Equality And Diversity In The Workplace

Claire shares with us the benefits of an equal and diverse workplace, what challenges this might face, and what we can all do to improve workplace inclusivity.

Hello and welcome back to another video. My name is Claire Carmichael. I'm a Registered Nurse and assistant lecturer. Today we are going to be talking all about diversity, equality, and inclusion within the workplace.

But first, let me just break down some terminology for you.

Defining Equality, Diversity And Inclusion

So, what is equality? Equality is the fair treatment of everybody regardless of their protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010.

Equity is about the fair treatment of everyone and making sure everyone has the same outcomes.

Diversity is a variety of people, a mixture of people, a diverse community of people from different cultures, backgrounds, religions, sexuality, etc.

Inclusion is the culture of where a mixture of people, the variety, the diversity that I was just talking about, can all come together and be included in something. It's where they can feel comfortable and confident to be themselves without the fear of being discriminated against for being who they are.

The Importance Of Diversity & Inclusion

Having an inclusive, diverse community in the workplace just empowers people to think differently, to be open, to be honest, to work collaboratively together in ways that suits them, that benefits the company.

If you try and think back to a moment in time, throughout your years, whether it was childhood, teens, adulthood, where you've not been included, you've felt left out as a result, and think about how that made you feel. That is how we do not want to work. We want to do the opposite of that and make people feel included. We don't want anyone feeling like that ever in the workplace.

And we spend the most of our lives working. So, our people we work with or our families or our colleagues, they're going to keep us going and keep us motivated so we want to look after those people in the teams.

So, it's really crucial that people feel valued and respected and safe in the workplace as a result.

Challenges In The Workplace

Some challenges of diversity and inclusion in the workplace could be things like communication, unconscious bias, a lack of trust, trying to tick every box.

I know some companies will have every tick box exercise to tick that they've met their LGBTQ plus standards, that they've ticked different people from different religious backgrounds, cultures, ethnicities and things like that to show that they're including people, but I don't think they really know what that means of including people in the workplace.

And some companies may not do this well, they might lack in the education and the training around inclusion and diversity within the workplace to be able to support those people when they come to work for them. Some other challenges are hostility in the workplace and discrimination.

Statistics On Discrimination

Whilst we're on the topic of discrimination, I just wanted to look at the discrimination in the workplace statistics for the UK alone, and this is taken from the government website, and this is in June 2022 that they published this. I'm going to share a chart here for you so you can actively see what I'm looking at.

Percentage of NHS staff experiencing discrimination at work, by ethnicity and area

These are the percentages of NHS staff experiencing discrimination at work by ethnicity and area. These statistics are shocking. If we look, the light blue is everybody included. The darker navy blue is anyone from a minority ethnic group and the yellow is a white person.

Anyone that is not white is twice as likely to get discriminated in the workplace than a white person. How is that okay? This is not okay. And this is what I was saying about people just do this tick box exercise to employ people, but they're not putting in the support and the tools and the education to help them thrive in the workplace, which is massively needed. Because looking at these stats, that is telling us that we need it.

And I'm just going to put up here the second chart that I found, which really, really shocked me as well. And this is the percentage of NHS staff experiencing discrimination at work by ethnicity and type of Trust. And if you look on here, 16%... Ambulance services? This shouldn't be happening anywhere in the world anyway, but to see those statistics in healthcare? We are healthcare professionals; we should not be committing discrimination. This is not okay.

Having an inclusive, diverse community in the workplace just empowers people to think differently, to be open, to be honest, to work collaboratively together in ways that suits them, that benefits the company.

How Can We Improve?

So how can we improve inclusion, diversity, equality within the workplace?

Education

The first step is education. We have to educate people on diversity, equality, and inclusion in the workplace, and there's not much training and education out there for groups. There's a lot more now than there used to be, which is great, and a lot of trust is setting up the equality, diversity, inclusion packages.

I know where I work at the minute, we've got a fantastic team that do this and there's a lot out there for it. And we've had a lot of webinars, a lot of seminars, a lot of teaching and education around this, which is amazing to see.

Policy And Equal Pay

Another good place to start is having a workplace policy. Having an equality diversity policy, as well, in place in whichever Trust you are working at. If you find that you haven't got one, raise it and see if they will create it or if you can help get involved to create this as well.

A policy helps everybody to know what diversity, equality, and inclusions are in place in the workplace, but it also points to the law and the legalities around it as well. It should have information about different types of discrimination, what is not accepted, and who to report things to if something should arise.

Not only this, but through your work policy, you should have things on recruiting staff and not just for a tick box exercise, like I said. Recruiting the staff, training, and education within teams to help support them and make them thrive.

Equal pay for everybody regardless of your protected characteristic, and a policy that should support different religions, different cultures, different backgrounds, and have things in place to help support those people. For example, some religions will have prayer times throughout the day, some religions will wear head scarfs and things like that. Some religions will wear a cross on them. So just putting things in place to help support that person's religion to make them feel valued and accepted in your team.

Flexible Working And Maternity Pay

Also, having things like flexible working, because we are a very diverse population. Everyone will be from different backgrounds, different cultures, different religions. Some people will celebrate Christmas, for example, on December the 25th, other people will celebrate holidays like Eid at different times of the years and they won't celebrate Christmas. So, it's about flexible working and putting things in place to help everyone achieve this.

Putting things in place like maternity pay, which doesn't just include mothers or biological females, something that is going to include everybody from different sexualities, different genders and different backgrounds can also help make people feel included and valued as well, because it doesn't just take a biological man and a biological woman to have a baby.

There's a whole other variety of ways to create a baby and create life, and a lot more support is needed out there for those people.

Hold Events That Celebrate Diversity

Another good tip that you could do for your workplace is have an event. Have events for things like Black History Month, LGBTQ plus awareness weeks and months, Mental Health Awareness Week.

We've got Neurodiversity Week as well and not many people know that that's a thing, but that's coming up on the 13th of March to the 19th of March. And that talks about a lot of people with ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, autism, and things like that.

A research paper published in 2021 by Gartner Research shows that people who are part of a diverse inclusive workforce and cultures tend to flourish, allowing teams to bring their whole selves to work and perform better. The research also shows performance was increased by 12%.

Accessibility For All

Also making things accessible for people with those disabilities, but also with physical learning disabilities as well. Wheelchair users, for example, deaf, blind people for example. Putting things in place in your workplace is going to make a huge, huge difference. And again, it is just going to eliminate that discrimination of those people when recruiting as well.

But again, it's not just a tick box exercise. We need to put the support physically in place within the workplace to help those people thrive just like anybody else that would not have one of those disabilities.

It's about recognizing their disability, about their neurodiverse status, and it's about making sure you've got support and things in place for those people so that they've got an equal chance at thriving at work as somebody that doesn't have those sorts of disabilities.

Recruitment

Just going back to recruitment, making sure that your job adverts are going out and they're in a language that supports all different communities and backgrounds. And who are writing your adverts for you? Who are recruiting? Who is on the interview panels? Are they from a diverse background? Having it just inclusive across the board is going to make a massive difference and eliminating any biases through the recruitment process.

Why We Should Be Being Doing This

So going back to why we are doing this, why are all these tips going to help? I have found a research paper published in 2021 by Gartner Research, and this paper shows that people who are part of a diverse inclusive workforce and cultures tend to flourish, allowing teams to bring their whole selves to work and perform better. The research also shows performance was increased by 12%.

That's just one evidence-based research why we should be including people in our teams from diverse backgrounds, making sure equality, equity for all.

So hopefully this has shown you diversity, equality, and inclusion in the workplace isn't just a tick box exercise, it's going to help you improve your workforce and your team, create value, morals, and motivation within your teams too. It's a win-win situation.

Ending On A Positive Note

And on a final positive note, according to a paper from Harvard, there's been a remarkable change in the past 50 years about our beliefs on race, sexual orientation, or gender. Organizations recognize they have a problem with inclusion and now want to commit to making more changes than they were 20 years ago.

I hope this video has given you some food for thought, some things that you can look at and put in place in your own workplace.

Thank you so much for listening, and I'll see you next time.