So… how are your plans shaping up for #ipinclusiveweek 2019 (11-17 November)?
In case you’re short of ideas, here are some simple things you could do in-house to mark the event.
- Put up our poster around the office, to help raise awareness of IP Inclusive, what we do and who can join us.
- Sponsor some IP Inclusive pin badges, magnets or lanyards and hand them out to your staff to remind people that everyone’s welcome and that we need as many “allies” and “champions” as we can get. There’s more about how the sponsorship usually works in this blog post here. ***Hurry if you want to get these in time for IP Inclusive Week.***
- Encourage colleagues to subscribe to our mailing list so that everyone in the team gets our updates and the chance to join our (usually free) events. Or at least make sure that whoever does get the updates circulates them among colleagues – in all roles and at all career levels.
- Encourage your staff to join our networking and support communities (all of which are also open to allies):
- IP & ME – for BAME professionals
- IP Ability – for disabled people and their carers
- IP Futures – for early career IP professionals
- IP Out – for LGBT+ professionals
- Women in IP
If you want to do something more substantial to improve your D&I (diversity and inclusion) credentials, you could:
- Set up an internal D&I committee/forum/group. Whatever you call it, make sure you include representatives from different career levels, different roles and if appropriate different offices. The more diverse your group, the more innovative and successful it’s likely to be.
- Work with your staff to establish some pledges, commitments or standards to reflect the importance you attach to respect and inclusivity, for example in meetings. You might want to start with the IP Inclusive allies postcard that we created for our January 2019 allies event.
- If your organisation is big enough, establish some internal staff networks of your own, with links to the IP Inclusive communities. There’s some great online advice from Inclusive Employers, for instance, to help you do this.
Our Steps to Inclusion review, a joint project with Focal Point Training, can help you take a broader look at your organisation’s D&I strategies and target resources towards sustainable yet cost-effective improvements. The review is specially tailored to fit with the IP Inclusive Charter commitments, and it’s bespoke to your organisation, so will allow you to align your D&I efforts with your overall business strategies.
We’ll be posting plenty more ideas before #ipinclusiveweek starts. But do please let us know what you’ve got in mind, and share any additional suggestions you come up with based on the ones here.