Gabrielle Austen-Browne, founder of Diversity Alliance and co-founder of Diverse Speaker Bureau, says the events industry must turn its DEI commitment into action.
During ‘twixmas’ (that time in between Christmas and New Year where we are in limbo), I took the time to reflect on 2022 and what I hoped to achieve in 2023. I chose to write down my observations and condense them down to single words. The words that resonated the most were: ‘inspire’ and ‘action’, so they are my goals for 2023, to ‘inspire action’.
A recent study highlighted that the UK and Ireland are behind other countries when it comes to addressing and implementing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). The commitment is there, but many just don’t know where to start and more importantly, how to monitor progress and stay on track. It’s a shame that we are more pessimistic in how we perceive DEI progress in our own companies, with nearly 50% saying they don’t feel like their company is making enough progress, despite the moral imperative and business case for DEI being very strong (source: get workable.com).
Take action
Working with multiple clients and speaking on many panels about DEI has demonstrated to me that there is an appetite to be more diverse, equitable and inclusive, and a keenness to implement DEI in a meaningful and impactful way. Now it’s time to move on from discussing the issues and highlighting the challenges and take action instead. To help, I have spent time developing ideas to encourage more decisive action, one of those being the development of a DEI hackathon style workshop, giving agency to decision makers and individual contributors.
The first of which we delivered at IBTM World in 2022, with three others taking place in 2023. It’s not all doom and gloom though, we are starting to put the work in as an industry to fix this, with initiatives such as the Fast Forward 15 mentorship programme, Racial Diversity Ambassadors, the launch of the Association of Black Event Professionals, addressing diversity in the talent pipeline through the REACH scholarship fund, and progress being made in regard to accessibility at events. I’ve also been lucky enough to work with and be inspired by companies and events including the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Pageant, supporting [10-11} Carlton House Terrace’s commitment to supplier diversity and the Harkin Summit, held at the ICC Belfast, which recently won ‘Best DEI at a Conference Award’ at the ABPCO Excellence Awards. I look forward to seeing more initiatives and events like these in the future.
I’m also delighted that Diversity Alliance has partnered with International Confex to deliver the People and Culture theater this year. We have created content that doesn’t just highlight issues we have heard many times in previous discussions, instead, the focus is on ‘what next’ by taking advice from experts and inspiration from those who have already begun to put DEI into practice at work and in their events. We will be covering topics such as ‘diversity hushing’, how to take a client’s DEI strategy and agenda and translate it into a truly accessible event, a diversity and inclusion in action case study and how to evolve the events industry through next generation talent, with the goal being to ‘inspire action’.
Let’s change our current global standing and have the UK and Ireland be the best when it comes to DEI.
