Week 1: What is a diverse workplace and why is it important?

Introduction

Welcome to Week 1 of the free badged course Diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Congratulations, you’ve taken your first step towards understanding and enhancing the role that both diversity and inclusion must play in the future of your organisation.

‘Diversity and inclusion’ is a significant topic and an 8 week course can’t cover every aspect in comprehensive detail, so the aim is to introduce you to key themes and issues, and to provide inspiration for further research and action. There is no quick fix for understanding and embracing diversity, it’s a long term commitment and this is just the beginning of your journey.

The amount of online information available can seem overwhelming, so this course will highlight some of the best advice available at the time of writing, and set it into a logical order to help you progress with your diversity and inclusion plans. As the issues discussed in this course are continually developing, you can use the content to inspire your own research into the very latest thinking

You’ll also find case studies and quotes from employers and individuals who have already started their diversity journeys. Real life experiences are at the core of the videos you’ll see in the introduction to each week. These videos include excerpts from interviews conducted with a variety of employers, sharing their observations and experiences and providing inspiration on the week’s key topics.

Watch this first video, in which our interviewees explain why diversity and inclusion is important in their organisations.

Download this video clip.Video player: Video 1: Introduction to Week 1

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Transcript: Video 1: Introduction to Week 1

Craig Pemblington

For us, diversity and inclusion is so important to our workforce and the people that we have working with us.

Mark Ealing

You’ve got a multitude of ideas, insights.

Yusuf Nagdi

If you can have a diverse workforce, a workforce of people who are part of the community, who are part of different communities, it means it will increase understanding and knowledge about what’s important for those communities.

Sophie Washington

We work with hundreds of young wheelchair users across the UK, all with a variety of physical disabilities. So diversity is quite a naturally occurring thing for us at WizKids.

Craig Pemblington

And we’re only able to work towards tackling some of the complex social issues that are existing in the world if we have perspectives, lived experience from a much, much broader and diverse range of backgrounds.

Yusuf Nagdi

The officers understand exactly what those communities need because they are part of those communities, they understand the background, they understand the culture, they understand the religious beliefs.

Mark Ealing

If we don’t have that diversity of thought, then we may make mistakes, and that has huge consequences for us. So not only is it a more exciting place to live and the atmosphere is better, but we end up making the right decisions for our customers.

Craig Pemblington

One of the things we realised when we were putting together an approach to recruitment and diversity was that there was no magic bullet to increasing diversity. And at the same time, we didn’t need to implement any kind of expensive interventions.

Yusuf Nagdi

First of all, there needs to be a commitment from the organisation from the people up at the very top understanding why diversity is important and having that commitment that we as an organisation are going to value diversity and push diversity, and we’re going to ensure that our workforce is as representative as it can be.

Mark Ealing

It’s not about cost. It’s about knowing what to do.

Yusuf Nagdi

Be ready because you might get some negative feedback. And that’s OK because it gives you something to work on.

Mark Ealing

You don’t need to do a new recruiting process, you need to modify your recruiting process. You don’t need to do a new way of assessing somebody’s talent, just modify what you’ve already got to make it as inclusive as practicably possible. So it’s about lots of small tweaks, there is no big silver bullet. Small tweaks, lots of little changes create a big change. And knowing that is quite encouraging, I think.

Sophie Washington

Everyone can improve on their diversity and inclusion. And it’s really important to go to the experts. There are people out there that do audits and can advise you on how to improve, show you what you’re doing really well.

Craig Pemblington

I think the most important thing to get across is that there are lots of small, inexpensive things that organisations can do that can enable them to access a wider range of talent and ensure that talent is included. And I think inclusion is just as important a part of this conversation as diversity to make that happen without necessarily having to invest a lot in terms of time and also in terms of the financial implications as well.

Yusuf Nagdi

Don’t ever feel what you do is the finished article, get the advice and guidance from others and be prepared to continuously evolve and develop. And I think if you can do that, it’ll put you in the best possible step going forward.

Sophie Washington

Actually, there isn’t a one size fits all approach that will work for diversity and inclusion. You’ve got to have equity rather than equality to make it work.

End transcript: Video 1: Introduction to Week 1

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Video 1: Introduction to Week 1

You’ll start this week by exploring some definitions, to enhance your understanding of diversity and inclusion. You’ll explore some of the associated social and legal responsibilities, and learn about the benefits a diverse workforce can bring.

By the end of this week you will be able to:

• define diversity and recognise its variety
• understand the importance of inclusion in creating a diverse workplace
• explain some of the wider benefits diversity can bring to an organisation.

Before you start, The Open University would really appreciate a few minutes of your time to tell us about yourself and your expectations of the course. Your input will help to further improve the online learning experience. If you’d like to help, and if you haven’t done so already, please fill in this optional start-of-course survey [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] . Participation will be completely confidential and we will not pass on your details to others.