National Inclusion Week 2022

National Inclusion Week 2022

26 September 2022

At Enable Infrastructure (formerly known as BCM Construction) & Enable Investment Holdings, Inclusion isn’t something we celebrate one week of the year as a performative task. Inclusion is at the centre of our core values, and we pride ourselves on building a workforce that demands equality, enabling a safe and inclusive working environment for all.

However, we also observe that there are always improvements that can be made to promote and action positive change when it comes to embedding inclusion and diversity into our workforce.

Looking to the National Inclusion Week 2022 theme of ‘Time to Act, The Power of Now’ we highlight some of our best practises and reflect on what we can introduce to continue to develop our ambitions for inclusion.

Prioritise Inclusion –

Our first step to creating a truly inclusive workplace was recognising it as a priority. For many businesses, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) comes as a secondary to how a company may function. It is often referenced as being a ‘buzzword’ and a performative act that many do as a PR exercise. At BCM, we have a dedicated Social Value Manager, driving forward inclusion and instilling it in all aspects of the company.

Clear Company Values –

We set out clear company values which must be embraced and practised by all members of our team. We have procedures in place that outline a zero-tolerance approach to any kind of discrimination and work closely with our supply chain to ensure our values are embedded throughout every element of our business.

Empowering our workforce –

In order to create an inclusive working environment for all, we empower our workforce to take action and learn about the importance of inclusion. Not only do we provide extensive training both in the induction process and throughout the continued employment of our workforce, we also encourage social working groups, ‘lunch n learns’ and spotlight days. By empowering our workforce, we create an environment where people feel like they can speak up and be heard.

Addressing our unconscious bias –

Everyone has an unconscious bias and recognising this is an important step to addressing the negative biases you may have adopted throughout your life. There are many ways in which we can eradicate the possibility of our unconscious bias getting in the way of our recruitment processes and workplace culture. A few of many examples are, anonymising candidate information, diverse panel interviews and skills assessments.

Community engagement –

We are committed to investing in and developing the communities in which we work. We are actively engaging with local charities, organisations and community spaces to allow local people to feel included in the projects we are working on and gain access to our employment opportunities.

Measurable outcomes –

All of this hard work would mean nothing if we didn’t have the data to support it. Data collection allows us to identify where we are as a business and how we can improve. For example, we can accurately measure if we are reaching enough under-represented groups or if we achieving gender equality targets.

When looking to the future we want to further amplify the voices of our people and encourage their opinions and perspective on a more widespread level. We also plan to promote more companywide events that embrace and celebrate the many cultures that make up our workforce.

We will continue to look at the evolving changes in society and the communities in which we work to develop innovative approaches to inclusion and maintain ambitious targets surrounding EDI.

We know when it comes to inclusion, you can never stop learning so remaining open and honest to challenging conversation is essential, and by taking inspiration from the National Inclusion Week theme, actioning what we have learnt.