inclusion

It was one of those defining moments that occasionally punctuate our working lives. The realisation that what had been previously taken as an article of faith was, in fact, the cause of the problem. As this inconvenient truth dawned on the faces of the assembled transformation leaders, there was a perceptible shift of energy. Feelings of release, as well as fear pervaded the hotel conference room in which we were gathered.

I recently read this statement as a headline for a report published by the CIPD.

A good friend from my home country of Scotland always struggled to keep up with his peers in school. But he also succeeded where most people would have failed.  

Early on in his career as an engineer, he designed and built a huge dome — essentially a projection screen stretched over curved pieces of metal — for Dynamic Earth, a conference venue and geology visitor attraction in Edinburgh.

As the dust starts to settle on the troubling results of Britain’s first race disparity audit published by the UK Government on 10 October 2017, many Talent Acquisition leaders are now becoming more aware of the critical role they play in this diversity issue. The facts and statistics paint a clear picture. UK employment rates are lower for ethnic minorities (excluding white minorities) than the overall population across the country. In 2016, just over 4 percent of White people were unemployed, which is lower than the rate of unemployment for people from all “Other” ethnic groups.

We conducted a Q&A interview with Martin Kirke, Coach, Non-Exec Director, Consultant on HR, D&I and Change, around leaders, and how they can create a culture of inclusion.

From your experience, what are the attributes required from our leaders to gain their commitment to engaging our community and driving forward the diversity agenda?

Recently, I had the pleasure of delivering a workshop for the ICSA conference in London. 

As the premier conference event for company secretaries, board and governance professionals it was an opportunity to explore how inclusion and diversity in corporate governance, in all its guises, is being addressed. It was encouraging to realise that the issue of inclusion was not a discrete topic of discussion but one that permeated many of the issues under scrutiny.

I remember last year my CEO asked me to find out how many working mothers we had in our employment (total pop m+f c 90k).  Although the data is not stored in that fashion making a few assumptions I sat down with him and had a conversation about the answer, but more importantly that I was worried that this might not be the right question.

When in October 2017 the #MeToo movement grabbed all major headlines, many wondered if 2018 was going to be the ‘Year of the Woman’. We heard this term repeatedly over the course of the year, especially in regards to the American elections. With 2018 now closed and behind us, it is finally time to answer the question. Was 2018 really the year of the woman? Will 2019 be a rollover from the last? Will for the first time ever, we have two consecutive ‘Year of the Woman’?