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Did you know that employers need to be ready to protect employees from sexual harassment under a new statutory obligation?  

According to a study from the Crime Survey for England and Wales, 2023 a quarter all people who’ve experienced sexual harassment said it had happened in their place of work. Meanwhile, the TUC found that 3 in 5 women have experienced harassment at work. 

From October 2024 the Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Bill will strengthen protection for workers against sexual harassment. This new law will place a new duty on employers to take ‘reasonable steps’ to prevent sexual harassment.  

If you want to understand what this means for you as an employer, Creative Access has created a training workshop covering the new legal obligations to help employers take proactive steps to avoid sexual harassment in the workplace.  

If you’re focused on inclusion, now is the time to act and not only deal with sexual harassment but to prevent sexual harassment from happening in the workplace. 

Our ‘Fostering Respect: Tackling Sexual Harassment in the Workplace’ workshop includes:  

  • What is ‘sexual harassment’? Recognising the behaviours that constitute sexual harassment  
  • Understanding the law surrounding sexual harassment  
  • What to do if you experience or witness sexual harassment in the workplace  
  • Understand how management should handle a complaint and how to support all staff involved 
  • Barriers to disclosure at work and creating a safe environment for disclosure 
  • Responding appropriately and managing trauma responses 
  • Remove or reducing risks to stop sexual harassment before it happens 

Take steps to protect your employees today and enquire now about booking a session for your team.  

Online Workshop 

We’ll also be running an open workshop on Tuesday 26th November 2024, 11am – 12.30pm on sexual harassment in the workplace for individual employees to join. 

Spaces are capped at 15 participants. Book your place now: Fostering Respect: Tackling Sexual Harassment in the Workplace

By Elonka Soros, Diversity & inclusion consultant and Creative Access trainer 

Whether it’s sparked by the personal impact of the cost-of-living crisis, reflections on high profile cases of bullying at work, or discussion about global conflicts, diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) conversations will continue to top workplace agendas into 2024. Supporting managers and colleagues to navigate these complex issues in a culture of respect and inclusion might take a little planning by HR professionals, but the beneficial impacts will be worth it, says Creative Access inclusion consultant Elonka Soros.  

We did not leave 2023 quietly. World events, political and economic uncertainties, and another round of nasty winter colds and flu are giving us all something to be concerned about. With post-pandemic work life still yet to find its rhythm, it’s no wonder many colleagues across the creative economy have been telling me they are finding it hard to keep going as ‘normal’.  

Senior leadership colleagues talk about the tensions of managing the economic impacts of a tough year for business, alongside the social and emotional fall-out in the workplace. While everyone else, from team leaders to interns, have been sharing the anxieties of working in an era of volatility and uncertainty.   

But 2023 wasn’t all about the troubling news and unease. Throughout last year, co-workers have also expressed a greater awareness of their diversity and acknowledgment that we won’t all be feeling the impacts of external events in the same way. More nuanced understanding of gendered, racialised or socio-economic experiences has in part been prompted by better workplace conversations – often facilitated by inclusion specialists – and the genuine desire of businesses and team-mates to support and accommodate talented colleagues during difficult times.  

“If only I knew what to say or do” 

Motivation doesn’t always lead to action. Feedback from over 200 hours of Creative Access DE&I workshops points to people’s fear of getting things wrong, with inappropriate actions or outdated terminology. This is where HR professionals can help colleagues by providing the tools and a framework to build inclusion competency, and to instil confidence in those leading and supporting a respectful and inclusive team culture.  

At Creative Access, we facilitate discussion, reflection and develop actions that lead to workplace culture change. Our DE&I workshops, mental health and wellbeing awareness sessions, and leadership trainings, are safe spaces where colleagues explore topics and learn strategies, tips and techniques that allow businesses to harness the added value of the diversity of their people, and in their teams.  

As we’re entering 2024, HR professionals will be thinking about what the training needs of your team will be and what will make the most impact. Whether it’s ways of opening up recruitment to a wider talent pool, addressing culture change or developing policies that dial up your inclusion aspirations, here are three tips to help you optimise your next investment in DE&I. 

Prepare for success   

Benjamin Franklin is credited with coining the phrase: “By failing to prepare, you prepare to fail” and in the context of booking your next DE&I training or consultancy, putting a little preparation in at the start not only ensures successful outcomes but saves time and money down the line.  

Online modules and off the shelf training sessions might look financially inviting but can leave participants frustrated as the current context can be overlooked. No two companies are the same and it stands to reason that the training needs of delegates, will also differ too.  At Creative Access, whether you’re engaging on one of our core courses or online briefings, we advise a planning call with the trainer so that your specific challenges are understood, and the workshop can be tailored accordingly. The world is changing very rapidly, and with it, the events that may trigger a need for team reflection and collective learning too. At time of writing, I have just finished another call with HR colleagues asking for my support with frameworks for having constructive conversations around religion, race and community in light of ongoing global conflict.  The Creative Access team is agile and alert to current affairs and best practice. All trainers have personal and professional lived experience across the full scope of the DE&I opportunity for the creative economy. 

You can also prepare for success by letting your team know what’s ahead. Be clear with colleagues about the expected outcomes of the training and share the agenda early on, allowing colleagues time to process the sensitivity of certain topics and share any access requirements.   

Plan-in for the next steps 

Very often the success of training is measured in participant engagement, but the purpose of a DE&I workshop is to effect tangible culture change. One way to ensure a legacy from the training is to plan in the next steps for delegate participation. Successful companies have held facilitated all hands meetings at the end of a suite of workshops where key insights are shared, and actions communicated. Others have provided colleagues with the opportunity to take part in a reflective session a few months after the initial workshop where themes and outcomes of the first workshop are shared and there is space to consolidate learning, share progress and recap to ensure staff have confidence and tools to lead the inclusion agenda.   

Equity and inclusion are the outcomes of ongoing actions. As sure as the world turns, there will always be more we can do or learn, and we will make mistakes – it’s how we respond to them that matters. HR professionals can generate momentum after DE&I training by scheduling in the spaces where colleagues continue their learning, feedback, and collaborate with each other.  

Whether your team needs to have more courageous conversations, manage bullying or harassment, set up and run employee resource groups, or develop the skills of allyship, Creative Access has a bank of ideas for formal, informal, internally generated, or externally facilitated next steps. All of our courses come with exclusive access to further resources, which are shared with all participants, and for HR colleagues there are additional invitations to update at regular free subject webinars. 

Practise makes perfect

A successful programme of training will deliver an inspired and motivated team eager and energised to engage with your DE&I action plans. It may surprise you therefore that at this point, my final tip is a heads-up to ‘curb your enthusiasm’. It can be tempting to rush into a flurry of activity, especially if you feel you’ve been battling to get DE&I seriously on the company agenda, but it could be easy to get very busy with initiatives and still get to the end of 2024 unclear about what you’ve achieved.  

A DE&I consultancy session can help those responsible for leading the change to take stock and identify the best course of post-training action. Taking an honest look at any in-training feedback about where your company is now and helping you plan for where you want to be by the end of the year. You won’t be able to do everything in twelve months, so don’t set yourself up to fail by promising to do so. Colleagues are less forgiving of pledges and statements that are not followed through.  

That’s not to say that you can’t be ambitious, far from it – but four or five priorities, with specific and measurable actions, communicated with transparency, and clear lines of accountability will deliver far more impact than 100 pages of strategy and a thousand flowers blooming.  

At Creative Access we’re ambitious – our mission is sector wide. Like many of the companies we work with, Creative Access is values-led, and data driven – our internal DE&I is as important to us, as supporting you with yours. We developed our Annual Thrive Survey to help us ensure that we’re actively living our DE&I aspirations.  In it we monitor the diversity of our workforce, check for equity in progression and pay, document the richness of our workplace culture, and measure the impact of our training and consultancy.  We have the data and are certain that we’re practicing what we preach so that we can help your business to Thrive too.  

Whatever 2024 brings politically, socially and for our businesses, we can be certain that it will involve more change. Restructurings, new hirings, new business and new people. If you want to know how to navigate business sentiment around DE&I with your team, check out the annual Thrive pulse report by Creative Access which outlines best and current practice for employers around the structures needed to support employees and build inclusive workplace cultures.  

Creative Access development director, Elonka Soros, reflects on our work over the past year and what key diversity and inclusion concepts employers need to know for going into 2023…

As I start the year prepping new projects for 2023, I’ve been reflecting on a busy 2022 Creative Access year of activity.

It’s been a pleasure to meet so many engaged creative industry colleagues over all the training sessions I led last year. In those sessions, I have noticed a shift in levels of understanding about matters of race, sex (and gender identities) social class and disability. That’s not so surprising because these discussions have been at the fore of political and world events, but what is interesting is that perhaps because of the often-polarising nature of the narratives, in many cases, I’ve also noted an increasing sense of urgency to take actions to confront and eliminate exclusions often aligned with these identity characteristics.

Regardless of sector, company size or the level of seniority of those participating in our Creative Access workshops, the key themes emerging out of these discussions have been very similar.

I’ve collated the top five matters that were exercising the minds of creative colleagues in 2022 – I wonder, how do these match your experience and what are you prioritising for 2023?

Black and white image of one of our trainers, Elonka, delivering a session to a room of employees at a workplace.

1. The concept of belonging in addition to those of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

It’s been refreshing to be part of DE&I conversations that acknowledge that just because someone is included in the team it does not mean that they feel that they belong. Creating equitable and inclusive workplaces with belonging cultures requires action that goes beyond the diversity numbers and the inclusion policies. It takes each one of us to understand the individual roles that we play to create company cultures that are welcoming, respectful, where people feel valued and can thrive. When people thrive, businesses thrive too.

We’ve been working with a global publishing company on their Equity and Belonging programme for line managers. They’ve built strong ERGs (employee resource groups). These safe spaces, celebrating difference have provided a forum for individuals to engage in meaningful dialogue with colleagues. When people feel they belong they are more likely to speak up, be creative and to innovate.

2. Understanding of intersectionality

This year Creative Access research has fuelled some insightful discussion with and within our wider creative industries community. Data from our 2022 Thrive Report showed that disabled people who also identify as Black, Asian or from other ethnically diverse backgrounds, are feeling less confident about their careers and progression in the creative sector than any other group. The more ways that a person is minoritised in their workplace – the greater the levels of concern. These more nuanced conversations about disability, race, accent, and social class have brought greater awareness and understanding of the ‘emotional tax’ of people who are minoritised in multiple ways at work. Hence the focus as above, on creating belonging cultures where people don’t have to mask their identity, or “pass” to survive. 

3. Increased focus on career access for disabled people across all levels and racially minoritised people at mid – senior level

While Creative Access’s industry leading positive action apprenticeships and internships programmes have delivered increased racial, socio-economic, and disabled representation at entry level across the sector, our research and community feedback show it’s still far from a level playing field and there is a lot of work to be done. In all areas of the creative sector, disabled people are seriously underrepresented. Steps to address systemic structural barriers are needed throughout the career cycle and you can read more about these and see the data from our Creative Access Disability Survey 2022 here.

4. Mental health, wellbeing and allyship in a post pandemic world

While the Covid19 pandemic is not over yet the forecast is not so bleak as it was back in 2020 when the UK went into lockdown. The toll on our individual and collective national mental health as we adjusted to a new reality is well documented, as is how many workplaces responded by putting in place measures to support employee wellbeing. Creative Access’ team of clinical psychologists, beamed into our homes via zoom and provided our team with tools to support ourselves, our families, and wider communities during the crisis, and many of our employer partners have been accessing these resources too.

Before the pandemic in many people spoke to me about their fears of sharing their mental health status at work, but the psychologists’ sessions have provided a space for people to share and learn that mental health is not static and that we are all always somewhere on a scale. More open conversation about feelings and the impact of day to day working life on our wellbeing has also resulted in a motivation for people to be alert to behaviours and language that could negatively impact their mental health and those of their colleagues. As we get back into more normal routines, the next steps will be to maintain the good practices we have acquired and build them into our new ways of working. 

5. The importance of data

The 2022 Creative Access Thrive research threw up an interesting aspect that may account for the slower progress towards DE&I aspirations than many creative companies would have hoped – they have no data upon which to build the actions required for change. Increasingly there is a realisation that measuring the diversity numbers is not enough, we also need data on our inclusion impact, and even fewer companies are doing that.

Earlier in this reflection I shared some of the discussion on the concept of belonging and the importance of understanding how now only how colleagues are accessing roles in our teams but also how they are experiencing working with us. It’s not always easy for people to speak up about matters that are concerning them or even articulate some of the impacts of workplace culture on mental health and wellbeing or productivity and ability to innovate. Even giving positive feedback about the things that we love about the places we work and the people we work with can get overlooked as we move form project to project, across time zones and in hybrid spaces. But we do need the information if we are to make the best use of our time and resources.

I think I may have said this before but it’s true, so I’ll say it again… when people thrive, businesses thrive too (and there is a big body of research to back that up).

If you’re interested in discussing what’s at the top of your DE&I agenda for 2023 or finding out more about how we support and partner with organisations, please contact us here.

I look forward to hearing from you.