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Mon, May 24, 2021

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Taking a stance on diversity

At The OR Society, equality, diversity and inclusion are at the core of who we are. Our commitment to these values is unwavering – across everything we do.  

We know that having varied perspectives helps generate better ideas to solve the complex problems of a changing world. We want our membership to be reflective of the communities OR supports; helping to maximise its impact. We want our diverse membership to feel they belong as part of our vibrant OR community.  

Diversity, equality, and inclusion are central to achieving our mission for OR and the OR SocietyTo help achieve our ambition, we have set out the diversity strategy below:  

  • Inclusion unleashes the power of diversity. The OR Society will focus its efforts on inclusion, being considerate, asking members’ views of how we are doing, and working collectively to remove the barriers we are able to. 
  • We are reflective of the community we support. We strive to make the membership of The OR Society more representative of the UK as a whole. We encourage the Profession to do this also with role models, representation and intersectionality. 
  • We celebrate visible and non-visible forms of diversity. Beyond the protected characteristics we will include other aspects such as neurodiversity, introversion/extroversion, practitioner / academic, geographic spread, social-economic background, and other non-visible characteristics.  
  • Together we achieve more. Diversity, equity, and inclusion is our collective responsibility, and it will take a team effort, from the OR community, to achieve our EDI ambition. 
  • Greater impact is achieved with focus. The OR Society will take a strategic approach to EDI, rather than trying to do everything at once. It will focus on agreed areas, delivered via the ORS EDI Programme of work. 
  • We demonstrate our commitment to EEDI by doing meaningful actions.  

As part of this work, we are joining with a group of member bodies, coordinating through Memberwise, who are taking part in a social media blackout, in response to social media platforms failing to stamp out racist abuse on their websites.  

Andy Burman, CEO of The British Dietetic Association, explains: Earlier this month, sport organisations across the UK took part in a social media blackout to protest about the persistent racism, harassment and abuse players and staff are subjected to through social media. They called upon these platforms to address this issue and take meaningful steps to resolve it.  

We are disappointed to see that these companies have failed to take action to protect their users, or to demonstrate that they are committed to preventing and removing abusive and hateful content from their platforms. The BDA stands with our members, along with our colleagues in the health, sport, association and trade union sectors in challenging racist abuse online.  

As part of our continuing commitment to be an anti-racist organisation, we are announcing a collective social media boycott this coming weekend, alongside our partner organisations and trade unions. We are committed to advocating for and protecting our members in all circumstances and will continue to challenge ourselves and others to do better.  

Our accounts will therefore remain silent from 3pm on Friday 28 May until 11.59pm on Monday 31 May in protest at the inadequate action taken by social media platforms on this issue.” 

Our team and board were also recently inspired by this video from John Lewis, that encapsulates how important diversity is, and how far society needs to go to achieve equality.  

Watch the video here

Nicola Morrill, The OR Society Diversity Champion, said: “I am proud of the OR Society and it's EDI ambition - it's central to who we are. This involves standing up for what we believe in. For instance, being involved in the social media blackout. There is just no need for racial abuse anywhere. I found the John Lewis video a really powerful tool to help me with my learning in this area. I encourage you to watch it.” 

To find out more about The OR Society’s diversity work, you can visit our webpage here.