Our commitment
All entities within The Sovini Group are fully committed to Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion. We will promote a positive culture of valuing and celebrating diversity and accepting and including people regardless of their personal characteristics or circumstances. Whoever you are, you can expect to be treated fairly, with respect and free from discrimination. Our work environment will be welcoming, friendly and a place for all our colleagues to thrive in.
Read our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Annual Report for 2023 HERE.
Here is an overview of how we maintain our inclusive culture:
- We have developed policies and practices that support diverse groups of people working together
- We have an established an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Steering Group and Forum
- We have signed up to the Navajo LGBTQI+ Charter Mark
- We are an accredited Mindful Employer, recognising our commitment to better mental health at work
- We are proud to be a Disability Confident Employer
- Showing our support for national campaigns, including Women in Construction Week, Black History Month and Pride Month.
- Our Empower campaign raises awareness and provides support on female related topics, including menopause awareness
- We deliver bespoke diversity training courses to increase awareness
- Colleagues across the organisation are encouraged to display their chosen pronouns on emails and in our employee app
Read The Sovini Group’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Policy Statement in full HERE.
A strategic approach
We have developed a Group-wide ‘Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy’ that incorporates all Group members and we believe this sends out an important message about how we work collaboratively to achieve what we collectively believe in.
The strategy includes a series of high-level strategic aims as set out below:
- Provide accessible services free from any barriers, real or perceived, that are available for all groups, are tailored to individual needs and address inequalities
- Go beyond compliance with all legal and regulatory requirements by developing and adopting best practice
- Promote good relations between all groups with protected characteristics
- Maintain and develop strong working culture where there is equality of opportunity for all groups, everyone feels valued / included and diversity is actively encouraged and appreciated
- Ensure equality, diversity and inclusion are embedded in all business practices and relations, internally / externally and through supply chain management
- Provide strong leadership and influence to promote equalities issues at the local, regional and national scale
- Never ignore – where we see discrimination, victimisation, harassment or differential treatment as a result of personal characteristics we take affirmative, corrective action
- Never stand still and seek year-on-year improvement and innovation
Each year the strategy will be subject to an annual refresh and we will provide an overview on the actions we have undertaken (our objectives) to make progress against the high level strategic aims. Read about the progress we made during 2022/23 HERE.
Inclusion Squad
The Sovini Group’s Inclusion Squad is a thriving environment, full of like-minded colleagues with a collective ambition of celebrating diversity.
We currently have 28 Diversity Champions whose role is to promote and improve diversity at The Sovini Group, to create an inclusive culture for all employees. Our champions pledge to:
- be a champion for diversity
- identify challenges, barriers, gaps or issues and make suggestions for improvements
- monitor progress of the diversity action plan
- deliver corporate messages to employees
- provide feedback from employees
- discuss and conduct the planning and delivery of activities, events and training
- encourage engagement across The Sovini Group
- review policies and practices within The Sovini Group to ensure that they are compliant with legislation and in-line with best practice
- consider the impact of any new legislation or any new government policies.
- provide support and updates relating to EDI accreditations
