Race Equality Week – what are you doing to address race inequality in the workplace?
Race Equality Matters is a UK wide organisation addressing race inequality in the workplace. Race Equality Week, which runs from 7-13 February 2022 is a chance to showcase what your organisation is doing to address race inequality. This year the theme is #ActionsNotJustWords. This messaging behind the campaign chimes with two of our core values – we champion equality and we support action – so we thought it would be great to get involved, share what we do in our own workplace and hopefully inspire others to make a positive change.
A simple action in the workplace – #MyNameIs
Race Equality Week isn’t the first time we’ve been involved with a campaign from Race Equality Matters. Over Black History Month in October last year, we took part in their #MyNameIs campaign. This is a simple action to help make sure we all pronounce each other’s names correctly and in doing so promote inclusivity. We were delighted to learn that we were one of the first organisations in the UK to roll out an organisation-wide campaign by encouraging all colleagues to add a phonetic spelling of their name to their email signatures. We received lots of positive feedback both internally within the teams and externally, and you can watch a short video about what the campaign meant to Support and Development team member Sara. #MyNameIs can be adopted easily we’d highly recommend joining the campaign if you want to make a simple but effective change in your workplace.
Equity, Diversity and Inclusion – it’s about much more than just having a policy
The theme for Race Equality Week 2022 ‘Action not just words’ resonates with us because we’re continually looking at how we can make our services and workplace more inclusive. In July last year, we shared our commitments to Equity, Diversity and Inclusion across everything that we do. The Connected Voice Trustees and staff Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) group worked over many months to re-write our EDI Policy, design a framework and accompanying action plan to help us meet our ambitious goals.
One of our aims is around supporting the organisations we work with to adopt their own policies. Policy writing is one of the key services we provide but in the spirit of ‘action not just words’ we also wanted to think about how we could help organisations put their policy into practice. We developed a brand new EDI tailored training session that is aimed at staff, volunteers and trustees. Sara Chezari, who delivers the session, wrote an excellent blog about what EDI means to her personally and why it is important to you and your organisation.
In the workplace, we aim to create a culture that supports trustees, staff and volunteers to feel empowered, knowledgeable and able to administer our EDI Policy. Part of this is around training all staff, and we’ve received excellent in-depth training from Show Racism the Red Card and also delivered our own Cultural Competency training to everyone across the teams. The Cultural Competency training is specifically aimed at organisations delivering health and wellbeing services who want to improve their services and make them more accessible to ethnically minoritised communities. The focus is naturally about service delivery but there’s lots to take away about our broader understanding of cultural differences.
Beyond the workplace – inclusive services and championing equality
We strive to make our services inclusive and in turn we hope that this adds to the recognition that we have an inclusive workplace too. In our Support and Development team we ensure representation of ethnically minoritised projects and speakers for our VCSE Networking Events, and we work specifically with ethnically minoritised communities to help them build their fundraising capacity. We have an entire service area – Connected Voice Haref – that campaigns for health equality in ethnically minoritised communities and works directly with communities to tackle ongoing health issues. There’s still some work to do around how we gather data about our member organisations so we can ensure we’re representative of the communities we serve.
Gaps in data is something that our Advocacy service also highlighted as being an issue, and with some simple changes to their referral form and case management database they now have a better understanding about the communities they work with and can adapt their services accordingly. Connected Voice Advocacy is a great example of how to make services more accessible. They employ bilingual Advocates, have translated materials readily available and the staff know how to use interpreters effectively.
If your staff and volunteers are continually involved in improving services and making them more inclusive then this will naturally lead to a more inclusive culture within the workplace too. That’s definitely something we feel here at Connected Voice. Our values weren’t just plucked out of the air or drafted by senior management. They were born out of in-depth workshops with staff, trustees, volunteers and the people who use our services. They’re an integral part of how we operate and we hope they resonate with clients, funders, partners and potential employees as much as they do with our current team.
Ready to make a change? Get in touch
The examples above only cover a segment of what we mean by ‘diversity’ because we’re sharing ideas in the context of Race Equality Week. Of course it’s worth highlighting that our efforts extend more broadly to include all aspects diversity and intersectionality.
Hopefully the ideas and actions we’ve shared have inspired you to think about what changes you could make in your own organisation. If you are interested in learning about how we could support your organisation in the next steps of improved Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, get in touch with our Support and Development team: Email connect@connectedvoice.org.uk.
