How to celebrate National Inclusion Week as a global employer

Inclusion and diversity are topics that impact organisations the world over, and 2022’s #ThePowerOfNow theme is as important to global employers as it is to those in the UK. We’re often asked how global organisations celebrate National Inclusion Week (NIW) and how they get colleagues outside of the UK involved. So we decided to ask them ourselves.

Celebrating National Inclusion Week globally

We surveyed some of our global Inclusive Employers members and asked them how they celebrate NIW with colleagues outside of the UK. Here’s what they told us.

“All our NIW efforts are driven by our inclusion lead in the UK. In 2021, we ran 5 live inclusion sessions as a collaboration between our UK and US businesses. This year we’re planning something similar plus more global comms and stories to bring everything to life”.

“We hold our events virtually so that they are accessible in either country. Any live events are broadcast over Teams. Last year everything was virtual due to Covid measures. This year we will have members of our DEI team in different office & site locations across the UK & US bases to engage employees further.”

“For 2022 we are using the opportunity of NIW to officially launch our revised EMEA DE&I Vision & Strategy.  We are using two of the daily tasks and encouraging all employees across EMEA to do these. Some countries are arranging other local activities such as producing videos of leaders talking about what Inclusion means to them.  We have also adopted the theme for our EMEA HR Conference in September as we have chosen the topic of DE&I for the conference and again will be encouraging our HR colleagues to follow the daily actions.”

Benefits of celebrating National Inclusion Week as a global organisation

A number of members found that by expanding National Inclusion Week to a global audience, they gained a huge number of benefits for their I&D activities, including access to more diverse voices, higher engagement across the organisation, greater senior buy-in and greater support from internal communications teams.

“Colleagues found it fascinating learning about different cultures and experiences globally. It broadened our perspectives on how big our business actually is and how many different people we have working in it. Some new global connections were made, which continued beyond NIW.”