Understanding Workplace Stereotyping, Privilege and Allyship

An Impact breakfast interactive workshop for Office Support Clients

As part of our Social Impact commitment, we were excited to host our Office support clients for an interactive breakfast workshop. This was an hour-long session delivered by Talent and Inclusion Recruiter – Daniel Asaya and organised by our Head of Support (Michelle Davies) and Temp Manager (Denise Watson).

The aim of the workshop was to improve our clients’ understanding on workplace stereotyping, its effects in the workplace and ways to reduce it. We also explored topics around privilege and how to be a supportive ally. 

What is workplace stereotyping?

Workplace stereotyping is a fixed, overgeneralised belief about a person or group of people. This stereotype may be based on your past experience with someone of a similar age, gender, ethnicity, background, education, etc., or your cultural biases and prejudices (which we all have).” Brent Watson

Privilege: What it means and doesn’t mean

“If you get upset when someone points out that you have privilege, that probably means you don’t fully understand what privilege is.” – Maisha Johnson

How to be a supportive ally

In a 2016 tweet, Kayla Reed co-founder and executive director of Action St. Louis (a grassroots racial justice organisation that seeks to build political power for Black communities in the St. Louis, Missouri, region of the United States), laid out what it means to be an effective ally: 

A – always centre the impacted

L – listen & learn from those who live in the oppression

L – leverage your privilege

Y – Yield the floor

Franchesca Ramsey also explained 5 tips to becoming an ally in this short YouTube video

A big thank you to all our guests and we look forward to continuing this important conversation in our upcoming events.  If you are interested in joining our future discussions, please email daniel.asaya@impact-london.com

How to Identify and Prevent Workplace Bullying

This #AntiBullyingWeek we look at how to identify and prevent workplace bullying to create a positive working environment for all.

What is workplace bullying?

Workplace bullying is repeated, and perverse behaviour directed towards an employee or group of employees that creates a risk to mental health and well-being in the workplace.

Bullying can happen in any type of workplace, and to people in any type of role from part-time employees to CEOs.

It can also take lots of different forms, from verbal or physical abuse to online harassment and in some cases can extend to out-of-work-hours harassment.

Examples of workplace bullying: 
The negative implications of bullying in the workplace include:
What steps can you take to prevent workplace bullying?

It is important to note that single incidents of unreasonable behaviour are not considered bullying. However, it is still important to deal with these issues correctly and monitor them accordingly.

 

For more information on dealing with workplace bullying, head to the National Bullying Helpline webpage.

Inclusive Hiring Workshop at Impact

Inclusive Hiring Workshop at Impact

Impact are huge advocates of driving positive change around Diversity & Inclusion within the media and creative industry and we consistently welcome the opportunity to enhance our skills.

A huge thank you to Jennie Child who facilitated a fantastic and informative session with our team last week.  Jennie is DEI specialist for Recruitment Network, an ex Talent Acquisition Director within WPP agencies and she now runs her own diversity consultancy, Balance.

Collaborating in small groups, we firstly took the time to acknowledge the barriers and bias that feeds into the hiring process.  Guided by Jennie, our focus was then spent discussing positive solutions and how we can continue to positively influence our clients through the recruitment process.

We shaped our thoughts with:-

We wrapped up by creating a clear action plan that is both achievable to consistently deliver on and importantly, aligns with our values.  Thanks again to Jennie for helping us stop and reflect on this important topic.