Over the last few weeks, we have seen a number of protests following the tragic death of George Floyd in the United States, calling for a stop to racism and in particular the widespread injustice faced by the Black community. At LiveWest, we have been thinking about our own role in tackling racism and stand by our Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) colleagues and customers. As a landlord rooted in diverse communities, people are at the heart of everything we do, and this has given us the opportunity to reflect on the steps we can take to celebrate and promote diversity, equality and fairness in our communities. We want to support our BAME colleagues and customers by continuing to work to develop an organisation that is more representative of our diverse communities.
We are in the process of confirming an action plan of what we will do to make this happen. This includes setting out clear behavioural expectations for colleagues which will be embedded into our organisation to support and protect everyone. We will be building an evolving learning programme which will educate all colleagues on the many aspects of racism, such as being able to recognise racist behaviour; how to support BAME colleagues; being aware of the appropriate reporting processes and having the confidence to stand up against racist behaviours.
Our goal is to be a pro-active anti-racist organisation that our BAME colleagues and customers feel safe in and proud of.
We want to have the right plans in place to support real change in our organisation. Once we have our practical steps confirmed we’ll share these with you
We are committed to:
• Having a plan to increase numbers of people from BAME communities that work for us and addressing their underrepresentation at senior levels of the organisation
• Review our equality impact assessment process
• Introduce a supplier code of conduct for all our contractors
• Introduce a support mechanism for our BAME customers
• Set out clear expectations of our customers as part of signup process
• Increasing communications in different languages for our customers
• Having regular communication with our BAME colleagues and customers to understand what else we can do to support them
We are committed to being a force for positive change and will make sure to keep you updated on changes going forward.
Watch our animation below on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at LiveWest