During or around IP Inclusive Week, you could organise either an in-house event for your own staff, or something larger with other organisations in your region. It could be a workshop, a discussion session, a seminar or a webinar viewing. You might choose to invite an external speaker, and/or to ask people within your own team to share their ideas and experiences. Remember that training on D&I-related issues can count towards your CPD requirements….
There are all kinds of suitable topics – unconscious bias, diversity “champions” and allies, mental health, workplace inclusivity, business drivers for D&I – not to mention those relating to specific groups or sectors, for example ethnic diversity in the IP professions. We’re sure you can think of others.
If you’re looking for materials to spark discussion, we’ve resources available on our website to help, for example:
- toolkits and presentations on unconscious bias, the business case for diversity and mental health in the workplace (see our resources page);
- recordings of our 2017 and 2018 webinars (links below);
- our “tube map” illustrating the many inter-related business benefits of D&I;
- the report of our spring 2018 mental wellbeing survey; and
- countless articles, comments and event reports, on our news and features page, covering a whole range of D&I-related issues.
Also please keep an eye on this IP Inclusive Week blog as we post more such materials over the coming weeks, for example notes about diversity champions and ideas for workshop exercises on unconscious bias.
Whatever your event, try to include everyone in your organisation, at all career levels and including support staff as well as fee earners. And if you’ve room, how about inviting IP colleagues from other, smaller organisations nearby, or clients and suppliers who also work with IP? It’s a great way to expand your networks at the same time as raising awareness of the IP Inclusive cause.
– Oh, and please don’t forget to tell us about your event. Even if it’s only open to selected invitees, we’d still like to publicise it as part of the IP Inclusive Week programme. If you tweet about it, please tag @IPInclusive and quote #ipinclusiveweek.
Here are the links to our webinar recordings:
How to be a workplace ally (23 March 2017)
Imposter syndrome (19 September 2017)
Mental health matters (5 December 2017, with LawCare)
Why looking after your mental health is so important (15 May 2018, with LawCare)
Top tips for studying under pressure (22 May 2018, with LawCare)
The business case for diversity (5 July 2018)
Unconscious bias and the IP professional (6 September 2018)