Empowering our employee networks and celebrating National Inclusion Week

Our people 2019

To enable our employee networks to grow and have a confident voice to talk externally, we have created a single online environment, the Inclusion Hub, where each network can be their own unique community but also come together to benefit from collective coordination and collaboration.

Launched during UK National Inclusion Week 2019, the Inclusion Hub supports all employee networks by enabling improved objective setting and progress tracking, better organisation of engagement activities and providing a central repository for knowledge and resources.

The Inclusion Hub helps each network to identify four priorities every year:

• Accelerate: action that supports our business, such as reviewing our recruitment processes, testing our policies or helping to improve rates of disclosure.
• Educate: action that builds awareness, improve perceptions and removes barriers and bias.
• Cultivate: action that forges strong partnerships with external bodies, local communities and government boards.
• Celebrate: action that raises the profile and recognition of all networks both internally and externally, as well as recognising the achievements of individual network members.

The Inclusion Hub also provides a platform for coordinating and supporting external outputs collaboratively, efficiently and with maximum impact.

Kevin Craven, Chief Executive for Serco UK & Europe, said: “The Inclusion Hub is the latest tool in our journey towards a much more inclusive and diverse workplace. It allows each of our networks to leverage the greater network – all of them put together. That collective power is really helpful in building density and momentum. It also provides a greater level of resource and support for individuals within those networks.”

Through the Inclusion Hub and during National Inclusion Week, we introduced a new engagement event, called ‘fireside sessions’. Each is an intimate podcast-style discussion, hosted by one of our networks. During National Inclusion Week, our network for LGBT+ colleagues and their allies, [email protected], hosted a fireside session with Angus Cockburn, our Chief Financial Officer, and Penni Gillen, Executive Assistant and mother to a transgender child. Colleagues were invited to listen live and ask questions. The first fireside session was so popular that three more have been held since, including:

• a discussion about disability in the workplace between Rupert Soames, Serco Group CEO, and Kate Nash, CEO of Purple Space;
• a discussion about menopause between Julia Rogers, Chief Operating Officer for Serco UK & Europe and David Eveleigh, Serco Group General Counsel & Company Secretary.