Everything we do at Everyturn Mental Health is shaped by our strong set of organisational values. They’re so much more than just words, and they truly shape everything we do.
Something that’s close to our heart at Everyturn is championing equity, diversity, and inclusivity for the benefit of everyone. The pledge we’ve made is very specific to us as an organisation, and what we want to achieve.
“We pledge to foster an open culture by opening up the conversation on equity, diversity and inclusion. We will give all our colleagues the opportunity to share their story and journey, enable colleagues to ask questions, and build a culture where we all learn from each other.”
Throughout our organisation, we want to ensure that all our colleagues feel that they can bring their whole selves to work.
The power of conversation
“Thank you for your insights, this is exactly the conversation we need to learn and effect change”
We’ve been working with our colleague diversity network groups to create a series of ‘in conversation with’ recordings with colleagues from across Everyturn. These conversations feature a variety of topics such as neurodiversity, racial heritage, LGBTQI+ identities, and more. Our ‘in conversation with’ series is so important to us as an organisation, as it helps us to empathise and learn from each other’s lived experiences – creating an environment where everyone feels welcome, heard, and valued.
“So moving, safe, real, humorous and caring. Thank you for creating such a beautiful, humane discussion with heart”
Our Gender Identity Policy
We’ve also recently introduced our Gender Identity Policy which was co-created with members of our LGBTQ+ group. We created this policy as it’s so important for us as an organisation to educate ourselves, use inclusive language, and avoid assumptions – all to help our colleagues feel safe to be their true selves.
Our Gender Identity Policy focuses on:
- Opening up the conversation to help our colleagues understand key terminology.
- A commitment to recognising and respecting personal pronouns.
- Becoming more inclusive with our personal data and records.
- Support and practical guidance for transgender people who are transitioning at work.
- Preventing and tackling discrimination, victimisation, bullying and harassment, on gender identity and across all protected characteristics.
Our plan for equality, diversity, and inclusion
This work follows an independent audit of our EDI approaches and practices. This research was done by EW Group in 2022. From this work, we developed our strategic EDI plan, which focuses on 4 pillars:
- Securing solid EDI foundations
- Building skills and confidence
- Recruitment and progression
- Building an inclusive culture
Our Chief People Officer at Everyturn, Sarah Dewar, speaks on our next steps as an organisation,
“As an organisation, we will be continuing with our strategic action plan, working collaboratively with our network groups, Board and colleagues. An area of focus for us later this year will be to review our approaches and policies relating to family. We want these to represent the true diversity of families in society today, and we’re taking proactive steps to work with EW to ensure our approaches are forward-thinking and inclusive.”
