This step is about how your organisation learns from experience and builds on it—before, during, and after the funding cycle. It focuses on how you reflect across calls, respond to feedback, and strengthen internal processes over time to better embed inclusion.
Continuous improvement makes inclusion sustainable. It helps your team build on what works, address gaps, and stay responsive to changes in the research ecosystem. This includes reflecting not just on application and review stages, but also on post-award implementation: What was actually funded, how it was carried out, and what results emerged.
Learning happens at all levels. It includes reviewing how calls performed, gathering input from applicants and reviewers, and understanding what staff need to feel confident and supported. It also includes collecting evidence of how integrating IGI has influenced project directions or outcomes. These examples strengthen the case for IGI internally and shift its perception from a compliance task to a quality criterion.
This step is not about more bureaucracy. It is about small, regular practices that keep learning alive. From internal debriefs and template updates to post-project reviews, sharing good examples, or running peer exchanges. These actions build capacity and clarity over time.
It also helps build institutional resilience. Organisations that reflect and adapt are better prepared to improve, respond to change, and apply lessons across different teams and programmes.
Use this step to embed IGI into your organisation’s way of working, including follow-up on funded projects. Structured learning across calls and cycles supports meaningful and lasting improvement.
- Can reflect on IGI across the full funding cycle: You understand how inclusion was taken up not only during application and review but also in project implementation and outcomes.
- Understand how to collect feedback from key actors: You are able to gather input from applicants, reviewers, funded teams, and colleagues to support structured reflection.
- Can identify and share good practice: You know how to collect and highlight examples where IGI made a difference, helping to inform future calls and internal learning.
- Are equipped to adapt tools and processes: You feel confident making evidence-based updates to templates, guidance, or reporting formats.
- Help reposition IGI as a strategic value: You support a culture where inclusion is seen not as a checkbox, but as a meaningful driver of research quality and relevance.
Continuous learning often takes a back seat to delivery. But without structured reflection, it is hard to sustain or scale inclusive practices:
- No time or capacity to reflect: Teams move quickly from one call to the next, leaving little room for review or improvement.
- Learning stays informal or undocumented: Insights remain with individuals and are not shared across teams or cycles.
- Feedback is collected but not used: Input from applicants or reviewers is gathered but not fed into programme updates.
- Inclusion efforts are not reviewed systematically: IGI is not part of standard evaluation or performance discussions.
- Teams lack confidence to adapt tools: Staff are unsure what can be changed or improved and stick with familiar formats.
- Good practices are not shared internally: Examples from one call or programme do not reach others who could benefit.
- Post-award learning is overlooked: Once funding decisions are made, few processes exist to review how inclusion played out in the actual projects.
- IGI is perceived as secondary: If inclusion is seen as less important than scientific or technical criteria, reflection on IGI is likely to be deprioritised or neglected.
These actions help you turn everyday experiences into learning that strengthens inclusion over time:
- Set aside time for internal reflection: Hold short debriefs after each call or funding cycle to capture what worked well, where IGI could be better supported, and how processes can improve.
- Collect structured feedback from all key actors: Use short surveys or guided conversations with applicants, reviewers, and funded teams to understand how IGI was addressed—or overlooked.
- Review tools and templates with inclusion in mind: Update call documents, guidance, and review forms based on what was confusing, missing, or particularly effective.
- Follow up on funded projects: Include post-award check-ins or reporting prompts to explore how IGI was implemented in practice and what outcomes it shaped.
- Gather evidence of IGI’s added value: Document cases where gender and diversity considerations strengthened research outcomes or enhanced project relevance.
- Share learning across teams and programmes: Make sure good examples and insights don’t stay siloed—bring them into onboarding, planning, and cross-departmental exchange.
- Encourage open conversations about challenges: Create safe spaces for staff to reflect honestly, raise difficulties, and test small-scale improvements.
- Track and communicate changes over time: Keep a simple record of what has been updated, why, and whether it leads to clearer expectations or better inclusion results.