Over the past year, Sift and its leading B2B brands – AccountingWEB, HRZone, TrainingZone, MyCustomer and PracticeWeb – have been driving a strong Diversity and Inclusion focus across all our teams. We believe we can make a much-needed contribution to societal change across our broad business networks and reach.
We’re really proud of what we’ve achieved in a short space of time:
- 13% increase in 12-months in female hires, now 51% of the business
- Removed ‘Gender’ as a required field on our publication registration
- Introduced a new D&I HR policy and equal employee commitment
- Improved the diversity of writers, striving for better representation
- Embedded a blind-hiring platform for all new job applications
- Added #beinclusive to our core Sift values
- We’re ahead of national averages for gender pay gaps
- Publishing our first D&I internal newsletter
- We have a quarterly talk scheduled for the teams on various topics
- Providing mental health training to all our managers
- Launched a Sift D&I calendar with all the key dates embedded
In June, we focus our attention on supporting the LGBT+ community during Pride Month. We’ve commissioned over 20+ articles across our publications, which will be hosted here, on Sift.co.uk, in a dedicated Pride Hub. They will also be published on our market-leading brands, providing reach to 1m+ business professionals.
We’re also proud to be a partner of Pride Bristol, where some of the teams (and families) will be taking part in the parade on 10th July. And we’ll have a stand at Queen Square with some home-crafted Pride related goodies – come and say hello if you’re local!
We have a range of lunch and learns (internal and external) from HIV awareness to Transgender education, as well as a new D&I book club launching this month. We’ve even booked Charlie Hides for Drag Queen Bingo, which will be a highlight for me!
We’re getting behind Mindout.org.uk, a brilliant charity supporting mental health in the LGBT+ community. If you’d like to show some support, please help us raise our small target by clicking the link here and contributing what you can.
Read more about MindOut on their website.
Finally, we’ll be running the Pride flag of support on our B2B brands and across our social channels, demonstrating that we stand together with the LGBT+ community. Beyond June, our editors will continue to shine a light on a range of D&I topics, sustaining our efforts in an authentic and genuine way is how we’ll make a real contribution to societal change.
