The events of 2020 shed light on the inequalities that exist in society and in many organisations. At NCRI, we have looked at our existing practices and policies and educated ourselves on where we need to do better. We have formed an EDI working group and are currently developing an action plan focussing on areas where we can exert the most influence.
We have recognised that our previous stance of not discriminating was not enough. We are committed to being an anti-racist organisation and we must be proactive in eradicating prejudice and discrimination, not just in respect of race, age, disability and other protected characteristics, but also other areas of inequity such as socio-economic factors. We are reviewing NCRI’s guidelines and policies to ensure they support this stance.
We recognise the lack of diversity across our staff and all those we work with. To improve our recruitment and retention levels of people from more diverse backgrounds, we are broadening our channels. We are reviewing our recruitment processes, ensuring that our recruitment literature is inclusive and removing bias in the application and interview processes.
To become an organisation that has a positive impact on the experiences of people from ethnic minority backgrounds when engaging with cancer research, we have improved the training materials and tools available to our staff, including the materials and guides we use for marketing and communications.
We recognise that we have a lot more work to do on equality, diversity and inclusion and that this is an ongoing piece of work to ensure these values are embedded in our organisation. During this year we have shared a variety of training materials and resources from other organisations with the aim of educating ourselves better on these issues and this has been the main focus of the working group to date.