Over the past few days I have been speaking with colleagues across the company about the murder of George Floyd and the institutionalised racism that brought this about. At Venn Group we want to respond to this terrible event with purpose and meaning. I am sure we all agree that there is no place for racism in society – but simply stating what we are against does not, in my opinion, go far enough.
At Venn Group I hope we support each other to create a workplace in which all feel welcomed, included and can thrive. However, we must also acknowledge that the structurally racist society we live in conditions everyone’s judgement and that at times we may fall short of the mark and make mistakes which may hurt or offend our colleagues. Our ‘not meaning to’ is not a sufficient excuse. I personally apologise to any individual who has felt they were not heard or who we spoke to in a thoughtless or inappropriate way.
We cannot change society overnight, but we can do our best within Venn Group to listen and learn in order to evaluate, inform and improve our corporate and individual behaviours.
To this end...
We will listen
We will listen to, and engage with you on issues relating to discrimination and social injustice by providing a forum where issues can be safely discussed and recommendations made. We want our staff to have safe and open dialogue and be able to raise any ideas, issues and concerns. We are setting up a Diversity and Inclusion forum with immediate effect. It will be chaired by Avtar Singh initially, who will also act as Venn Group’s Diversity and Inclusion champion on our Board of Directors.
We will learn
We will be engaging external support to deliver Diversity Training and Education.
• Focussing on unconscious bias
• Gaining cultural intelligence
• How to re-examine history as presented to us
All the very best
Deirdra