This week I had the pleasure of judging the Employee Benefits Awards 2024. This is something I always love to do as I find the insight it gives into employers’ strategies and their reward offerings to be absolutely fascinating. I always find that I learn something new and come across schemes that I have not encountered before.
Speaking to our highly experienced panel of judges throughout the day, one thing that stood out across the board this year was the focus on inclusivity that came through. This now seems to be firmly on employers’ agendas, informing many of their reward and benefits activities. While diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives are certainly not new, employers’ focus on inclusivity now seems to have much greater reach. Family-friendly benefits and work-life balance policies, in particular, now seem to be much more informed by employers’ desire for greater inclusivity.
It was interesting to have such conversations in a week when I also accompanied my daughter’s school on a trip to a local Hare Krishna temple. It was fascinating to witness how excited the children were to learn about the religion and all it encompasses.
Their attitude and openness to experiencing a different religion and set of beliefs to their own was in contrast to my own experiences at a similar age, when some parents of children at my primary school chose not to attend an assembly on the basis an external speaker from a different religion to their own had been invited to speak. Given that I grew up in a relatively multi-cultural area, I found this truly shocking. (NB: To clarify, my parents were not among those who were opposed to the event).
Obviously, religion and ethnicity are just two elements of inclusivity, and, as I discussed in my blog How can we inspire inclusion on International Women’s Day?, there is still a long way to go before we reach true equality and full inclusion. The progress that has been made in the last 30-plus years shows how attitudes have changed. We now need to build on this further.
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Debbie Lovewell-Tuck
Editor
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