Aviva at Number 10 Downing Street!
Brad McLaughlin from Aviva and a team of people from other industries had the opportunity in July to go to Westminster and Number 10 to discuss the role of faith in the workplace, representing Aviva and the Faith Friendly Workplaces initiative. Here is his testimony.
The first meeting was the APPG with Baroness Verma looking at how businesses can help work with government to build greater freedom of religious belief. There was a great story from Salesforce (their multi faith network is called 'Faithforce') they have a big office in Israel, and he spoke about how they had been working to bring both Arab youth and the Orthodox Jewish youth in the region to the offices and bring them together and to build greater shared understanding. There were many other stories like this of companies doing well by doing good.
In the second meeting at No 10, there was a greater focus on sharing with the minister about the good work that is already taking place, and helping to share how the government can help to enable greater freedom of faith and belief within the workplace.
Lots of evidence was shared about the value to the UK of bringing faith and belief into the workplace (or 'Bringing your whole self to work') we heard from a few companies, but the two that stood out for me were the CEO of Baringa who spoke passionately about how they have incorporated faith and belief into their wider culture of inclusion. He spoke of a 'culture of kindness' and how they were tracking the economics of kindness, and how they are seeing a big return on their investment (significantly lower attrition and much higher engagement than their peers).
The other was from The Director of Staff Experience at the NHS who shared that during the annual staff survey of their 1.3m people, over 50% voluntarily shared that they were part of a religion or faith group. But more compelling, was that the individuals who said their were part of a religious or faith group in the survey also showed much higher engagement levels.
So what next?
There will be a summit in London on 20th November at Sales Force HQ to which private and public sectors will be invited. This will serve to further develop this new area, give it a lot more profile and even media interest. The Prime Minister will be invited, it's going to be big!
If you would like to get involved with our faith and belief networks, we would love to hear from you, please get in touch through the Transform Work office:
office@transformwork.net
“Faith is one of the protected characteristics but is often one of the least developed within most companies Diversity and Inclusion strategy,” says Andy.
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