Working together to create change

Working in equality, diversity, inclusion and belonging 

EDIB stands for ‘Equality, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging’ and knowing that acronym is probably the best way to understand my role. I used to be Head of EDIB alongside Business Development Manager for humanities and social sciences titles, but we quickly realized that EDIB was not a small area. It garnered more and more attention as we got involved with various issues and needed to be a full-time role. 

For the most part now, I am a conduit and a voice of representation: I sit on EDIB committees and groups for our journals and marketing teams, and the academic board. I provide guidance on areas that need more attention and require discussions around recruitment, retention and EDIB guidance for our products. I’m a proponent of the squiggly career. I looked at my skills and saw how they could be transferred into another area of the business as opposed to just going up the ladder.

Building a sense of belonging at work

I believe that equality, diversity, inclusion and belonging should be something that's embedded into every organisation. We should constantly be thinking about what diversity and inclusion look like. What does it mean to belong and what does belonging look like? If you don’t feel you belong somewhere as your whole self, then you’re not able to be an active person in the workforce and you won’t be very effective to your company. 

We should constantly be thinking about what diversity and inclusion look like. What does it mean to belong and what does belonging look like?

 

The world is constantly changing and we should all be constant with learning. I love speaking to the younger people within this organisation because they keep me on my toes and I learn so much from them; they are at the forefront of change. At the end of the day, we are just trying to get people to be kind and accepting. We’ve had some very honest and challenging conversations within this organization which I think is a great thing because we learn from each other during those interactions.

At Cambridge, we're currently looking at how we recruit our people and identifying what it means to be a fair recruiter. We have a hybrid working schedule and flexible working for individuals - it’s really important to be agile. And when it comes to retention, if people feel like they've reached the plateau of their career in one area, how can we then transition that into another area of the business? It makes sense to try and keep the people that we train, so we really try to nurture that loyalty and make sure that we’re keeping people who can see a future within Cambridge as much as possible. We also don’t want to lose the wealth of knowledge that our people have.

Championing diversity in Academic publishing

In Academic publishing, we’re diversifying our author base by looking at different avenues to creative diversity, for example, going to a new conference to meet new authors there. I don’t think you can have diversity of product without diversity of people so we are also considering race, socio-economic background, education, sexuality and neurodiversity.

I don’t think you can have diversity of product without diversity of people so we are also considering race, socio-economic background, education, sexuality and neurodiversity.

 

We’re about to launch our global equality, diversity, inclusion and belonging strategy and our product principles for the Academic publishing group. I’m also discussing a mentorship programme at the moment, along with a name change policy and creating ways for our authors to identify their pronouns optionally.

Promoting equality, diversity, inclusion and belonging in the workplace

At the end of the day, your history is your learned behaviour: how you approach things, your ideas, your thoughts and your decisions are all because of your history or upbringing. So we need to look at how we get people to consciously think about diversity and inclusion and how their words and behaviour affect others. I’m really proud that Cambridge University Press & Assessment has rolled out conscious inclusion training as part of our EDIB Academy for our colleagues.

These highlights are taken from Valerie’s interview with the Supadu website, which you can read in full here.