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The Local Authority – Managing diversity
The Challenge
The Authority serves a very diverse community
and was one of the first to recognise that to serve its community, it had
to value diversity within the workplace and in delivering services. After
a positive start, the Authority lost momentum as competing demands marginalised
the programme. As a result, diversity was never mainstreamed. The Authority
was galvanised into action with the publication of the Race Relations (Amendment)
Act 2000 and the need to produce a Race Equality Scheme.
The Solution
The project required a review of work that had been carried out to date
around diversity and inclusion, identification of the areas of good practice
and where the organisation could do better, and the provision of recommendations
for taking diversity forward. This involved:
- Convincing project leaders that their work should be widened whenever
possible to include not just race, but gender, disability, religion
and sexual orientation, thus pre-empting pipelined legislation
- Leading a series of workshops to train managers in the implications
of the Act and how to develop the Race Equality Scheme. This provided
managers with a toolkit to produce the Scheme, and enough of an understanding
of the issues to begin a debate with colleagues around diversity
- Developing a programme for communicating the issues to staff and
the wider community. The rationale was to open up debate about diversity
and what it meant for the Authority amongst staff and the community
and to gather feedback and views on the issue.
The project is on-going, but early results show that both the way the Authority
delivers its services and the culture of the organisation are being challenged
and changed in a way that is likely to lead to the Authority placing an
awareness of different needs of the community at the centre of everything
they do.
If you would like more information on how Perfect Circle
can help you develop a proactive stance on diversity, please contact us
on: 0117 915 4552, or click
here to email us now.
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