EXCLUSIVE: Adam Gibson (pictured), strategic workforce planning leader at the Metropolitan Police, will discuss how diversity and inclusion strategies can be used to improve an organisation’s bottom line and address gaps in the workforce at Employee Benefits Live 2017.
The session, titled ‘Championing a diverse and inclusive culture in benefits strategy’, will form part of the diversity and inclusion conference stream on Wednesday 11 October.
During the session, Gibson will discuss how a diversity and inclusion strategy can have visible impacts on an organisation’s bottom line and economic success by tackling potential gaps in its workforce. He will highlight how longer recruitment processes linked to the UK’s current skills gap could be a drain on an employer’s financial resources, however, training up diverse employees who have job role potential could stem the skills gaps in businesses.
Gibson will also link this approach to the working age gap, which he predicts will be 1% by 2030 when the UK’s highest population group will start retiring from the workplace.
In addition, he will explore why previous messaging around creating a diverse and inclusive workforce has not proved successful with UK businesses, explaining that taking an economic stance to diversity will help business leaders better absorb and take in how this type of strategy can have a positive impact for an organisation.
He said: “The case for diversity is that if all of this hinges on the current levels of economic participation, then those groups who are under-represented in terms of employment are the areas that if [employers] tap into it, [they] can bridge the gap. [They] can bridge the gap in terms of the conceptual working age, but also if [they are] prepared to build capabilities, as in go out there, recruit someone based on potential and then train the skills in to them, then that’s [the] easy way to bridge the skills gap.
“Both of the problems, the current problem of skills and the problem of sufficient people of working age, can be overcome easily by doing something different in terms of diversity and inclusion. It really is that simple. […] The narrative hasn’t worked and we need to try something different.”
Employee Benefits Live 2017 will take place on Tuesday 10 and Wednesday 11 October at Olympia National, London.