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Heartbeat: Inclusion Day gives colleagues opportunity to speak and be heard

November 16, 2020

Monday 19 October saw us hold our first Inclusion Day – a virtual event that included a Q&A panel and a series of talks. Kicking off the event was an ‘Ask the Panel Event’ chaired by Nick Bellis, HR Business Partner and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Lead.

The panel consisted of:

  • Richard Samuda, Trust Chairman
  • Frieza Mahmood, Joint Acting Director of People and OD
  • Donna Mighty, Chair BME Staff Network
  • Andrew Mould, Chair Disability and Long Term Conditions Staff Network

The event was also a chance for colleagues to hear from external speakers around the topics of disability, trans awareness and inclusion.

Speakers on the day included:

  • Dean Eales from AccessAble who develop detailed access guides to places for those with mobility needs. The Trust has partnered with them to provide access guides to our sites, departments and wards so that patients, visitors and staff can check out accessibility before arriving. The aim of the project is to help alleviate anxiety when visiting the hospital, as a patient you are likely to be anxious about your appointment, but imagine also worrying about whether the service you need is accessible or not. Find out more AccessAble.co.uk.
  • Nesta Williams, a leading consultant in equality and engagement. Nesta’s work supports organisations such as Health Education England, Royal College of Nursing, and NHS England and NHS Improvement. Through her commitment to equality and inclusivity, Nesta developed the HEARTS© to Hearts leadership model – 6 steps to sustainable leadership, organisational transformation, employee engagement, equality, diversity, civility and inclusion and is a member of the working group, Coalition for Action on Racial Equity & Justice (CAREJ).
  • Katie Neeves, who shared her own journey on being transgender. Katie formed Cool2BTrans to support and inspire other trans people and also to educate the general public on trans issues. She helps organisations with diversity and inclusion by providing trans awareness training in an entertaining way by using her infectious sense of humour.

Heartbeat caught with Nick Bellis, who told us: “It was fantastic that we were able to bring a wide variety of people together who were able to share their experiences.

“The feedback from colleagues and the questions they raised will really help inform our work and potentially revise our equality, diversity and inclusion plans going forward. There was a clear message that colleagues want to be able to speak and be heard and for any actions to be shared more widely. There is also certainly a need to resource the work we are doing with equality, diversity and inclusion, therefore a paper will go to December’s Board looking at how we achieve that given the number of actions we need to deliver.

“We have a big equality, diversity and inclusion agenda over the coming year as we continue to strive to be a more inclusive health provider and employer. The plan is to run a quarterly event and would welcome ideas of the issues to cover in future events.”