How our organisation supports yours to become inclusive
Spotlight Inclusion organisation exists to support your organisation.
We can often feel that our organisations are all about our outcomes. Our outcomes might be student exam or assessment results, the number of items we make, the profit we make, the creative output we put on our stages. But really, your organisation is about people.
Your organisation relies on people. People who might work for you. People who might work with you. People who benefit from your work. People you want to reach. And people are complex. People are human beings who are wonderful, complex, creative, vulnerable, perfect and flawed.
Debbie Prentice suggests that beliefs are like possessions. Beliefs are based on experiences and are very hard to change. Similarly, beliefs are more and more becoming part of a person’s identity. Who we are. So, in any organisation, we have many people coming together (whether as colleagues or the people we are trying to engage with) with their own beliefs and sense of identity. Some identities experience discrimination, and we know this to be fact. Some people are not able to thrive and progress because of how their identity is perceived and negatively interpreted by others who often have majority or dominant identities. Therefore, there are very specific challenges around our own identities, our positionality, our intersection with leadership responsibilities and the intersection with the wider world. All of this comes together in one place and this can be challenging, and is becoming more so.
This is often where organisations need our support. You might be thinking how do we address unwanted behaviours? How do we work collaboratively and positively in spaces where there may be beliefs that people hold, which can be in contrast with the dominant identities? How do we shift towards new ways of working which are becoming essential for younger people but which challenge traditional norms? How do we create candid and psychologically safer environments for people to be able to contribute from all corners of their experience, skills, talents and identity to what we do? How do we retain staff?
Our organisation is about people.
Supporting leaders to not only recognise their positionality but to embrace their identities as a potential strength in their leadership
Providing strategies which support organisations to create psychologically safer spaces
Providing strategies which people are able to contribute positively to your organisation
Addressing the gaps in our perceptions and understanding of different identities which can look like specific input on topics such as Disability aware or antiracism for example
Working with you to enhance your recruitment, onboarding and retention strategies
Working with you to create an environment which is ready for diversity in its demographic make up so that people with identities which experience discrimination are much less likely to do so in your organisation than in others
Creating systems which ensure that opportunities are offered to everyone and places where bias can thrive are reduced and removed
Helping you to ensure people are the best version of themselves.
Looking forward so we can anticipate organisational, local, national and global challenges and consider how these are likely to impact our people and the people we want to engage with
Working with your Board so they are part of your journey and indeed, that the Board operates in an inclusive manner.
Every aspect of this, is about people. Without people, your organisation cannot possibly meet its full potential. Investing in the environment your people are working in and ensuring they are able to be at their best, makes sense.
If you would like to find out about how we support organisations you can:
Book a discovery call
Read more on our website
Download our Partnerships Package
Purchase an Inclusion Toolkit to begin your journey
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