DEI initiatives may be under attack, but cutting them could end up costing your organisation.
Recruiting diverse talent is a great step toward inclusivity, but effective DEI programmes ensure you're building a meaningfully safe workplace where people want to stay - they're essential for an organisation's competitiveness, innovation and resilience.
Collaborating with specialist charities, like Galop, can help you build an effective DEI strategy that enhances the well-being, safety and retention of your staff and customers.
Embarking on collaborative partnerships can feel daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. As the UK’s leading LGBT+ anti-abuse experts, we’ve put together four best practices to help you build effective partnerships with specialist charities
1. Build Meaningful Partnerships: As an LGBT+ specialist organisation, we often receive requests for support that seek our expertise without the meaningful engagement needed to build a successful partnership.Effective collaboration with LGBT+ charities should start early in your DEI journey and not be applied as an afterthought. Consult with us during the initial planning stages of your research, initiatives, or campaigns – before you invest lots of time and resources in developing something that later needs huge adjustments. By including our expertise upfront, you can ensure your projects develop in a safe, inclusive, and impactful way for the LGBT+ community.
2. Value and Recognise Expertise:Galop has over 40 years of specialised knowledge in supporting LGBT+ survivors of abuse and violence, and the largest evidence base of abuse and violence against LGBT+ people in the UK, but our contributions and expertise can be undervalued or minimised. Ask yourself, are you budgeting for specialist involvement as a core part of your project? When you partner with specialist organisations, we encourage you to think of it as essential consultancy work, not a favour. Whether it’s participant recruitment, risk audits, design support, messaging, or training, specialist charities should be compensated fairly for the expert knowledge we bring to the table.
3. Balance the Onus of Responsibility: Networks and internal staff groups can provide vital spaces for colleagues to come together and share their lived experiences. These spaces can also provide crucial insights for your organisation, but it shouldn’t become the expectation that they can provide solutions for you. We’ve seen a pattern of LGBT+ staff networks being overburdened with inclusion responsibilities that fall outside of their core work, with little support.
It can be a lot of pressure to feel you have to represent your entire community or have all the answers. It’s great to include staff networks to champion your organisation’s voice in your DEI development, but you should also work with experts like Galop to balance this responsibility and support your staff to develop and gain best practices too.
4. Prioritise Trauma-Informed Practices:When engaging with vulnerable communities, it’s crucial to adopt trauma-informed approaches. But what do we mean when we say ‘trauma-informed’?Trauma-informed practices consider the lived experiences of minoritised people and ensure that any engagement — whether that’s research, campaigns, or product design — is designed with potential trauma exposure in mind to ensure and prioritise safety.
Remember, we're here to help:We are always
happy to have a entirely free conversation on your LGBT+ development goals and what would make the most sustainable impact.
