Week 8: Next steps
Introduction
Welcome to the last week of this course! By now you should be feeling better informed about diversity and discrimination in a workplace context and be full of ideas about how to take things forward within your chosen organisation!
This week, you’ll bring all of your learning together and start to plan your next steps.
In this final introductory video, the employers share the importance of keeping the conversation going with all the staff in your organisation and being transparent about progress.
Download this video clip.Video player: Video 1: Introduction to Week 8
Transcript: Video 1: Introduction to Week 8
Craig Pemblington
We keep a constant eye on particularly our sector but more broadly. We’re also really interested in what’s happening across national bodies. So thinking about what the work is of the social mobility commission, for example.
Mark Ealing
There’s a group of people within the business that just get it, that you’re preaching to the choir. And there’s a group of people in any business that will never get it. It’s not for them. They’re not interested.
Both of those groups are important, but that’s not where your focus really needs to be. Focus is needs to be the majority of the people that sits in the middle who don’t spend too much time thinking about it. They’ve got a day job. What we’re trying to do is get more of that group to come and support the energy of what we’re trying to do.
Craig Pemblington
I would hazard a guess that we have a diversity and inclusion conversation in maybe half, if not more than half, of every conversation I have about any work involving any kind of recruitment and selection at the moment. So I feel like I’m constantly being kept on my toes and learning new things from other people.
Yusuf Nagdi
I keep talking about it to everybody that I see, whether it’s people internal to the organisation, whether it’s people external. I know where my gaps are within Leicestershire Police. I know where I need to recruit people. And I need to keep the conversation going.
Every police officer that talks to me, I make it really clear to them that every interaction they have is an engagement opportunity.
Craig Pemblington
It comes to the point that I think diversity and inclusion is everyone’s responsibility actually in an organisation. And that conversation needs to happen at senior executives here who are probably thinking about it strategically. But particularly, for more junior staff, where it might not form part of the day to day, we create regular spaces through some particularly online and digital tools with people being remote. So Slack has been a great tool for us, keeping people connected and up to date with news flashes about interesting information within the space.
Mark Ealing
Ultimately, what we have to do is make systemic changes to the way we operate, and we need to explain why we’re making those changes and why it’s good for everyone.
And so if we’re making a tweak to a process, we need to bring people on board with why we’re making the tweak, test it, make sure that it works within our organisation, then roll it out, and we re-affirming why we’re doing it, and then be transparent with our performance, our results.
Transparency is really important, because without that, you won’t build the psychological safety. We’ve made a change, it’s made a difference, good or bad. And we’re going to carry on doing this or do less of this. So engaging with people about what you’re trying to do, what you hope to achieve, and then share your results.
Video 1: Introduction to Week 8
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By the end of this week you will be able to:
- reflect on how you can make a difference as an individual
- describe organisational actions that will promote diversity in the workplace
- access useful resources to maintain your awareness of diversity issues in the future.
You’ll start by focusing on your personal responsibilities.