Areas for Consideration

These are the areas to which your organisation may need to give serious consideration in order to successfully address diversity and equal opportunities.

• Leadership - The most successful organisation have a diversity champion at a board or senior level. They are a role model for staff and can address diversity issues in all areas of work. For examples of role models in organisations with successful diversity strategies see ……
• Policy - This is the benchmark which your organisation expects employees to complysee ‘Fact Sheet Legislation’and the ‘ CREATE Equal Opportunities policy document.’
  Action Plan - This speaks for itself. A plan of action with a time line and an evaluation strategy.
• Communication - Decide how you are going to disseminate your new policies and procedures. How will your teams of employees know about your aspirations and expectation? And how can you inspire them to collaborate in this strategy? Can you engage staff in training programmes? Examples of organisations who have been successful communicators of their strategy can be found in the ‘Good Practice’ section of this web site. Good practices from employers include publishing cultural calendars, fact sheets and awareness guides, prayer/contemplation rooms, time off for religious festivals, multicultural events to celebrate religious events, employee religious networks, food labelling and InterFaith groups.
• Marketing - How will your customers know that you are a diversity conscious organisation? Can you improve representation of women, black and ethnic minority and disabled people in your advertising, promotion materials and products? Do your customer service staff have enough skills or need training to act appropriately with a diverse clientele?
• Monitoring - To know how well your strategy is working you need to plan and build in a monitoring strategy. This might be at job advertising, application and appointment stages. It might also be an examination of the supply network that serves your organisation. Importantly it may take a close look at the customer base and those that you are not currently reaching. Talking to your staff can be extremely informative; staff surveys can reach a large workforce, although they will not give a complete picture.
• Employment - To have an inclusive and diverse workforce your organisation needs to consider why it might not be the employer of choice in your area. Is your board and workforce pale, male and able bodied? Are you accessible? Are there prospects for promotion for all staff members? How can you address diversity issues if there are no current vacancies? Can you facilitate the development of part time and casual staff? Have you a forum for small staff groups, e.g. a women’s group? Do you provide facilities to meet the needs of your workforce e.g. halal or kosher food in the canteen?
• Community Involvement - Does your organisation participate in the local community? How can you reach out and attract workers from a diverse community? Can you support a community organisation with a financial donation or volunteers from your workforce? How would the local community rate you as an organisation?
• Results and Impact - Your organisation may be making a real impact in creating a diverse workforce, attracted a new and diverse client group and using a varied group of supply organisations, but how do you know? Its important to think about how you will gauge this at the planning stages. You may also wish to judge your own performance against that of your competitors. Take a look at Race for Opportunity’s ‘Race for opportunities’ website and their members benchmarking procedures.