People everywhere are different – which should be something we can all celebrate. At Home Instead, we believe that everyone – whatever their culture, religion, sexual orientation, physical or mental ability, age or race – has the right to be treated with respect and dignity. It’s a key aspect of our corporate philosophy that we aren’t prepared to compromise on and it will continue to be a priority across our home care franchise.
So we were delighted to hear that our commitment to equality and diversity has been recognised in the Financial Times’ annual listing of Diversity Leaders. In fact, we came sixth in the healthcare sector, making us the highest scoring home care company in Europe!
The list was compiled after an online survey was conducted of over 100,000 employees across 15,000 European companies in 16 countries. The study was carried out by Statista, the Financial Times’ research partner. Statista assessed the employees’ perception of their company’s inclusiveness and their efforts to promote diversity. It looked at issues such as gender balance, openness to all forms of sexual orientation, race and ethnicity, disability and age. The employees were asked to rate the extent to which they thought their employer promoted diversity, based on a scale ranging from zero to ten.
From the 15,000 companies that were assessed, 850 businesses with the highest scores formed the final list. Martin Jones, Home Instead UK’s CEO, remarks: “I am thrilled that Home Instead is recognised in this list. It’s testament to the wonderful culture we have established across our network of franchise offices.”
Indeed, we’re all very grateful to have been recognised for our attitude towards diversity. Our equality policies and our emphasis on inclusiveness also encourage our franchisees to celebrate equality and diversity. This is highlighted by the fact that many of them mark occasions such as Pride Month, International Women’s Day, Older Person’s Day and Diwali. These are all embraced and enjoyed by both our employees and their clients.
So how do we encourage inclusivity? We ensure that everyone within Home Instead – including our franchise owners, Care Professionals, other employees and, of course, the clients – is treated with dignity and respect. And when we recruit new employees or franchisees, we don’t just look at their values, skills, knowledge and experience. We also pay attention to their attitude towards equality, diversity and equal opportunities when making our hiring decisions.
Ultimately, we’d love to see a world in which everyone is treated fairly, cared for and appreciated as an individual. That’s why we celebrate the diversity and multicultural nature of our workforce and client base. We always want to ensure that people’s differences are valued and enable everyone to thrive at work.
And there’s more! With our key mission being to change the face of ageing, we truly believe that this can only happen if we also fully embrace equality and diversity. So our Equality, Diversity and Equal Opportunities Policy is one of the most important pledges that everyone signs and agrees to before joining our family. To keep the ball rolling, we continue to educate employees about equality and diversity through team discussions, e-learning modules and specific training sessions. As part of their franchise support, our franchisees receive guidance on how they can keep this important topic high on the agenda and make their businesses accepting and welcoming environments.