Hi Lisa.
I think starting early and active mentoring in the workplace are a good start for any anti-discriminatory activities but they are only the tip of a very large iceberg.
There is a lot more that organisations can do to demonstrate their active commitment to equality and diversity, to raise awareness and to dispel the confusion about what D&E actually mean. Also, in some cases,to demonstrate compliance against their country's D&E legislation.
For instance,Senior Managers and HR departments can:
- Ensure there is a clear D&E 'owner' at executive level (and that staff know who that person is)
- Clearly understand and document the business risks that can arise from *not* being "equal and diverse"
- Introduce Diversity Champion roles
- Elicit staff feedback about Diversity & Equality in their annual staff surveys
- Routinely collect metrics on the demographic of their workforce and routinely monitor and refine those statistics (within the legislative and regulatory frameworks that apply of course, such as GDPR!).
- Introduce explicit D&E training and awareness materials that 'go beyond the headlines' (eg by 'exploding myths' ;emphasising that D&E are "all about inclusiveness", for men and women of all backgrounds; highlighting the benefits of a diverse workforce; providing organisation-specific generic examples that demonstrate types of acceptable/unacceptable behaviour,etc)
- Introduce D&E "workforce representation" working groups, aligned to output from the organisations' HR and governance forums. (A D&E sub-group would have a particular interest in annually reviewing the organisation's recruitment, appraisal, acceptable behaviour and complaints procedures)
- Routinely include 'Demonstrate an active commitment to D&E' in all JDs, with additional responsibilities at the higher grades.
- Ensure their complaints, grievance and "whistleblower" policies are fit for purpose. (A 'hot topic', following the Harvey Weinstein allegations.)
All staff groups can:
- Introduce Diversity & Equality as a standing item on relevant meeting Agendas (eg team meetings)
There are also some less obvious actions individuals and organisations can take. For instance:
- Everyone could encourage organisations (like ISC2!!) to sign up to the Diversity Charter:
http://diversitycharter.org/
"All too often we see conference and event lineups full of the same or similar people, we don’t want that anymore. We want diversity."
As you can probably tell, I was a Diversity Champion in a former (work)life and am passionate about this subject!
