Background
Regent’s University London (RUL) recognised the importance of inclusivity and cultural awareness whilst promoting dignity at work, managing discord, and working collaboratively to optimise the work environment.
Task
University approached us to design, deliver and evaluate an innovative and challenging face-to-face equality and diversity programme for 80 managers and 460 staff.
What we did
We fully familiarised ourselves with the organisation through several visits to interview key personnel and staff about the issues they faced.
Based on the findings from of our research, we designed and developed a series of bespoke interactive workshops: “Respect for All – Valuing Inclusivity at Our University”. Our programme highlighted specific areas such as feeling valued, understanding diversity, professional behaviour under pressure and maintaining a collegiate approach.
Topics
-
Inclusive and socio-cultural awareness
-
Understand legislation, duties and responsibilities
-
Good practise in relation to equality, diversity and inclusive
-
Responsibilities in recruitment and employee relations
Solution
In this programme key issues around equality and diversity were addressed, such as religion, belief, gender, sexual orientation, race and disability. In workshops solely devised for managers, we concentrated on topics such as improving motivation, promoting change, managing unacceptable language, and creating effective communication procedures.
Result
-
We made recommendations on how to maintain the momentum of the programmes and highlighted further areas to be addressed
-
We suggested termly meetings convened with staff and managers to directly address areas covered in the training and to feedback any issues
-
We advised the implementation of sustainability workshops to further stimulate discussion