Week 3: Diversity characteristics and discrimination – Part 2
Introduction
Last week you explored three of the key protected characteristics, disability, race and sex. This week, you’ll continue that process, looking at issues surrounding age, religion or belief, gender reassignment and sexual orientation in the workplace.
Although it isn’t a protected characteristic, you’ll also look at the contribution that social capital makes to discrimination, and how enhancing social capital can make a difference.
Watch this short video, in which employers discuss their support for colleagues with some of the diversity characteristics you’ll be learning about this week.
Download this video clip.Video player: Video 1: Introduction to Week 3
Transcript: Video 1: Introduction to Week 3
Sophie Washington
I think social capital is hugely important. We, obviously at WizKids, have a really fantastic team of volunteers across the UK, with a huge variety of experience in different personal work experience, all sorts of different backgrounds where we are so diverse. So I think it’s really incredible to actually learn from that experience and those networks, as well. And it’s just a really collaborative and young-people-focused place to be. So it’s hugely important to us.
Craig Pemblington
We have quite a young team, but still a diverse range of ages. And again, some of the practical measures around that include things like flexible working.
Yusuf Nagdi
We are a menopause-friendly employer, and we make that really clear. We’ve got lots of wellbeing support. We put lots of fitness support in place. So I’d say a lot of those incidents or any concerns would primarily be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.
Craig Pemblington
Many of the ways in which we’re working with colleagues that are older means that they are often less inclined to be more mobile to travel within the environment, not always. But sometimes that is the case, where some of our younger colleagues can feel like they can up sticks and run off to an event if we need them to run an event and others can’t. So I think it’s about the way in which we enable flexible working practices, enable the same kind of portfolio and level of support.
Yusuf Nagdi
We always work cooperatively or collaboratively with our LGBT network. We have had individuals within our organisation who are transitioning, and what we’ve done is we have supported those individuals. We speak to them to understand exactly what their needs are. If they need to be taken off frontline policing for a short time to see what additional support is in place, then we will always do that. We are also in Stonewall’s Top 100 employers, and we are the highest ranking police service in the country.
Craig Pemblington
Around about a third of our staff team are LGBT+. And as a result, I think the support that is generated for that has come from internal spaces, so in the same way we run a BAME community, or they self-facilitate around BAME community and they self-facilitate around LGBT spaces. And we draw on that a lot, because that influences a lot of the work, a lot of the way we talk about the work, thinking about LGBT communities.
Video 1: Introduction to Week 3
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By the end of this week, you will be able to:
- describe key aspects of several protected characteristics, and reflect on related issues in the workplace
- reflect on the impact social capital can have on diversity and discrimination
- understand the concept and impact of intersectionality.
You’ll start the week by looking at age in the workplace.