How the BLM ‘Fed-Up-rising’ Can Spark A More Inclusive, Happier, Healthier Workplace

As businesses worldwide move for the first time to set out properly and publicly how they recruit, retain and professionally develop BAME staff, more employers than ever are considering their own business practices around diversity, inclusion and wellbeing. To those unfamiliar with the Black Lives Matter movement, which originated in 2013 following the acquittal of George Zimmerman for shooting Trayvon Martin, it can seem a tough and uncompromising movement demanding rights and levels of equality that many organisations haven’t considered or had the facilities to offer before. However, it need not: now is the time to embrace the movement and learn from it, bettering your company, and your workforce, in the process.

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Putting People at the Centre of the Recovery

This engaging, motivational and highly inspiring session was held by Sir Ian Cheshire, Chairman, Barclays, Natasha Adams, Peter Cheese and Valarie Todd at the CIPD Festival of Work. It is certainly one of the highlights of the Festival of Work.

The current circumstances have allowed us to really bring things into perspective, we’ve learnt a lot about collaboration, priorities and key focuses during this time. Flexible working and wellbeing are critical as this crisis has presented so many people with varying concerns which employers need to acknowledge and respond to. Some people may feel disconnected, others have embraced and welcomed the new normal, mental health and wellbeing was part of the HR agenda, however going forward it needs to remain a priority for employers.

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Employment trends for 2020

Every year we see different HR trends emerge as organisations switch their mindsets to “new year, new plan”. With this, HR are often at the heart of organisation strategies to implement these changes to help them achieve an enhanced company culture, improved their employee experience and of course achieve the much-desired sparkly employer brand.

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Working fathers need flexibility too! Encouraging gender equality in parenting

“Being a father means you have to think fast on your feet. You must be judicious, wise, brave, tender, and willing to put on a frilly hat and sit down to a pretend tea party.”

Matthew Buckley, Fatherhood: The Manliest Profession

The debate around parental leave is one that seems to be ongoing and in light of the latest British Social Attitudes survey, the results demonstrate that despite being in 2019, that there is still a strong view towards mothers taking the lead on parental leave.

Despite the shifting dynamics of UK households, a time where women have a focus upon their career and are quickly becoming the main source of income within thousands of households, it begs the question; what can we do to change the view on fathers taking time out to bring up their children equally with mothers?

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embRACE at CIPD ACE #cipdACE

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I was attempting to have a more creative title for this particular post, but last night at the embRACE event at The Midland Hotel Manchester was an event that spoke for itself.

One word to describe last nights event – pride. This meant so much to people in the room and you could truly feel it, everyone was truly proud of who they were and interested in how we could all do our bit to embrace inclusion.

embRACE is a group set up by the CIPD which is designed to create a safe space within the CIPD for those who wish to discuss racial diversity. This has always been a taboo subject that people don’t feel comfortable approaching and this event was designed to change attitudes towards this; why are we not discussing racial diversity more within our workspaces. A point I raised with a couple of the attendees was that employers often say “we are an equal opportunities employer” just to be clear, diversity and inclusion is not a tick box exercise to satisfy your equal opportunities policy,  the conversations just need to simply take place; it is about truly embracing diversity.

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