Wed, 20 March, 2019
TWI, The Welding Institute’s London Branch, and The Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) came together for a Tipper Group event to promote diversity and inclusion.
The event, which took place at the IMechE’s offices in London on 25 February, sought to address a number of issues relating to diversity and inclusion, such as unconscious bias and the importance of diversity in the workplace.
TWI’s Tipper Group chair, Kamer Tuncbilek, presented a talk that looked at issues such as recognising and respecting difference along the lines of gender, ethnicity, age and culture. The talk has ended with a question and answer session
Taking gender as an example, TWI has a higher than average number of female engineers when compared to the UK average. However, we still lag behind many other nations in the EU, which could be down to factors such as traditional gender roles, motivation, schooling and exposure to these industries.
In addition, there are issues around support for women returning to work after having children including flexibility in the workplace to help with reintegration. For example, keeping staff connected during maternity or paternity leave by inviting them return for a few hours when it suits or making allowances for when someone has to leave work early to collect a poorly child from school or nursery. Aside from parenting and gender issues, there are other wellbeing factors, such as recognising that many staff members may need support with looking after elderly relatives.
The key is about not just diversity but inclusion, whereby everybody, regardless of their age, gender, culture, ethnicity, sexual orientation or any other factors, feel part of a unified team through the merging of people from different backgrounds.
TWI, particularly through the work of The Tipper Group, continues to strive for improvement in diversity and inclusion while also acting as an example for other organisations that we work alongside.
You can find out more about the Tipper Group and TWI’s Corporate Social Responsibility work here.