"Take Action, Make Impact" during this National Inclusion Week

National Inclusion Week(NIW) starts today and is a time to celebrate the progress we have made in improving diversity and inclusion throughout our organisation. It is an opportunity to reflect on what more we can do to create a welcoming and inclusive environment where everyone can thrive.

The theme this year is 'Take Action, Make Impact'. It is key that we all think about the meaningful ways in which we can improve inclusion in our teams and allow all our colleagues to be their true selves at work. We caught up with Mel Aston, Diversity and Inclusion Manager at Compass Group UK & Ireland about plans for the week ahead.

What is NIW?

National Inclusion Week is a chance to celebrate diversity and connect and engage with our colleagues about inclusion.

The theme this year is ‘Take Action - Make Impact’, so building on the momentum from previous years, it’s an opportunity for us to re-evaluate what we’ve done, consider the impact these actions have had and ensure we are making positive and lasting progression.

What are we doing at Compass for NIW?

We have a great week planned which is predominantly being led by our employee networks - Within; Pride in Food; YouMatter, Ability and Women in Food, through a mixture of listening and sharing activities, we are promoting ways that teams can get involved in all things inclusion. We are very excited to also be bringing together our network leads at a face to face informative and collaborative event and more importantly to celebrate the successes, share ideas and plan for the future.

What are the next steps to drive forward inclusion at Compass?

Last year we launched Our Social Promise, which includes a commitment to positively impact 1 million lives by 2030. This has set out our targets and we have a clear roadmap outlining what we need to do to achieve our goals. It’s really heartening to see the publication of our first ethnicity pay gap report; we also rolled out a socio-economic survey among our unit manager and above and we recently launched our Careers Hub, which involves partnerships to help those from disadvantaged or hard to reach groups into employment. We have also seen some great work from our colleague networks, raising awareness and celebrating our D&I work to drive forward the agenda.

These are a few examples of how we are continuing to make Compass an inclusive workplace and create a culture where everyone’s individuality and differences are celebrated and welcomed. We want to create a culture where we respect and embrace everyone’s talents, beliefs, backgrounds and abilities, so that are our colleagues feel valued, can reach their full potential and thrive. Diversity is our strength!

Give us a brief explanation of the networks and how it feeds in to NIW

Our networks are run by our colleagues, for colleagues, creating a welcoming and inclusive environment for all. They play an important part in Compass’ inclusion journey and events like NIW are a great way for us to highlight this agenda. The networks are led by people from all kinds of jobs, from all parts of the business and from different backgrounds, some from the communities they represent, some allies. All groups are safe spaces focused on making a difference – and they really do!

I’d like to say thank you to all our fantastic people, as we look forward to a great week celebrating them and making plans for the future.