In April each year around the world, we celebrate diversity – in our families, our neighbourhoods and our workplaces.
In an increasingly polarised and violent world, it’s more important than ever to promote inclusivity, and to understand and appreciate people’s different perspectives, backgrounds and cultures.
Here are some of the things we’ve been doing at MacIntyre.
Diversity Advisory Group
In 2020, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, the Black Lives Matters movement gained greater prominence. MacIntyre’s senior leadership team wanted to ensure we were doing everything possible to understand and celebrate our workforce.
After a period of consultation, we set up MacIntyre’s Diversity Advisory Group. This is a group of 25 people from around the organisation with a wide variety of roles, backgrounds, and interests who share a zeal for inclusivity.
Training
One early priority was the development of training for all MacIntyre staff in Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI). This is now delivered by a combination of interactive e-learning and face-to-face sessions with an external expert.
Sharing who we are
We believe it’s crucial to connect on a human-to-human level. A great way of doing this is sharing our stories and experiences with colleagues. Here are just a few examples.
Azar Ullah, our Head of Recruitment (and member of the Diversity Advisory Group) held a Ramadan stall at our central Milton Keynes office. Listening to Azar talk about practices around his faith and the history of fasting during Ramadan, we had positive discussions and found common ground, regardless of religion. (We also enjoyed Azar’s Mum’s amazing cooking!)
MacIntyre School at Wingrave makes a point of celebrating a wide variety of cultural and religious events, involving both pupils and staff, and helping everyone understand the rich heritage of so many cultures.
We’ve also recently developed a network for dyslexic staff, which is in its early days but proving popular as people share their experiences of feeling excluded at school and elsewhere. It’s already helping us rethink some of our communication and training options.
Three focuses
The Advisory Group currently focuses on three main areas of diversity:
- Ethnicity - reviewing representation within the workforce, and how well we reflect the local demographics of the communities in which we work.
- Neurodiversity - improving support for our neurodiverse staff
- Sexuality - support around gender identity, sexual and romantic orientation
Each diversity group member focuses on the area which interests them most. We’re developing resources to help understanding: for example a toolkit on use of pronouns, and a celebration calendar, encouraging colleagues across the company to celebrate occasions that are important to them, and share in their teams.
Once we’ve made more progress in these three areas, we will ask staff what other priorities we should focus on, perhaps age and disability.
Giving everyone a voice
When it comes down to basics, what we’re trying to do is give all our staff members a voice and encourage creativity and innovation. People can only learn and grow from having open minds. Working together, understanding and respecting each other, we are all stronger.
