February 4, 2021 — This week marks the first-ever Race Equality Week in the UK, an initiative uniting UK organisations and individuals in activity to address the barriers facing race equality in the workplace. The theme for 2021 is transparency, accountability and action. In the spirit of this, we are sharing an update on IRC UK’s commitments to Diversity, Equality and Inclusion.
IRC UK has been working with colleagues in the UK office, particularly representatives from our staff-led groups & networks including our BAME Network; Europe PRIDE; Unite the Union, (all of which have already been in place for some time) to understand what and how IRC UK could do better, and more, on diversity and inclusion.
In October IRC-UK launched our action plan for the coming year. We are making progress on the commitments made and wanted to share a few highlights of some of the work we have completed:
- We are gathering data to better understand our current staff base and to inform work to make our workplace more diverse and inclusive.
- All members of the UK Management Team and the UK Board of Trustees have undertaken unconscious bias training.
- All new Job Descriptions are reviewed for unconscious bias.
- We now advertise jobs across different networks and groups to reach a wider audience, with all ads including statements to encourage under-represented groups to apply.
- All communications staff have had induction and refresher training on the IRC’s informed consent policies as well as image and brand guidelines.
We are continuing to monitor our progress against our commitments, which anyone at the IRC can now monitor online. We also share monthly updates in our UK All Staff meetings.
We know there is still more work to do to increase the diversity and inclusivity of our organisation, and we will continue to work with colleagues to hold us to account in achieving this.