Getting started

Seven simple ways to get started

So what do you need to get started? Cohesion is about understanding people and respecting their difference. The leadership needs to come from the board of the organisation with committed delivery and implementation from HR and people who manage staff, so that it is embedded into the culture of the organisation.  Within the workforce there are some basic starting points:

1.     Ask what the vision and ethos is for your organisation; does it reflect the aspiration for a united workforce that can work together. Where does the leadership come from?

2.    Take a look at your current HR/equality/people policies.  Do they cover cohesion and tackle the importance of respect for all in the workplace?

3.    Find out what is going on in your organisation. Talk to your employees; the local authority; the police; community groups and where appropriate the recognised trade union who mayhave a useful contribution to make; examine HR statistics for absences, sickness and incidents. Get a picture of your workforce.

4.    Check out the organisation’s demographic data. Where do people fit within the workforce? Where are they positioned within the organisation, at what level do they work, which departments, who works on shifts? Break this down by ethnicity, gender, disability and age.

5.    Work with your trade unions and staff representatives, find out what issues the workforce are bringing up. Do some of these issues relate to factors around cohesion? View UNISON's Challenging Racism in the workplace case study.

6.    Create a support network for staff, so people feel they have somewhere to go if they are not happy about a particular issue in the workplace. This could be in the form of employee networks, a department representative or through regular team meetings where people can air their views in a confidential setting. Make sure support networks do not create more divisions. View more information about employee networks and BT Reaching Out case study

7.    Decide what schemes and processes to introduce that might tackle any issues that may have arisen from the above. This could be along the lines of informal social gatherings to bring different people together or more formal arrangements like cohesion training sessions for all staff.