We're extremely proud to be supporting National Inclusion Week 2017, and the breadth of activity we've got planned for this year's event shows our commitment to treating every one of our 19,000 employees with fairness, respect and equality of opportunity, regardless of their background.
Inclusion has always been an integral part of Amey’s culture and we’ve always wanted people to work for us who came from a wide range of backgrounds. We're the only business in our industry to be awarded both Investors in People Gold and Champion status and this week we're delighted to announce that we've been awarded Leaders in Diversity accreditation.
We've come this far because embracing diversity is not only the right thing to do, but it has always given us the best chance to secure the talent we need.
That's why we're always looking for new ways to ensure our employees are as diverse as the communities we serve. In the last year alone, we've launched a Women@Amey group, which already has over 200 members, introduced women's fit PPE, taken part in our first National Women in Engineering Day and worked with the Girl Guides to develop an engineering badge.
We also have an established LGBTA Network, which now has over 400 members. Our branded rainbow lanyards and pins are the most visible sign of this, and we have so far distributed over 1000 lanyards and 1000 pins to people in the company. We have a number of initiatives running including combating discriminatory language, planning case studies to put human faces to the LGBT acronym, and developing a pilot scheme to include LGBT courses in management training.
Elsewhere, we've entered a partnership with Scope to promote disability awareness, in addition to providing tailored placements and mentoring for disabled apprentices. We have again signed the Armed Forces Corporate Covenant, teamed up with Show Racism the Red Card in London and joined the Buy Social Corporate Challenge – a ground-breaking initiative that sees some of the UK’s largest businesses use their spending power to effect positive change in communities.
Of course, striving to be an inclusive company isn't limited to the way we treat our employees; as a business that prides itself on creating better places for people to live, work and travel in the UK and internationally, we know we also need to provide services that are inclusive of everyone in society.
In our Design and Engineering teams we are creating more obstacle-free, accessible routes for disabled people and the elderly at train stations, and safe routes for vulnerable road users, such as cyclists or those who use mobility scooters. Where possible we are also providing public signage in Braille and in languages other than English.
Ultimately, our daily challenge is to think about the full diversity of the people who may be using the infrastructure or service that we are designing and engineering. We are using a wide range of tools to proactively assess user needs and actual travel patterns. Big data being at the heart of the work.
As part of our commitment to supporting these causes, we will this week through over 100 events, from big conferences to coffee chats, be reminding all our employees to think about the diversity that exists in the communities we serve and to question whether we could do more to ensure our services work for everyone.
If you want to find out more about inclusion and diversity at Amey, please visit www.amey.co.uk/your-career/inclusion-and-diversity or follow us on Twitter @Ameyplc and LinkedIn @Amey.