There is much talk about diversity and inclusion within Irish businesses, but in the past, often it was more a case of “talking the talk” rather than “walking the walk”. However, in recent years there has been more focus on building a diverse workforce thanks to studies proving its indisputable benefits for a business, its employees and society at large.
To ensure that companies are actively making tangible progress on creating a more inclusive workforce, three years ago Business in the Community Ireland (BITCI) launched Elevate, the Inclusive Workplace Pledge. To date, 65 large companies have signed up to the pledge, including huge employers such as ESB, KPMG, Deloitte, AIB, Bank of Ireland, Tesco and Bidvest Noonan.
“Elevate is Business in the Community’s pledge to support businesses to build more inclusive workplaces,” explained Linda O’Sullivan, head of social inclusion, BITCI. “The ultimate ambition is to build workplaces that reflects the diversity within Irish society.
“We currently target large businesses and the pledge is signed at CEO level. Signatory companies differ in maturity when it comes to diversity and inclusion; you don’t have to be at a minimum standard, you just have to have an aspiration to build an inclusive workplace. The idea is to translate an employer’s ambition around inclusion into accountability; support them to put something tangible around their ambitions for inclusivity.”
Companies that sign the pledge commit to recording the diversity profile of their workforce, develop one tangible action that ensures the recruitment or retention of diverse talent, and report yearly on the impact of this action. The pledge also challenges signatories to increase their ambition on the diversity, equity and inclusion agenda.
“We’ve seen a real rise in the awareness of the importance of diversity,” said O’Sullivan. “It’s at the executive table now, and more and more companies are appointing someone from the C-suite to take accountability for diversity & inclusion. In the past, a lot of companies would have simply talked about inclusion, but now they’re starting to be proactive about it and adopt targeted strategies to promote a more inclusive workplace.”
The positive effect of a more inclusive workforce has been widely documented. “Having a workforce that reflects the population helps to build a more fair and inclusive society,” said O’Sullivan. “As a starting point, it makes sense for a business to build a diverse workforce that is reflective of the customer base. Additionally, however, there is loads of evidence to support the belief that a diverse workplace is more productive, more innovative, better at problem-solving and generally happier.”
For BITCI and the Elevate pledge, the foundation is data – it is critical that strategies and actions are based on evidence and are measurable. “It is easy for an employer to assume they are inclusive, and suggest that everyone has equal opportunity and anyone can apply for a job. It’s very difficult to get behind that statement and hold yourself accountable if you are not building up a diversity profile of your business and using data to support your claim. When employers look at the diversity profile of job applicants, or for example, their graduate intake, or internal promotions, they can identify how inclusive they actually are, and if there are gaps they can introduce actions to specifically target under-represented groups.”
In the past, a lot of companies would have simply talked about inclusion, but now they’re starting to be proactive about it
Building up this data and taking action to improve it is one of the cornerstones of the Elevate pledge, commented O’Sullivan. “We ask companies to provide us with a diversity profile of their workforce in as much detail as they are able. All data sets are annonymised and aggregated to create an Elevate data set, which to date consists of over 150,000 employees. We use this for collective insights and we also offer individual benchmarks to each signatory. So for instance, a company might see that they are not gathering data on ethnicity, but the majority of their peers are – so perhaps it might be something they should consider adding in over the following year.
“At Business in the Community Ireland, we also believe in the collective so we do knowledge sessions, information sessions, small group discussions to bring the companies together into a community of practitioners so they can learn from each other.”
So far, the pledge has proven successful, and now, O’Sullivan said, ambition is growing. “This is our third year running the Elevate pledge and we’re at a juncture where we will start to increase ambition and look for a little more. We have 65 signatories; and to see other companies’ actions can be a big motivator for companies, as they want to be seen either with their peers or leading. We use our insights to challenge companies on certain things – for instance, we would say, ‘For a company of your size you should really be setting targets around employment of people with disabilities - here’s what other companies are doing.’ We’re seeing steady progress as a result. Ultimately the collective is the great way of doing that, but the real wins are when you see individual companies making progress.”
But while progress is being made, much still needs to be done. Despite being essentially at full employment, there are groups within society that are disproportionately unemployed, including migrants, lone parents, people with disabilities and members of the Traveller community. Employers that are actively committed to building inclusive workplaces and that develop recruitment and development strategies that support under-represented groups within their workforce can have real social impact, at the same time as securing committed and talented employees.