Blog: People and Perceptions, Inclusion Week at the ASA, part three

In week three of our blog series on diversity and inclusion, Miles Lockwood, Director of Complaints and Investigations, gives three pragmatic points about why being inclusive is the right thing to do.

“We are all different, which is great because we are all unique. Without diversity life would be very boring.”

— Catherine Pulsifer

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I’m very proud to work in an organisation that has put advancing equality, diversity and inclusion front and centre, and following on from our recent EDI celebration week I’d like to share why advancing this agenda matters to me.

In my own experience of work over the past 20-or-so years, organisations have come a long way in advancing equality and inclusion in the work place. By way of one example, back in the mid-90s during a summer holiday when I was at university I did a part-time job to earn some cash. This business (a factory in deepest West Berkshire which made the rubbery things that go round car wind-screens) had segregated break out rooms for men and women with the tea and coffee facilities in the men’s area only! It seems a bit hard now to believe that this sort of thing was tolerated but we are only a very few years on from when it was quite normal to see routine displays of overt discrimination in this way in the workplace.

So we’ve already come a long way in the UK in breaking down the really obvious physical barriers like that. Encouraging greater equality, diversity and inclusion is however a journey with no final destination and there is still much to do. I can show this by again borrowing from my own experience - in just the last couple of years I’ve known two friends and close loved ones in other major organisations right here in London who’ve faced more subtle but very damaging forms of discrimination that were centred on their sexuality and gender.  The cost to these two people and those around them has played out in financial, career changing and emotional terms and can’t be calculated or underestimated.

Advancing the principles of equality and diversity in the workplace matters to me in particular therefore because I’ve seen up close and personal the damage that can be done when people and the companies they work for don’t live up to those values.

But I’d also like to advocate that there are three really positive reasons why I think everyone here at the ASA gets behind the goals of EDI:

First, and quite simply - it’s the right thing to do. As the quote above points out, life would be very dull if we were all the same or expected others to be like us. Being curious about difference and what makes us unique on the other hand is endlessly fascinating and enriching.

Second - advancing equality of opportunity, diversity and inclusion is good for business. The ASA is stronger for being a fair, tolerant and open place to work that will attract and retain the best people from all walks of life.

And finally - by celebrating what makes us unique and what brings us together through our diversity of experience we learn and grow from each other; and that makes for better thinking and better outcomes. In an organisation like the ASA, that’s got to be good so that we can truly reflect the society we seek to protect and represent in our regulatory work.

 

Want to hear more? Read our blogs from weeks one and two and find out more about why equality, diversity and inclusion are so important to us at the ASA, and how central they are to our success as a regulator. Also, make sure to check out our recent report into gender stereotyping in advertising - Depictions, Perceptions and Harm.


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