European Social Fund in England

Diversity means business

South East England Development Agency (SEEDA)

Funding: £400,000

Target Group: SMEs and their Employees

Start date: 01/01/2004

End date: 31/12/2006

Based at Portsmouth City Council, The Diversity Means Business project is a region wide project aimed at giving advice guidance and training to small to medium businesses across the South East. The project grew out of an existing sub-regional partnership, The Diversity Works Partnership which had been delivering projects for some time at the sub-regional level. What makes this project unique is its focus on making the business case for diversity. The products which include, a website, a diversity handbook and range of training modules all centre on the business benefits of diversity. Understanding employment legislation, improving recruitment and retention of staff and improving customer service are the prime focus. The in-house team has two diversity advisers who offer a flexible service and will arrange to meet companies at their place of work. Once there they carry out a training needs analysis, and guide the employer through simple diversity action plans and checklists. These products are aimed not to bombard the company with paper work, but provide them with a simple framework for instigating change within their company. All this is on such a wide geographical scale is not possible without a strong partnership in place. Partners include local community organisations, public bodies such Jobcentre Plus, Learning and Skills Councils across the region, Acas, TUC, Federation of Small Business Business Link and of course the South East England Development Agency (SEEDA). We also have private sector partners who are deliver engagements and training on our behalf.

To get to our potential clients the team attend network events, business to business events and sector conferences. Before the project could start delivering its services to companies, it had to develop its products. A lot of time was spent making the literature relevant to business. Research told us that the average small to medium sized company was very poorly informed on diversity issues and did not initially think it relevant to their companies. The format for the pack is 5 booklets, a general introduction, business and marketing growth, recruiting, retention and the law. For the training programme, we developed a series of 15 one hour modules, to give the greatest flexibility to the employer. These are grouped under 3 themes;

General Diversity, Disability, and Race and Faith. Again this is in direct response to the fact that SME's are reluctant to release staff for long periods of time. Again the training is flexible, and can be delivered on or off site depending on what is best for the client.

The project has a number of outputs, however the main ones are to engage with 300 SMEs across the region and train 300 employees in diversity training. In addition it must engage with

34 non SMEs, and train up to 10 support providers. To ensure coverage and impact across the region we have to hold 6 sub-regional events. To date we have engaged with 264 companies and trained over 100 staff. We have over achieved on targets such training support providers and are looking to hold our last dissemination event in Buckinghamshire in April 06. The project had now gained a lot of momentum. Whilst training at first did prove difficult to get companies to sign up to, those trained are contacting the team to request further modules, which is great news. The diversity advisers often find themselves pitted against sceptical audiences, but find that feedback has been surprisingly positive in these circumstances, with comments such "thank you, you have made me think" to "powerful training" being some of the comments on the evaluation sheets. Getting firms interested via the public procurement route and sector approaches is something to be further developed. Key target beneficiaries are BMEs and people with disabilities. In terms of equality of access, of the people trained so far 18% are BME, 3% have a declared disability and 43% are female.

For further information contact: Siobhan Flynn Project Manager - Diversity Means Business 023 9283 4754 siobhan.flynn@portsmouthcc.gov.uk