If Only my Work Colleagues knew about this Area of Inclusion...
After WCW in 2020, I contacted our HR manager, EDI manager & health & wellbeing manager to highlight that there was no support for staff who are childless in my workplace. I suggested that this is an area which needs to be addressed by management in staff health and wellbeing as well as in the equality, diversity and inclusion team.
Since then, I have had several meetings with these managers, and there has been some progress in raising awareness about being CNBC in my workplace.
Today staff can find links on our staff intranet for:
1. A local support service
2. A self-help programme
3. A webinar series
All for people who are childless not by choice.
Most importantly World Childless Week 2021 was advertised as an event on our intranet! These are huge steps forward from where we were in 2020.
Last month I was contacted by management in the health & wellbeing service who suggested that as part of World Childless Week 2022 we promote a ‘coffee and connect’ morning at work. This will be a space for staff who are CNBC to come together to discuss issues & provide suggestions, requests & supports for managers to build on.
I know it will be challenging to get even a few staff members to participate in this event and so I had to think really hard about ways to encourage staff to attend the ‘coffee & connect’ morning. I wanted to share something which is clear and is not too time consuming to read and so I designed this poster (see below) to go along with the invitation to this event in my workplace.
I hope this will be a start in encouraging staff to think about this area of diversity and inclusion in workplaces like mine where pronatalism is massive.
Thank you for reading this.
Fiona Curley
Photo by Campaign Creators on Unsplash