The Equalities, Diversity and Inclusion professionals from Bath and North East Somerset Council, Royal United Hospitals Bath, Bath Spa University and the University of Bath have joined forces to create a community of practice through which they share learning and best practice, and can work collaboratively to benefit the local community.
Each team on its own is small, but by working together the ED&I professionals have found that they can overcome shared challenges and pool their resources to run bigger events, or to coordinate activities that all of their staff can benefit from.
They can also start to scrutinise how their organisations, four of the biggest employers in the city, respond to changing ED&I requirements and can hold each other accountable to best practice. This might be sharing recruitment approaches that give greater equality of opportunity to all candidates, or scrutinising the impact of academic research on over-studied communities in the local area.
The new ED&I community of practice is the first of a number of professionalisms which are being explored for collaboration between the Civic Agreement partner organisations – others include procurement, climate action, and communications, and will contribute to the betterment of all four organisations and the ways in which they interact with the local community.