Inclusive Employers The benefits of taking our diversity and inclusion accreditation
Our diversity and inclusion accreditation, the Inclusive Employers Standard, is an evidence-based tool to measure, celebrate and set goals for your inclusion agenda. Lindsay Lerigo, Senior Programme Manager, Inclusive Employers Standard, explains how your inclusion agenda will benefit by taking part in the Inclusive Employers Standard.
The benefits of measuring your inclusion and diversity activity
The Inclusive Employers Standard (IES) measures your inclusion and diversity activity against the six pillars of inclusion. The benefits of measuring your I&D practices are outlined below:
Understand your organisational culture
Our diversty and inclusion accreditation uses evidence (supplied by participating organisations) to evaluate how organisations engage with their employees. This ensures that the feedback and results organisations get are a genuine measure of your work and truly understand the quality of the employee experience.
Understand your current position
In order to develop and improve organisations need to have a clear understanding of their current inclusion practices. Our diversity and inclusion accreditation evaluates the evidence provided by organisations in the submission process in order to give them a clear idea of how effective their inclusion work is.
Set goals and priorities for progress
The assessment, reporting and feedback process within our diversity and inclusion accreditation gives participating organisations comprehensive knowledge of what is working well and what can be improved. This allows organisations to identify ongoing goals and priorities for progressing.
Evidence for budgets and legal obligations
The IES encourages organisations to begin to measure the return on investment they gain from their inclusion work. This supports organisations to build the business case for inclusion and evidence its benefits.
Recognise and celebrate your inclusion achievements
Participating in our diversity and inclusion accreditation gives you the opportunity to celebrate achievements internally and externally. The benefits of this include:
Enhance your reputation as an Inclusive Employer
Organisations who take part in the IES will be awarded a Bronze, Silver or Gold accreditation or a Commendation.
Accredited organisations will receive logos to display on their website, social media and internally as well as a certificate.
This will give you a platform to clearly demonstrate to customers, clients and service users that you are an Inclusive Employer. Not only are you genuinely committed to inclusion but inclusion and diversity practices are embedded within the operations of you organisation.
Attract and retain a diverse workforce
The more diverse and inclusive your organisation is, the more likely you are to be able to attract and retain a diverse workforce, as inclusion and diversity are becoming increasingly important to job-seekers.
Evidence also highlights employees who are satisfied with their employers I&D strategy show higher levels of productivity and are more engaged.
Becoming accredited with our Inclusive Employers Standard will enable you to highlight your I&D credentials to attract talent.
Celebrate success internally!
Embedding inclusion and diversity requires organisation-wide commitment. Preparing the submission for the Inclusive Employers Standard also requires input from different colleagues and teams.
Success in our diversity and inclusion accreditation allows you to celebrate the hard work of everyone in your organisation and can galvanize support and focus for progress inclusion in the future!
What are the benefits of the IES over other diversity and inclusion accreditations?
As the IES Senior Programme Manager I may be biased (!) but these are the reasons our diversity and inclusion accreditation stands out:
- The IES is designed to bring meaningful and positive change to all participating organisations.
- When you participate in the IES you demonstrate real commitment to developing your workplace culture that is not tokenistic or tick-box in approach.
- The IES really focuses on you as an organisation and truly identifies how inclusive you are across all your inclusion activity. We celebrate where you are doing well and work with you on areas that need to be improved. It is about you as an organisation, not how you compare to others.
- The comprehensive feedback report and feedback meeting that participating organisations have allows us to really drill down on the areas of focus that were identified during the accreditation process. Participants often report that this is the most beneficial part of the process as they receive expert, action-focused advice.
How accredited organisations benefit from the IES
The quotes below highlight how three different organisations found the process of taking part in our diversity and inclusion accreditation and the benefits for them:
House of Lords, Gold accreditation
“The process was really straightforward and easy to complete, and it was really useful to hear the feedback provided by the Inclusive Employers team – their insight helped us to understand which areas we could improve on and where we excelled. It was also very timely and meant that the feedback could be incorporated into our 2019-21 strategy.”
Warwickshire County Council, Bronze accreditation
“The Inclusive Employer’s assessment report has provided us with additional leverage internally. Our feedback meeting was really useful in terms of being able to acquire resources and knowledge of practices within other organisations to support us in achieving our inclusion goals.”
Telefonica, Bronze Accreditation
“The Inclusive Employers Standard helps to structure a focused and honest approach to ensuring that we get it right. It helps to keep you ‘honest’ and provide a clear pathway to changing your culture from within.”
In September 2021, Teach First were accredited Gold in our diversity and inclusion accreditation. You can learn more about their achievement here:
And if you want to find out even more reasons to register your interest for our inclusion and diversity accreditation you will find them here:
Participate in the Inclusive Employers Standard!
Now you know all the benefits of participating in our diversity and inclusion accreditation you can find out more about the process, timelines and register your interest for the Inclusive Employers Standard.
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