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Equality and Diversity

August 28th, 2012

The week that was…

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Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Equality and Diversity

August 28th, 2012

The week that was…

0 comments

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Welcome back after the bank holiday weekend. Here are the equality and diversity highlights from last week – can coming out at work have a positive impact on your career development, what will be the impact of downsizing the EHRC, what are the experiences of BME gay people in accessing public services and why do companies still get it wrong when it comes to diversity in recruitment.

The founder of the LGB network at the French bank Societe Generale talks about how coming out at work has benefitted his career. Vincent Francois says he was worried that coming out at work would compromise his career development. But encouragement and support from his executive coach led him to open up to his colleagues. He feels being himself has had a positive impact on his performance and therefore, his career development.

Following announcement of the reorganisation and downsizing of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, concerns are being raised about tackling inequality and discrimination in Britain. Lester Holloway, a Lib Dems councillor, writing for the Guardian, argues that the proposed downsizing of the EHRC will “turn the commission into little more than a glorified equalities thinktank”. He also notes that a vast majority of EHRC staff facing redundancy are from BME background and that on Trevor Philips’ retirement as chair next month, the EHRC management will be all white.

Stonewall and Runneymede Trust have jointly published a report, ‘One minority at a time’, examining experiences of BME gay people accessing public services. Participants explained how widespread assumptions that black and minority ethnic people are always heterosexual and a lack of understanding and training around ethnicity and sexual orientation result in public services offering inappropriate and poor-quality service responses.

Charles Hipps, CEO of e-recruitment specialist WCN, discusses why companies still get it wrong when it comes to diversity in recruitment. He identifies a number of factors, including  failing to monitor which publications, events or social media channels deliver the greatest mix of applicants, interviewing in a manner that may alienate certain sections of the community, psychometric tests that may ‘turn-off’ some people, interviewer bias and lack of accessibility in e-recruitment websites/systems.

Have anything to add? Write to Equality.and.Diversity@lse.ac.uk.

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Equality and Diversity

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