2 billion a month is lost
by UK businesses by ignoring the needs of disabled people
wearepurple.org.uk
Companies whose executive teams are in the top quartile for gender diversity are
more likely to financially outperform their peers.
For ethnic diversity, this rises to
36%
25%
McKinsey and Company; Diversity Wins
Ethnic minority-led firms in the UK are more likely to have engaged in product or service
and more likely to export
innovation
Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) UK; Unlocking Opportunity

What are the consequences of exclusion?

We need an Innovation
ecosystem that provides
solutions for all

diverse
We must increase the diversity of
upcoming innovation talent and make
innovation support more visible,
accessible, and inclusive to all.
§ Targeted Programmes (Women in
Innovation, Young Innovators)
§ Increase community engagement
§ Develop application process & policies
§ Improve support for applicants
§ Internal recruitment

We will support innovative
companies to fully understand the
value of EDI and build it into their
innovation and growth strategies
§ Innovate UK People strategy to have
core EDI strand
§ EDI Advocates across Innovate UK
§ Enable sharing of good practice
§ Provide EDI-related business advice
via Innovate UK EDGE
inclusive

We will encourage companies to
develop products and services with
a focus on inclusive innovation
§ Update application process to support
planning of EDI in innovation
§ Upskilling Assessors and Monitoring
Officers
§ Inclusive Design toolkit to support
planning of EDI in innovation
embedded

We need good data to target action
in the right places and monitor
impacts and progress
§ Updating EDI survey questions and
collection method
§ Extend Ventures analysis of historical
applicants
§ Build new evidence and insights
§ Collaborate across the innovation
ecosystem
effective

diverse inclusive
embedded effective

Understanding the Medicines Manufacturing
and Digital Heath Technology Catalyst (DHTC)
funded portfolio’s protected characteristics
Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) Survey

Pav Tiwana – Programme Manager, ISCF Medicines Manufacturing Challenge,
Innovate UK
Alex Bacon – Workplace Inclusion Coordinator, Diversity and Ability (D&A)
Introductions

We are running a survey to capture the protected characteristics of those involved in the project
teams.
We would like to understand the type of people working on projects we have funded as part of the
Medicines Manufacturing and Digital Health Technology Catalyst (DHTC) competitions.
This is wider than project leads or exec team members. From finance business partners to
technicians allocated to this project. Including closed and currently live projects.
The ask
We’ll be sending you (as project leads) an email with more information and a link to the survey:
• Complete the survey for yourself
• Share this email with those who are/were a part of your project team
What are we doing?

1. All ISCF Challenges are completing a similar exercise, with D&A analysing the results to
product a report with recommendations and findings.
2. An EDI strategy for medicines manufacturing sector and Innovate UK – baseline will help us
understand who we’re currently attracting.
3. Building an EDI community for medicines manufacturing.
What are the expected outputs?

• To understand who we’re funding: Identify which protected characteristic groups we are
attracting / are missing.
• Identify potential focus areas as we develop our EDI strategy for medicines manufacturing sector
– next steps and engagement plan.
• Help identify perceived gaps and improvements to UKRI/IUK processes.
• Start engaging with communities we are not funding to understand how we can support them
including reviewing our policies e.g. is our language inclusive?
• Once we have implemented changes, we would like to see with the next set of funded projects
whether the barriers we are aiming to remove are having the desired effect.
Why do we need a baseline?

• The survey is focused on understanding the protected characteristics of those involved in
projects we’ve funded.
• The protected characteristics included in the survey:
• The questions are based on ONS EDI protected characteristics.
• We're only asking questions where we can act on the data. We’ve removed any unnecessary
questions e.g. marital status
• To help with our analysis, we will be asking:
o Challenge(s) you were funded by – please select any of the ISCF Challenges you were
funded by (only need to complete survey once)
o Organisation size and type
About the survey
Social economic Sexual orientation Ethnicity Disability Religion

Share your views:
You also have the option to share your views on how well the sector is doing in encouraging the
EDI agenda, challenges and potential solutions.
Get involved!
We will also be sending a link to opt into more EDI activities, and join our growing EDI medicines
manufacturing community where we share learnings.
Opt out:
You have the option to opt out of completing the survey.
Please can you still share with your project team members.
About the survey

Data handling
• All data will be handled by D&A to analyse, produce the final report, and then the data will be
given to UKRI to handle. After the report has been created, D&A will not store the data or have
access to it.
• The survey is hosted on Survey Monkey, is anonymous and all data is non-identifiable.
• The role of D&A is to:
o Handle the survey and incoming data
o Gather data on EDI within each challenge area
o Analyse the data and produce a final comprehensive report
o During this time, be the point of contact for UKRI and any queries relating to the survey
• D&A will conduct interviews to garner qualitative data for the report, from those who would like
to be involved. Alias will be created and data gathered from this will be with individual consent
from each participant.

• We will use the data to inform the report and build on the responses we have received in
the initial pilot phase
• The data will be used to assess the current situation of EDI statistics within ISCF funded
projects
• The data will be analysed by D&A’s research team with an intersectional approach in mind
• The report will be sent to EDI Advocates and Challenge Leads for baseline
The data will not used for any other purposes.
How the survey data will and will not be used

Pilot: What does the data tell us?

Pilot: What does the data tell us?

What are we going to do with the information?
• D&A will assess the current situation of EDI statistics within ISCF Challenges, and create a final
report.
• The data will be leading the way in identifying which protected characteristic groups we are
attracting.
• Start engaging with communities we are not funding to understand how we can support them
by removing barriers, starting with reviewing our internal policies and processes.
• Contextualising the baseline against available industry level data.
• As part of our EDI strategy, this data will help inform our next steps and engagement plan.
How will this data help inform our actions?

How will supplying this data help you?
• EDI will underpin all future funding for IUK. This information will ensure we're doing the right
thing.
• Working in innovation, there is a need and benefit to working in a diverse team – influence the
sector to change work cultures, talent and skills programmes
• We’re reviewing our internal processes to be as assessable as possible.
• We’re building an EDI community within Medicines Manufacturing – addressing challenges with
potential solutions and sharing learnings.
• Opportunity to use the same survey to gather your organisations EDI data as well.
How will this data help inform our actions?

The ask
We’ll be sending you (as project leads) an email with more information and a link to the survey:
• Complete the survey for yourself
• Share this email with those who are/were a part of your project team
You will receive:
• Link to the survey
• Survey participants information sheet
• List of ISCF Challenges, including competition names so you can identify if you’ve been funded by more than
one ISCF Challenge
• Link to register your interest in getting more involved with EDI at Innovate UK/D&A/Medicines
Manufacturing Challenge
• Link to opt out of filling in this survey
Queries – direct them to KTN or D&A
Next Steps

Panel Q&A

Survey

www.ktn-uk.org
Thankyou!
karen.wilkinson@ktn-uk.org
pavan.tiwana@innovateuk.ukri.org
Medicines Manufacturing Challenge Community:
https://ktn-uk.org/programme/medicines-manufacturing-challenge-community/