What Diversity Means to us
For us Diversity encompasses a multitude of areas such as gender, race, disability, physical ability, mental capacity, education, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, values, age, personality, experiences, culture and the way each area approaches work. Obviously, this list is not exhaustive. Embracing diversity means acknowledging, understanding, and appreciating the differences between individuals and developing a workplace and business that enhances their value. By being flexible in our approaches it is then possible to achieve a rewarding environment.
The Benefits of Embracing Diversity
We feel that a diverse workforce can offer a wide range of resources, skills, ideas and energy to our business, providing a competitive edge. Organisations that embrace diversity will reap the benefits of resourcing from a wider pool of talent, broaden their engagement, improve performance and raise the community profile. We hope our values and commitment to diversity will benefit us in a number of ways:
- Improve opportunities within the organisation through internal promotion
- Utilise the knowledge of different areas of the community
- Understand communities and customer behaviour
- Become the preferred employer
- Have a more representative ‘balanced’ workforce
- Value and respect employees, attracting and retaining a wider talent pool
- skilled and knowledgeable staff delivering confident customer excellence within the context of our diverse customer base.
The Difference between Diversity and Equality
Diversity and equal opportunities are often regarded as the same thing. However, there are differences. Valuing diversity is about seeing everyone as individuals, valuing the abilities and skills they can bring to an organisation. It is not about seeing people first and foremost in terms of their membership of a particular group. Equality of regard for people is about emphasising inclusiveness, openness and fairness, offering a positive outlook on the many differences, as well as similarities, that can affect how people interact and perform with each other in the workplace or in the delivery of services.
Diversity is about respecting differences within minority groups and not expecting everyone to conform to the ways of majority groups. Widening diversity is something that is initiated internally, where a culture for diversity has developed over time.
Equal opportunities are usually prompted by external factors such as legislation and codes of practice.
Managing diversity is concerned with improving quality within the organisation, with a focus on qualitative issues and good practice, whereas equal opportunities focuses on improving numbers. This might include increasing the number of women in management positions, or increasing cultural diversity or raising the age profile. Valuing people, and their many diverse qualities, enhances employee potential, therefore enhancing the business.
Equal opportunities aims to ensure that no group receives less favourable treatment because of their differences, ensuring all people are treated equally. This is about adapting to individual needs rather than treating everyone the same.
Diversity focuses on being proactive and finding opportunities to enhance the business.
Equal opportunities is reactive and will focus on existing problems while trying to redress the balance.
A diverse culture is something that can develop with support but an equal opportunities culture is socially constructed by specific measures being put into place. Managing diversity encourages people to reflect on and change their own practises and systems, resulting in a diverse culture. Diversity at work is not only concerned with keeping within the confines of the law, but would also gradually seek to educate every staff member so that discrimination would become a thing of the past.
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