OBI Property and Enterprise City push diversity agenda forward

Photo: OBI Property and Enterprise City push diversity agenda forward

OBI Property teamed up with Allied London, developer of Enterprise City (ECUK) to host a frank discussion on diversity in the workplace and its effect on business growth.  Over 100 people joined in the debate which led to a number of positive action points which everyone agreed to take on board.

Chaired by Kirsty Styles, talent and skills lead for Tech North, the panel comprised: Naomi Timperley, director and co-founder, Tech North Advocates; Kirsty Devlin, business development manager, Webantic; Vimla Appadoo, service designer, Department for Work and Pensions and Mylo Kaye, chief executive, Dreamr

The consensus among the panel and audience was while inequality in gender, race, age and class remain a huge area for everyone to tackle, there’s simple steps any business or individual can take to move diversity in the work place forward:

  • Encourage work place/lunch time discussions about diversity, gender and race – encourage your team to exchange their personal experiences and talk about how it relates to the work place. Ask your team what diversity means to them.
  • Make sure the language of job descriptions are reviewed properly – overly masculine words can put off half your applicants off. There is software readily available to do this.
  • Use social media to share positive examples and articles of people and businesses doing amazing things to promote diversity.
  • Involve yourselves with mentoring programmes for young people, the panel all agreed a major key anyone getting into work is confidence and self-belief.

Joe Averill, OBI Property said: “Diversity is a key issue facing Manchester businesses, particularly those experiencing fast growth.  The panelists and audience at our event were already clearly engaged in providing encouraging and positive working environments and it is great to be able to share that with a wider audience.

Daisy Barnes, Allied London which is delivering Enterprise City, said:  “ECUK will continue support diversity in Manchester over the coming 12 months. Diversity is something everyone needs to be positively supporting, not just because without it the city is missing out on major talent, but because it makes business sense too.

This news was published by Business Cloud.