Excellence in Diversity Awards

Tag: EiDA Nominee

  • 2015 EiDA Nominee – Liverpool Mutual Homes

    Liverpool Mutual Homes manages 15,000 homes in the city and have 17,600 customers. Their exceptional equality, diversity and inclusion strategy “People Matter” showcases their commitment to continuous improvement and to providing excellent services that recognise people’s differences and embrace their various needs. LMH invest in learning, training and development to help staff achieve and excel, and have long term strategies in place to create a more diverse and inclusive workforce. Their equality and diversity staff group ‘Your Voice’ is representative of the whole organisation and has 15 members, 7 of which are ‘diversity champions’. These remarkable champions assist in embedding inclusion throughout the organisation by promoting their own relevant protected characteristic and promoting activities and events. LMH have a thorough equality and diversity training programme consisting of induction sessions, handbook training sessions, e-learning training, regular ‘Did You Know’ email communications and learning sessions.

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  • Damian Kitson

    Damian is Head of Record to Report at Asda, and is responsible for the recording of all financial accounting transactions across all cost areas within Asda and manages a 13 strong team of accountants. Beyond his core, role Damian seeks out opportunities to further develop an inclusive workplace. He is the chair of Asda’s Disability Network, where his current focus is to help remove the public stigma of mental health, and is an active member of the Gender Steering Group, personally challenging himself and others to be fair in creating opportunities for both men and women. In addition, Damian is a Home Office Colleague Voice representative and a Culture Catalyst for the business, using his widening networks to impact wider teams, radiating the inclusion agenda around the company. At work he is known for his inventive ways of inspiring teams and has deservedly been recognised as “Finance colleague of the year”. Damian optimises an ‘Employee of the Year’ and this is illustrated through a fantastic array of endorsements.

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  • 2015 EiDA Nominee – Ricky Somal

    In December 2014, Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust was cited in a national report by NHS Providers. This was in recognition of the Equality Standard toolkit designed by Ricky Somal, E&D Lead and a focused piece of work that has resulted in a 50% reduction in BME staff disciplinarians. Ricky has transformed the diversity and inclusion agenda at Southern Health with the design of an innovative 5-point E&D Integration Plan, and from March 2014 took lead of equality and diversity at Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust in conjunction to his current role. This programme of work and associated patient and workforce outcomes has been recognized through national awards. Ricky designed and delivered Equality and Diversity Training which was completed by over 4,000 staff in 12 months. ‘Diversity Moments’ is a brand new initiative designed by Ricky to improve workforce diversity and inclusion. Diversity Moments is a series of focused positive action projects and interactive web-based learning vignettes to improve understanding of inclusion.

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  • Cam Kinsella

    Diversity, equality & inclusion for Cam isn’t just her ‘job’, it’s her whole world. Removing inequalities is Cam’s greatest passion and this is evident through her extraordinary achievements over the past 8 years across the industry. Cam transformed Golden Gates Housing Trust from an organisation with no systems in place to promote, monitor or support equality, into a leader within the sector; becoming the first winner of the DNA award and the only organisation still to date to have received 10 distinctions. Amongst Cam’s many outstanding initiatives include setting up GGHT as a hate crime reporting centre which saw reporting rise from 1 per quarter to 15. Additionally, Cam was a key partner in the ‘Keep Warm Keep Well’ Campaign which targeted older customers with winter warm bags. Cam recently brought her exceptional initiatives to Merlin Housing, and has already created plans to drive the organisation to excellence. Cam’s incredible commitment is rapidly evolving housing organisations to become truly inclusive employers.

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  • 2015 EiDA Nominee – English Federation of Disability Sport

    The English Federation of Disability Sport exists to make active lives possible and ensure that millions of disabled people can lead active lifestyles. Dedicated to disabled people in sport and physical activity, EFDS supports a wide range of organisations to include disabled people more effectively. The national charity know through much of their research that many communications could be missing a large proportion of the population because they are not accessible or appealing enough to disabled people, so they work hard to support providers with more evidence, practical support and resources. In April 2014, EFDS produced a guide to inclusive communications. Written in partnership with Big Voice Communications, it supports providers to reach a wider audience. The excellent guide has proven to be extremely successful with over 1000 downloads to date and it was also chosen by Government to be a part of their National Accessible Britain Campaign, providing advice toolkits to organisations and individuals.

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  • 2015 EiDA Nominee – Greater Manchester Police

    Greater Manchester Police has shown outstanding contribution to harnessing diversity within their workforce, actively taking the lead to highlight the business case for inclusion within the police service. In recent years, Greater Manchester Police have taken robust measures to increase the diversity of their workforce, successfully doing so in the process. The force has resourced a new operation, ‘Operation Peel’ to increase the diversity of staff recruitment, and to tackle issues internally last year GMP established a Hate Incident Governance Group to have organisational oversight of all hate cases involving discrimination within their police force. Having such a group enables GMP to have an understanding of the volume of cases and the type of issues staff experience when concerned about fairness. GMP have seen astonishing results from initiatives that they have implemented in response to their employees needs and diversity related issues, and continue to make improvements across many areas internally and externally.

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  • 2015 EiDA Nominee – Victim Support

    Victim Support is the independent charity for victims and witnesses of crime in England and Wales. They were set up 40 years ago and have grown to become the oldest and largest victims’ organisation in the world, taking pride in being a diverse organisation enriched by the participation of all individuals and communities. Their services are free and available to everyone, whether or not the crime has been reported and regardless of when it happened. To achieve this, Victim Support ensure non-discriminatory practices are in effect in both employment and service delivery. Their policy is to ensure that no victim, witness, employee, volunteer, trustee, or job applicant receives less favourable treatment. Selection criteria and procedures are regularly reviewed to make sure that individuals are selected on the basis of their relevant merits and abilities. Victim Support’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee is dedicated to a programme of action to make this policy effective and bring it to the attention of all employees.

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  • 2015 EiDA Nominee – Housing Diversity Network

    Housing Diversity Network is a social enterprise and incredible diversity resource that supports organisations to improve how they address inequality, get the most from their staff and meet the needs of the communities they work with. HDN provides a wide range of exceptional services including training, consultancy, independent assessment, accreditation and guidance. There are two areas in particular that make them unique, distinctive and worthy of being featured in this shortlist. These are their Staff Mentoring programme and their network of regional Equality and Diversity Practitioner Groups. Their dynamic mentoring programme has directly benefitted an immeasurable amount of individuals and organisations. Their practitioner groups provide ongoing practical support to countless equality, diversity and inclusion staff. As a network HDN are a catalyst for sharing advice and expertise across the sector, and there is no doubt that their activity has a great impact on their clients and wider sector organisations.

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