Moto: Diversity and inclusion is in our DNA now

In the pursuit of a workplace culture where diversity goes beyond standalone initiatives to become an integral part of business, Moto Hospitality’s people director Louise Hughes says sharing the responsibility is vital.

“You would want to get to a position where we aren’t even talking about diversity, because it was just the norm.”

Despite these aspirations, she recognises the ongoing necessity of prioritising D&I.

“What I like at Moto is that the operating board is really involved”, she says, adding, “It is in our DNA now.”

This top-down commitment makes diversity an intrinsic part of company culture, and a concern that is shared business-wide.

“I think that’s really important; it’s not just about putting a team in place for it to be their job.

“For us, we’ve built it in so it’s part of everybody’s responsibility – to be part of how everyone does business.”

Currently, 15% of Moto leaders are from an ethnic minority background versus a goal of 18% for 2025.

However, 18% of site managers, and 12.5% of the level below the board are from an ethnic minority background.

These successes have been predominantly maintained through internal talent development programmes and internal promotions. 

Hughes emphasises the need to vigilantly maintain these achievements and highlights the importance of bold goals, with the mantra “what gets measured, gets done.”

The organisation’s diversity data collection commitment extends to tailoring targets for each site based on the census, recognising the importance of reflecting the locality’s specific make-up.

“The inclusion piece is huge as well, but for us we’re quite a metrics driven business.

A big focus going forward is to increase its percentage of disabled colleagues by 1%. 

Moto is actively engaged in educational efforts and employee upskilling and aims to “move the dial”, with partner organisations such as Purple Tuesday and the Hidden Disabilities Sunflower. 

At every level of leadership, including board level, it has now achieved gender parity, representative of the overall 60% of females in Moto.

It has also increased the percentage of female site managers from 22% to 45% over the last five years.

“Even though they fall into a wider leadership level - we wanted to get gender parity of that population for people to look up and see that and be inspired.

“We realised [in 2019] that at the junior management level, there were 60% female team leaders but the next level up, it was around 20% female, 80% male.

“We wanted to understand what the blockers were, and for us it was about females just not being in the mix.

The business’ ‘Empower’ programme has been “instrumental”, in building the confidence of females in its workforce where “imposter syndrome” was rife, says Hughes.

As part of the WiHTL community, the brand also participates in mentoring schemes, webinars and hosting guest speakers, to share best practice.

“If we all work together, we’ll go much faster than trying to do something on our own”, she adds.

A key driver of progress has been the company’s Race Reverse mentoring scheme and D&I steering groups, says Hughes.

Engaging members of the operating board, with an aim to “step into the shoes of an ethnic minority colleague”, Hughes is candid about some of Moto’s learnings.

“Some issues we could fix, such as the language we use, the perception of treatment from customers or even from colleagues.”

Beginning its cultural transformation journey around five years ago, Hughes says diversity has been built into its key values, with zero tolerance of discrimination. 

Moto’s recent engagement survey showed that 89% of colleagues felt that people from all backgrounds are treated fairly in the organisation, an improvement from 84% in 2020.

“One of our values that particularly stands out is ‘Do the right thing’, and that’s something that is almost implicit in creating a diverse and inclusive culture.”