IP Inclusive: How inclusive are you?

11th Feb 2021

There’s an easy to way to learn where your organisation stands on diversity, explains Andrea Brewster.

We all want to do our best for diversity and inclusion (D&I), but we may not always know exactly what more we – our organisation or our department – can do. That’s why IP Inclusive has put together an easy online quiz that can help you identify your strengths and weaknesses when it comes to embedding D&I.

The first crucial question is whether your organisation has signed up to the IP Inclusive EDI Charter. This signals a public endorsement of the principles of equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI). Signing up to the Charter involves making six commitments, which are designed to be achievable by individuals and organisations working in or with IP – whatever their size and structure, wherever they are based and whatever the nature of their involvement with IP.

If your organisation has already taken that step, it’s certainly on the right track, but what’s just as important is making sure that employees know that it has done so. The next nine questions in our questionnaire are designed to bring that to light. For example, they ask:

Whether your organisation has a D&I committee or another similar structure to champion this issue;
Whether it offers unconscious bias training;
Whether your firm collects D&I data; and
Whether your organisation has a mental health policy.

If your answers to these questions are mostly “yes”, that means your firm has put EDI values into practice and you are aware of it. But there may be more you can do, for instance by getting involved with one of our five support communities. See IP Inclusive’s website for details.

If your answers are mostly “no”, that means there may be room for improvement. But if you have been compelled to take the test, you are likely to be someone who would like their firm to do better. If so, perhaps you could suggest your organisation goes further with a Steps to Inclusion review, a tool offered by IP Inclusive partners Focal Point Training to help Charter signatories benchmark their D&I credentials, identify ways to improve and prioritise future actions.

If your answers are mostly “don’t know”, it could be that responsibility for inclusion doesn’t fall under your job description, so you haven’t focused on it. However, equality, diversity and inclusion are not issues that are owned by any one person. They are everybody’s responsibility – and the duty of the organisations we work for, our clients and society as a whole.

Alternatively, a lot of “don’t knows” might suggest that D&I isn’t taken seriously enough in your organisation and an inclusive approach isn’t yet seeping through into the corporate culture. If that’s the case, the next step is simple: just go to the IP Inclusive website to jump-start your organisation’s more inclusive future.

Access the quiz here

Andrea Brewster OBE is Lead Executive Officer at IP Inclusive

Find out more at ipinclusive.org.uk