The Calendar Is the Corridor: Auditing Real Access to Senior Leaders

Most UK organisations can point to an open-door commitment. It appears in induction materials, on leadership pages and in the language used by senior managers who describe themselves as approachable. Yet access to senior leaders is rarely governed by the door itself. It is governed by the diary, the gatekeeper, the format of the encounter and the unwritten rules about who may reasonably ask for time. For many staff, the door is technically open but practically out of reach.

This is not an argument against hierarchy. Senior leaders have finite time, and prioritisation is necessary. The question is whether that prioritisation is transparent and fair, or whether it quietly rewards proximity, confidence and similarity. A useful audit therefore begins not with architecture but with access: who can get into the calendar, through which route, and at what personal cost.

The Door Is Not the Building

Open-door culture is often tested through physical proximity. A senior leader sits near a team, walks the floor or attends the occasional all-staff event. Those moments matter, but they are not a system. They favour people who are in the building, who feel able to interrupt and who share the social confidence to turn a brief encounter into a conversation.

Hybrid working has made this less reliable. The colleague who might once have caught a director after a meeting now competes with a full calendar and a queue of formal requests. Part-time and job-share staff may be absent on the days senior leaders are visible. Remote staff may never experience the informal corridor at all. Junior employees may not know that asking is permitted, or may fear that a request will be read as presumptuous.

An open door, in other words, has a doorframe. The frame is made of time, status, format and permission. The audit should examine each part.

Four Tests for a Genuine Open Door

First, test calendar reach. Are there published opportunities to meet senior leaders, or does access depend on knowing the right assistant, being invited to the right meeting or catching someone at the right moment? If open slots exist, are they offered at different times of day and in different formats? A senior leader who offers only 8am breakfasts or 6pm drinks is not equally accessible to carers, commuters and disabled staff.

Second, test gatekeeper discretion. Executive assistants, chiefs of staff and diary managers perform an essential role, but they also make judgments about whose request is important enough to reach a senior leader. Those judgments may be entirely well intentioned and still reproduce existing hierarchies. Are requests logged? Are there criteria? Is there a route for a junior employee who has no obvious sponsor but a genuine work issue?

Third, test format tax. Some access routes require significant preparation, travel, evening attendance or social confidence. A monthly town hall may be open to all but still only hear from those willing to speak in front of hundreds. A mentoring scheme may be advertised as open but select for people who already know how to present themselves. Fair access means offering low-preparation, low-risk routes as well as prestigious ones.

Fourth, test askability. The critical question is not only who asks, but who believes they may ask. Askability is shaped by grade, working pattern, caring responsibilities, disability, ethnicity, gender and previous experience of being dismissed or redirected. A culture can be formally open and still communicate, through a hundred small signals, that only certain people should take up senior time.

What to Measure Without Surveillance

An access audit should not become a system of individual monitoring. The aim is to see patterns, not to police people. Use aggregate data that already exists: the number of requests to senior leader offices by grade band, working pattern and location; attendance at open sessions; participation in skip-level meetings; and the time between a request and a response. Where possible, anonymise and group the data so that no individual is identifiable.

Add a short pulse question to existing engagement surveys: I know how to request time with a senior leader; I believe such a request would be welcomed; I have seen senior leaders engage with people at my grade. Break the results down by demographic and working pattern, but only where the sample is large enough to protect anonymity.

Review the calendar itself. Are senior leader open hours concentrated in central London, at the start or end of the day, or during school holidays? Are they advertised only in leadership channels? Are virtual options available? These are not minor logistical details. They determine who can physically and practically attend.

Widening the Doorframe, Not Adding a Policy

The most effective changes are often small and procedural. Publish a simple access route for every senior leader: how to request time, what response to expect, and what counts as a legitimate reason to ask. Make clear that raising a barrier, proposing an improvement or seeking career insight are all valid reasons, not only issues that would already command executive attention.

Rotate open hours across early, midday and late slots, with virtual and in-person options. Give gatekeepers an explicit fairness remit: log themes rather than individuals, offer alternatives when a request cannot be met, and avoid filtering solely on seniority. Introduce low-preparation routes such as fifteen-minute virtual slots, written question forms or monthly ask-anything sessions with anonymous submission.

Use skip-level meetings carefully. Inform line managers so that the encounter is not undermined, but do not let the line manager become the gatekeeper. Invite people by lottery or by role rather than only through high-performer lists. Ask senior leaders to attend ordinary team meetings, not only flagship events, and train them to notice who is not speaking. Finally, retire the phrase open door unless there is a published method and a response standard behind it. Language that promises access without providing a route creates cynicism.

The Cultural Signal

Access to senior leaders is a cultural signal. It tells staff whose views are considered relevant and whose career is worth investing in. The goal is not to abolish hierarchy or to flood leaders with meetings. It is to remove unnecessary friction so that informal access is not reserved for the already confident, the already visible and the already sponsored.

When the doorframe is widened, senior leaders hear from a broader range of people. That is good for decision-making, good for retention and good for the kind of workplace where people can flourish. The audit is not another policy. It is a practical test of whether the open door is a genuine invitation or simply a familiar phrase.