New Leeds company sets out to help employers avoid costly discrimination claims
A new Leeds company aims to help businesses and public sector organisations to change their corporate culture in order to improve performance and avoid costly litigation and damaging publicity as a result of discrimination in the workplace. Recent high profile cases have included a £635,000 payout to an Indian doctor who suffered discrimination within the NHS and a £500,000 payout to a black police officer who was victimised in the Metropolitan Police.
Diverse Culture provides employers with e-learning products that can be used to train employees to value and understand diversity and equality. Its portfolio will include e-learning products to cover race, age, disability, gender and sexual orientation.
“Our training programmes use psychology to actually help people to look at things in a new way and change the way they think and act,” explained Steve Iball, business development director of Diverse Culture. “Too much of traditional training simply tries to tell people what they should and shouldn’t do, without really helping them to understand why and improve the way they act.
“Another problem that we’ve solved is that many employers didn’t provide comprehensive equality training for all their employees because it was too expensive and too time consuming. By providing the training on CD-ROM, the internet or an organisation’s own in-house network it is much more cost effective and means that people can do the course when they choose and at their own pace. It also means that you have an audit trail to prove that staff have completed the training, which can provide vital evidence if any discrimination incidents should occur,” continued Steve.
The new business, based in Leeds city centre, has been supported by West Yorkshire Ventures which offers a specialist programme to support start-up businesses with serious growth potential.
“Diverse Culture is focusing on an important and growing market as more and more companies realise the value of a diverse workforce. Its investment in research and development has resulted in an innovative product that provides real benefits to its customers,” commented Brian Pettinger, consultant for West Yorkshire Ventures. |
