Creating a community where underrepresented employees felt they are represented, have a voice and are valued.

In 2019, we engaged with colleagues across ICON and carried out focus groups to understand what diversity and inclusion meant to them. Based on the feedback our colleagues shared with us, we developed the role of a D&I Advocate. We sought applications from all regions inviting colleagues who were interested in supporting our D&I efforts to become Advocates and champion diversity and inclusion in their teams and service lines at every opportunity.   

Colleagues were asked to complete a short application form, sharing what value they could bring to the role and why D&I was important to them. We received over 100 applications and carried out interviews. It was important to us to have good representation from a gender, ethnicity, and abilities perspective, as well as regional and service line representation. We were so impressed by our candidates that we selected 40 D&I Advocates, which was more than we had originally planned! Once we had our Advocates selected, we invited them to our first ever D&I Advocate training session where we talked about diversity and inclusion, the business case for creating diverse teams, why it was important to ICON and what we hoped to achieve. We also took time to outline the role of the D&I Advocate and our expectations of them.  

Our D&I Advocates quickly mobilised across ICON and created our five core Community Groups (or ERGs).    

They are PRIDE (supporting our LGBTQ+ colleagues), SPACE (supporting parents and carers everywhere), EmbRACE (ethnicity and race), DAWN (disability awareness network) and NOW (Networking Organisation for Women).  

The Advocates launched these groups and set their initial goals and aims. Today, each of the groups has grown exponentially and gone from strength to strength in the last four years. They have worked hard to educate our colleagues and raise awareness about the importance of creating a culture of inclusion.  

We are proud to say that we now have hundreds of active D&I Advocates across our 5 community groups and we see this number growing every day!