Ibec Diversity Hub launched

The conversation around diversity and inclusion has made significant strides in recent years. It has moved past the focus on the business case for D&I, into meaningful conversations about how best diversity can be achieved. The benefits to businesses and individuals are now undeniable with organisations actively seeking people from different backgrounds and cultures. We have seen an intensification of this space, as businesses want equitable workplaces with a true sense of belonging, employees expect diversity and consumers prefer businesses to reflect their social values.

Ibec have always supported the Irish business community on this agenda, through our social policy team and the Ibec diversity forum. Our service offerings showcase best practices, provide tools on key issues, highlight new initiatives, shape policy, keep employers updated on new regulations and facilitate knowledge sharing among Ibec members.

To add to the services already in place, we have created a one-stop shop for diversity and inclusion information for business called the “Ibec Diversity Hub”. Looking at the needs of our membership, we saw the value in ensuring the wealth of knowledge within Ibec, our stakeholders and members was captured and curated to support those who are passionate about creating change. This resource currently does not exist elsewhere and is unique in what it offers. Its value is also heightened by our connection across a breadth of business sectors, government departments and strategies, and stakeholders at both national and European level.

Ibec Diversity Hub

The Ibec diversity hub is hosted on the Ibec website and can be accessed with your member details. It offers members access to thought leadership, sample documents, toolkits, guidance documents, best practice case studies and insight on different areas of diversity.

We worked with Government, representative groups, NGO’s, people with lived experience and a variety of businesses in different industries and regions while developing the hub. Given the nature of diversity, we had to consider the needs of a vast variety of groups and minorities, it therefore was important to include a multitude of sources. There are many representative groups, with superb resources for businesses, however, often this content is fragmented, making access to this important and helpful information sometimes difficult to find. To overcome this, we have signposted to content with clear summaries of each resource ensuring a wealth of relevant, applicable content is easily accessible.

We were eager to ensure that this hub would bring value to businesses at all stages of their diversity journey, help organisations fill knowledge gaps, support conversations and celebrations around diversity, and offer tangible guidance that business can easily implement. While this hub is the first of its kind, our long-standing work with our members, stakeholders and government helped us to shape a hub that targets the needs of Irish business.

Overall, the diversity hub simply makes accessing diversity and inclusion content simpler. This engaging, user-friendly hub recognises that people consume information differently. Often our preferred communication methods are different. Therefore, many of our pages include a range of multimedia formats. Where relevant and available our hub contains, text, video, podcasts and downloadable resources.

Areas covered

It is easy to treat diversity as just one vast topic. However, within that overall heading can be a wide variety of distinct areas with particular challenges and unique characteristics that need to be considered both independently and collectively. There can also be an intersectionality in the challenges or solutions to challenges faced by different cohorts but to serve groups effectively and acknowledge that employers approach diversity and inclusion in different ways we have separated out distinct areas. While it is not exhaustive the areas currently covered on the Diversity Hub include:

• The business case for D&I
• D&I strategy
• Monitoring, measuring and benchmarking
• Recruitment and hiring
• Employee resource groups
• Inclusion initiatives
• Supply chains
• Gender pay gap reporting
• Public sector duty

A range of D&I topics get a deeper review including:

• Gender equality
• LGBTI+
• Disability
• Race equality
• Age
• Family
• Carers
• Fertility
• Bereavement
• People with criminal convictions
• Human Rights

We also host a diversity blog; this will be a constantly growing pool of information on diversity and inclusion topics which you are welcome to share within your own organisations.

You can access our Diversity hub here*: https://www.ibec.ie/influencing-for-business/diversity-and-inclusion

The hub is a live resource which will continue to be developed and updated where necessary. This hub was created to support your diversity and inclusion needs. To ensure we are meeting those needs, we would appreciate your feedback and suggestions. This will allow us to grow our content and improve our service while ensuring our efforts are focused on the priorities of our members.

*If you have any difficulty activating your web access or this is your first time to do so – please visit www.ibec.ie/login and then click ‘request access’. Enter your email address, then select ‘send verification code’. A code will automatically be sent to your inbox immediately. Once you have the code, go back to the webpage, and you can manage your two-factor authentication and password creation. Once submitted, your details will be activated.