Pledge Actions

No matter how much time you have to spare, you can always help improve inclusion and diversity.
Below are some quick wins to help you implement the pledge, such as joining our ABCD and WWAG groups.
Or, if you have a bit more time, why not look at improving your cultural awareness, or becoming a better ally?

Quick Wins

• Join the RPS Workforce Wellbeing Action Group (WWAG) - this will help you understand the causes of poor mental health and wellbeing in the workplace, build co-operation to improve wellbeing for pharmacists, and champion changes for future generations of the workforce
• Join the RPS Action in Belonging Culture and Diversity - talk through ideas, get involved to create change and build networks
• Identify your unconscious biases - implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html
• Ask others how they would like to be addressed - what are their preferred pronouns? Check with them how you pronounce their name
• Ask colleagues how they’re feeling, and, if they’re happy to share, actively listen and ensure they feel heard. Give them space to share as
  much or as little as they comfortable with
• Be mindful of your colleagues: if an individual needs help, be aware of support services, so you can signpost to and destigmatise accessing
  help
• If you work outside traditional working hours, add an email signature saying I work flexitime and don’t expect a response out of hours or This email is sent at a time that is convenient for me, which may be outside normal working hours. Please, feel free to respond when it is convenient for you.

Other ways to help:

• Do you know what wellbeing support services, training resources and workshops are available in your organisation? Find out, so you can offer support and access services when required
• Does your organisation, department or team provide Wellbeing Ambassadors/Mental Health First Aiders/Champions? If so, find out how you can become one
• Celebrate religious festivals or national heritage days/months – our calendar of events shows when they are (look out for RPS activities celebrating these events!)
• Become an Inclusion and Diversity Champion for your team, department and/or organisation
• Does your organisation offer Freedom to Speak Up Guardians? If so, nominate yourself for your team, department and/or organisation.

Improve your cultural awareness, and provide more inclusive patient care:

Access cultural awareness training to deliver inclusive professional practice and ensure you understand the diversity of the community you serve

• CPPE – Seeing you better: Culturally Competent person-centred care learning campaign – this campaign will help you consider the beliefs, values and cultures of the people you see in practice, and to demonstrate dignity and respect
• An Inclusive Pharmacy Practice Resource for all pharmacy professionals– a resource pack to help NHS pharmacy teams better understand and interpret local population data, especially from ethnic minority communities
• Training and Education Resources on cultural understanding and awareness – a list of current training and resources on culturally competent healthcare delivery.

Be a better ally

Educate yourself on the diversity of your colleagues

• Join staff diversity networks
• Learn about the different experiences of different groups through the resources listed below under Find our more about Inclusion and Wellbeing
• Encourage members of under-represented groups to join national boards and advisory group and improve inclusion of diversity across all levels of pharmacy
• Have a zero-tolerance stance for racism; actively speak up about discrimination that you witness or experience. If someone shares their experience of discrimination with you, support them through the situation; for suggestions, read our antiracist statement
• Learn about microaggressions –unsure what they are? Access our disability, race and gender microaggression resources
• Coach or mentor someone from an under-represented group using your experience and knowledge – sign up to our RPS Mentoring Platform
• NHS England and NHS Improvement have produced this simple guide to allyship
• Looking for further help? 23 Films, Podcasts and Books To Be a Better Ally at Work

We can help you improve inclusion and diversity in your teams. We've divided up supporting actions into quick things you can do, such as introducing a team huddle, and longer term actions, such as how to be a more authentic leader.

Quick wins

Create a more inclusive culture in your team:

• Introduce a daily team meeting to check on wellbeing, or adopt a regular wellbeing discussion to nurture a caring team culture - we have some top tips for Building positive workplace relations
• Undertake team building exercises to:
  • Understand the diverse roles of your team members and their daily duties
  • Become familiar with your team’s backgrounds and their heritage
• During one-to-ones and appraisals:
  • Check on each individual and their wellbeing
  • Have a one to-one conversation with every team member. Be culturally sensitive and try to understand individual stories; consider how you can empower them to bring their authentic self to work
  • Identify the skills and strengths of team members; give them projects that utilise their skills to help them thrive and benefit the organisation
• Support your team to proactively access wellbeing support services, training resources and workshops available in your organisation and nationally
• When making decisions, enable diverse voices to be represented, heard, and valued by ensuring there is diversity around the table
• Encourage the celebration of religious festivals and national heritage celebrations; ask people to share what their festival means, or bring in food from their culture
• Nominate an Inclusion and Diversity champion for your team, department and/or organisation
• Support your team’s work-life balance. Can their working hours be achieved around other commitments, e.g., caring, rather than the traditional approach of doing all work hours in one block?
• For new starters, stress the importance of mental health and wellbeing, and how to access support. Include inclusion and diversity topics, such as authentic leadership and the importance of cultural awareness to deliver inclusive person-centred care.

Be a more authentic leader

• Forbes offers Five Ways to Become a More Inclusive Leader
• Our RPS e-Library has the e-book How to be an Inclusive Leader
• If offered by your organisation:
  • Encourage members of your team to nominate themselves to be a Wellbeing Ambassador/Mental Health First Aider/Champion for your team or department
  • Encourage your team to become Freedom to Speak Up Guardians for your team, department and/or organisation.

If you're part of senior management, we've got some ideas to ensure a culture of belonging within your organisation.
These include policies and procedures to implement, as well as ways of thinking about organisational culture and data.

Here are some of the things you can do:
Policies and Procedures

• Commit to having and implementing policies and procedures - ensure everyone is aware of them, can easily access them, and that they are implemented fairly across different groups, taking individual needs into consideration
• Flexible Working Policies and Procedures - to support work-life balance and support closing the gender pay gap; these should cover long-term conditions, disability, caring responsibilities, and women’s health
• Family Friendly Polices - to help balance and benefit both work and family life; might include flexible working, enhanced parental leave, and additional childcare provision; enable more equal sharing of work and childcare so both men and women can fulfil their potential at work
• Gender Identity Polices - to provide a supportive environment to recognise an individual’s gender identity
• Women’s Health Policy - to consider the impact of women’s health in the workplace and any support required (this should be inclusive of transmen and transwomen)
• Fairer Hiring Polices - so all groups can progress on their merit and capability, regardless of background, age, disability, pregnancy or maternity status
• Raising Concerns Policy - to raise concerns without a fear of consequences. Ensure it is upheld and actioned fairly and properly when concerns are raised, and it is clear what behaviours are acceptable and unacceptable
• Create a safe and welcoming culture - empower individuals to look after their own wellbeing, be more inclusive and celebrate diversity
• Value everyone’s diversity in backgrounds and roles that make up a pharmacy team; acknowledge contributions and celebrate national events and wellbeing campaigns (see our calendar of events)
• Encourage individuals to become Mental Health First Aiders/Champions and Freedom to Speak Up Guardians for your organisation/department - clearly signpost how people can access these
• When recruiting - ask about Inclusion and Diversity in the interview, and ensure the interview panel is diverse
• Accessibility - become more disability inclusive; promote open discussions about accessibility needs and consider the accessibility of the department, e.g., access to disabled toilets.

Do you know your organisational culture?

• Introduce questions on Equality, Inclusion and Diversity and Mental Health and Wellbeing into staff satisfaction surveys and be prepared to act on the results
• Take steps to identify the baseline within the organisation of what behaviours and values people would like to see, and consider the steps needed to get the desired culture and attitudes. Working with HR teams or accessing nationally available resources
• Language is important! Use inclusive language, in guidelines, recruitment documents and polices to ensure everyone feels included. For example, gender-neutral language such as people or they/them rather than gendered language such as he/she.

It’s all about data:

• Endeavour to collect Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) data or put in systems to start to collect the data which is important to help identify how diverse your workforce is and identify diversity gaps
• Produce gender, ethnicity and disability pay gap reports to identify diversity gaps in the senior leadership teams and put together an action plan to address these gaps

Organisational access to training:

• Provide access and proactively signpost to national and RPS mental health and wellbeing resources to staff more prominently, e.g. introducing them into the induction and including them in regular updates to staff - find out more on our Your Wellbeing page
• Give people the tools or training to help recognise when someone is not OK and know how best to handle the situation depending on the person's needs
• Provide access to and proactively signpost to unconscious bias or equality, diversity and inclusion training
• Support access to cultural awareness and understanding training to ensure the delivery of inclusive person-centred care. Including sharing access to RPS workshops, events and CPPE training programmes amongst company networks to support professional development and awareness.

Organisational access to support:

• Provide access and proactively signpost to a diverse range of services for Wellbeing Support for different needs
• Clearly signpost organisational resources to support people with a disability and ensuring individuals are able to access support such as the government's Access to Work and the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS)
• To help and support employers and employees to establish good wellbeing practice within the workplace, make use of our Workforce Wellbeing in the Workplace support tool.