Kathryn Eldridge's IP Inclusive Leaders’ Pledge

I commit to:

1. Providing visible and proactive leadership to improve D&I in my organisation, by:

• Being personally involved in, and contributing to, D&I projects and events

• Publicising my commitment in regular corporate communications, both internally and externally

• Providing D&I-related content for those communications

• Having the courage to speak out about difficult D&I issues and share my own experiences

• Putting my name to a public statement of the organisation’s commitment to D&I and of its D&I objectives, strategy and policies

• Acting as an ally to, and champion for, colleagues from under-represented groups
   

2. Taking D&I seriously at the highest level, by:

• Acting as, or appointing, a D&I champion at board/partnership level

• Including D&I as a standing agenda item at board/partnership meetings

• Encouraging my senior colleagues to do as I do to provide visible and proactive leadership on D&I issues
   

3. Embedding and valuing D&I throughout the organisational culture, by:

• Building a culture in which the whole of my organisation is involved in the quest for D&I

• Including D&I-related topics on the agendas of internal events such as for new starter induction, would-be partner training and staff awaydays
   

4. Building trust and safe spaces throughout the organisation, by:

• Attending some of our internal D&I forum’s meetings

• Encouraging all staff, at all levels, to bring their whole selves to work and speak openly about their identities

• Leading by example in sharing my own identity and experiences

• Setting up informal mentoring or buddy schemes so that all staff have a trusted friend to speak with one-to-one, separate to their line manager, if they wish
   

5. Educating myself and my colleagues about D&I issues, by:

• Introducing a reverse mentoring scheme for senior staff to learn from more junior professionals and professionals in under-represented groups; participating in that scheme myself

• Providing allyship, privilege awareness and/or unconscious bias training for staff at all levels, including board/partnership level
   

6. Sharing my privileges, by:

• Where feasible, adopting the IP Inclusive guidelines on recruiting for social mobility and on improving social mobility and access to the IP professions

• Ensuring that staff in the organisation are aware of, and ideally involved with, IP Inclusive’s Careers in Ideas outreach initiative