Almost four dozen Irish companies have publicly pledged to ensure greater diversity and inclusion in their workplaces.
The Elevate pledge was presented to companies by the non-profit group Business in the Community Ireland (BITCI). The goal of the pledge is to have companies commit to inclusivity measures such as disability confidence training and gender pay gap.
The pledge follows a report by BITCI and Deloitte called Diversity and Inclusion in Focus, which revealed some of the social inequalities that exist in Ireland today and look into the barriers to inclusion experienced by both employers and jobseekers.
The report found that compared to “the general population”, a person with a disability is four and half times more likely to be unemployed in Ireland, a black person is six times more likely to be unemployed, and members of the Traveller community are 13 times more likely.
During focus groups carried out for the report, some participants said they had been told by recruiters to change their names so they’d be hired by Irish employers.
Others said they were frustrated that their education and skills weren’t recognised or appreciated by Irish employers, leading them to work in lower paid jobs that didn’t coincide with their experience level, and that employers and recruiters didn’t have adequate knowledge of visa processes.
For companies taking part in Elevate, the pledge must be signed by their CEO. The pledge asks all signatories to evaluate and profile their current diversity levels and put measures for inclusion into effect.
Each company is required to provide diversity profile data on their own workforce, beginning with their senior management teams, and measure the effects of their actions to improve inclusion.
Some of the companies that have signed the pledge include Accenture, Aviva, BT, Cork Chamber, Deloitte, Eir, Fujitsu, Heineken, Irish Water, Janssen, Sky, SSE Ireland, and William Fry.
The CEOs that have already signed have committed to a number of actions including:
- mandatory ‘race awareness learning’ for all staff,
- achieving an equal gender balance in senior appointments by the end of 2021,
- reviewing job descriptions to eliminate unintended bias,
- carrying out a gender pay gap analysis, and
- partnering with a DEIS school to give transition-year students placement opportunities.
To monitor their progress, BITCI will publish reports annually. The first report to be published is planned for mid-2022.
“The global pandemic and movements such as #BlackLivesMatter have shone a spotlight on the major inequality in our society,” said BITCI CEO Tomás Sercovich.
“Companies have a fundamental role to play and know that they have to do more. We are at the foothills of realising truly inclusive workplaces, but the power of a collective response from BITCI members and learning from each other will lead to continuous improvement as we have seen previously with our low-carbon pledge,” Sercovich said.
