Project
ESF Project
Engaging Diversity is an ‘Equal’ programme project, which is an initiative funded through the European Social Fund. The Equal programme tests and promotes new means of combating all forms of discrimination and inequalities in the labour market, both for those in work and for those seeking work.
Equal operates across 9 main themes that embrace the four pillars of the European Employment Strategy (employability, entrepreneurship, adaptability and equal opportunities). The themes cover issues such as supporting potential for ethnic minorities at work and promoting lifelong learning and inclusive work practices. Equal funds activities that are carried out by strategic partnerships called Development Partnerships (DPs) with each DP addressing one thematic field. The theme for the Engaging Diversity Development Partnership is:-
Theme F: Supporting adaptability of firms and employees to structural economic change and the use of information technology and other new technologies.
The Equal programme also encourages participation and transnational co-operation through partnership building across five priority areas which are closely focused on key issues of concern in Britain. The programme helps to develop good practice that can enhance the delivery of mainstream UK and Structural Fund activity.
For more information please visit the Equal programme website.
Rationale
The Machpherson Report, first published in February 1999, dramatically altered the way we view and understand equal opportunities in the workplace. The report gave us the term ‘institutional racism’ and helped us to understand the effect that organisations can have on disadvantaged groups both within their workforce and in the wider community at large.
Since the report the concept of equal opportunity has evolved from being a policy into a set of practical activities and measures that large scale organisations can put in place to combat institutional discrimination.
The report showed that much discriminatory action or behaviour within an organisation can be unknowing or unwitting and highlighted the importance of training to build understanding of racism awareness (see recommendation 54, MacPherson Report).
The Engaging Diversity Development Partnership (Engaging Diversity DP) aimed to create an approach to learning that would engage high volumes of people at work and be easy to deploy and manage within large scale organisations.
In order to inspire real motivation to change behaviour the learning needed to operate in the affective (emotional) domain of individuals. The Engaging Diversity DP also wanted to use an imaginative approach to building awareness of diversity to help combat the inertia of many organisational cultures.
A 2004 CIPD report called Driving Diversity Progress suggests that changing attitudes among any workforce is possible. The emphasis of the Engaging Diversity learning programme would be on engaging, empowering and energising people through consistent messages delivered over time.
