Managing change at Swinton Insurance
As part of Working Transitions regular ‘5 minutes with…’ series, Zoe Bull, Head of Marketing, talks to Hilary Burns, People Director at Swinton, about a recent change programme at Swinton. Zoe Bull, Head of Marketing, Working Transitions: Hi Hilary! Can you talk us through the change programme that you have been involved in recently? Hilary […]
Why diversity initiatives fail
Many laudable attempts to make our workplaces more inclusive end up having the opposite effect – and it’s worth understanding why and how they fail. Diversity is a reality; it’s not just groups of people as the census might have us believe. It’s also infinite; no two people are the same. But inclusion is a […]
Is there a ‘Harvey’ in your company? What are you going to do about it?
We have all, I’m sure, been shocked by the headlines and the details around the sexual harassment allegations made about Harvey Weinstein. Whilst I knew this kind of behaviour was not entirely a thing of the past it’s still hard to believe that so many people knew and said nothing or at least nothing effective. […]
OCD Awareness week: challenging the stigma at work
Let’s celebrate OCD Awareness Week as OCD is such a brilliant disorder to have. It means you’re neat, clean and organised. Polish your desks, check your work for typos and stand in order of who loves the disorder the most to show we’re all “a little bit OCD”. It will be the quiet ones at […]
Damned if they don’t value diversity – damned if they do
There’s so much rich insight coming out of the academic sector that HR professionals need to know. At Academics’ Corner we feature the best HR researchers that tell you what they’ve found and what you need to do differently on the back of the research. Get connected to the academic sector through Academics’ Corner and […]
“One of the biggest challenges to achieving workplace inclusion is a lack of senior level buy-in.”
Janice Henson has recently joined Equal Approach as Director of Embedding Inclusion. With a wealth of experience in and great passion for advancing workplace diversity and inclusion, she will be building on the company’s already successful global inclusion programmes. Here she discusses her plan of action for the coming year… Becky Norman, Deputy Editor, HRZone: […]
Promoting a thinking environment creates inclusion
There are a whole lot of new words being created to explain the impact of bias and sexism which comes with it. Words like: Manterrupting: Unnecessary interruption of a woman by a man. Mansplaining: Explaining without regard to the fact that another person in the group knows more than the explainer, often done by a […]
Even feminists show bias against female leaders
Consider this and notice the images in your mind’s eye. The visit to my doctor from earlier that morning was still on my mind when I found myself slamming the brakes of my car to avoid a collision. A driver was pulling out onto the roundabout just in front of me. Still shaking I carried […]
Menopause is not a women’s issue, at work or anywhere else
There’s so much rich insight coming out of the academic sector that HR professionals need to know. At Academics’ Corner we feature the best HR researchers that tell you what they’ve found and what you need to do differently on the back of the research. Get connected to the academic sector through Academics’ Corner and […]
Are you ready for an Alpha workforce?
Digital media isn’t only a tool made by people; it’s also making people and how they see and treat each other. So that’s changing how we work, but also the rules of workplace life. Little worlds based on long-established traditions of behaviour, subtle codes of manners and deference, of implicit trust and nuanced conversations, are […]
Internalised sexism: an unconscious bias that is kept out of the spotlight
There’s been much discussion of late about the ways in which women have been insulted or marginalised by their male counterparts in the working world due to biases around gender. The most recent example hitting the headlines is over the now infamous Google memo, in which a senior employee at the company claimed that women […]
Working twice as hard to get half as far: the truth behind differential payoffs and penalties
There’s so much rich insight coming out of the academic sector that HR professionals need to know. At Academics’ Corner we feature the best HR researchers that tell you what they’ve found and what you need to do differently on the back of the research. Get connected to the academic sector through Academics’ Corner and […]
Reality v aspiration: women in senior roles
The poet W.H. Auden once wrote that civilizations should be reassured by “the degree of diversity attained and the degree of unity retained.” The same could be said of boardrooms and executive leadership teams. Today, the importance of boardroom and top tier executive diversity is universally acknowledged. However, there remains a gap between aspiration and […]
Unconscious bias in action: four of the most common bias-related issues in people decisions
A while ago, I spoke to an investment banker who believed that he was far too clever to have unconscious biases. His argument was that he was so intelligent, everything passed through his conscious mind in order to get into his unconscious mind. He therefore believed it was impossible for him to have any unconscious […]
Three fascinating studies on diversity you won’t have heard of
We’re writing loads of content on diversity in order to help organisations turn the dial, all collated in our diversity content hub. In this piece, we look at three interesting studies on diversity and the conclusions that were drawn. Study #1: Non-white or female bosses who push diversity are judged negatively by their peers and […]
We need to talk about race: why are we making so little progress on ethnic diversity?
We’re making significant progress with gender diversity in the workplace. Yet when it comes to race and ethnicity, advancements have been harder to see. Only 6% of top management jobs are held by black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) leaders. That is simply not good enough when you consider BAME groups make up 12% of […]
Inclusion is the glue: 5 ways to create a holistic diverse and inclusive company
Corporate recruiters and headhunters spend an exorbitant amount of time and effort to recruit diverse talent. Even when organisations are serious about diversity– as with an ever growing number of companies – it is not enough to merely push for more diversity. By merely creating diverse teams without appropriate organisational and managerial interventions, companies run […]
Be yourself! Individualism in the workplace
The Plainspeak Analyst is Katherine Jones, Partner and Director of Talent Research at Mercer, the world’s largest human resources consulting firm. Her job is to design and deliver insight research and services to Mercer’s global clients. She was previously VP, Human Capital Management Technology Research at Bersin by Deloitte. She has a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction from Cornell University. […]
“Make diversity and inclusion a business topic, not just an HR topic.”
Melisa Waters is Group Head of Engagement, Culture, Diversity and Inclusion at AXA. Advancing gender parity at the senior level is a key priority for this global insurance company. Launched in 2014, its Sponsorship Tandem programme has been successful in helping talented women develop their skills to become the next generation of leaders. Melisa has […]
Employ disabled people: it makes sound business sense
Considering there are over 13 million disabled people and people with long-term health conditions in the UK, it makes good business sense for small and medium-sized businesses to not only tap into this consumer market – which has a spending power of over £80 billion – but also to recruit from this group, as the […]
