No, there I said it, we are not doing enough. Is it because we don’t have a strategy, is it because we don’t have enough time or are we just lazy and revert back to our usual hiring talent pools and ways of working?

Well, honestly, it is a combination of all three things.

Should I be putting myself out there saying that we are not doing enough? Yes I should, because we are not and that is something that I am here to change.

Would I be content with putting up a few fancy statements and changing logos to “show” how inclusive we are, without any context or action behind them? I would absolutely not.

Don’t get me wrong, we are not sitting on our hands doing nothing, we are making strides within the local community and actively getting involved with projects that benefit local projects and charities that align with the values that are important to our employees. Our office is a fully accessible environment and we have started to look at different talent pools to hire our internal staff.

Is it easy?
No

Does it require a change of thinking and action within the office?
Yes

Will it benefit our business, our clients and community long term?
100%!

We can already see the benefits with the small changes we have made and how we now have all our current employees fully invested in the future of this business and how they can drive change through their behaviours and the companies vision and mission.

To pick on one area of underrepresentation would be women in the manufacturing sector and it was interesting to read MakeUK’s recent report on manufacturing our recovery through inclusion, in that Women make up 29% of the manufacturing workforce and 18% of company boards.  We know as a business ourselves we are under represented by women, however it struck a chord with me that our own representation sits alongside our client base – coincidence?
Read the full report here.

We know that there are a shortage of women engineers coming through into manufacturing, I recently had a very interesting conversation with Bhavani Bhatt at the Institution of Engineering and Technology about this subject in particular and how the STEM work they are doing is so important to ensure that there is a future generation coming through into this sector.

We also know that the LGBTQ+ community is grossly underrepresented across most sectors, not least our own, in Recruitment, Engineering, Manufacturing and beyond. We have been making a conscious effort with addressing women in STEM careers, but admittedly there are lesser known initiatives for LGBTQ+ people to pursue careers in STEM as well, for example the Pride in STEM charitable trust: read more here.

Therefore it’s not only about addressing the gaps we already know about, but also interrogating and educating ourselves on the gaps we DON’T know about.

But we also know that learning about these gaps and educating ourselves is not enough; we know we need to make real, tangible, palpable changes internally and externally for the impact to be genuine and long lasting…

The long-term vision is that D&I isn’t even a conversation and it just something that happens throughout the culture of the business.

Watch this space…

Interested in joining The Synergi Way?

Get in touch with Zery Latif with your today
zery.latif@synergirecruitment.com