Why inclusion and diversity are important to Ricardo

Although this year’s Pride events are moving online, they continue to act as a powerful reminder of the importance of celebrating inclusion and diversity, as well as challenging discrimination.

As a global consultancy working across a range of disciplines, from engineering to the environment, we recognise the benefit that diversity and inclusion brings to the business. It provides richer insight and experiences into the way we work with our customers and helps support innovation.

Most importantly, however, inclusion and diversity are important at Ricardo because of our people, including those who might be thinking of joining us in the future.

We aim to:

• Listen to our people and be open to challenge
• Support our people including those who call out discrimination and those who may be affected themselves
• Raise awareness and increase understanding of diversity, equality and inclusion
• Celebrate and support key events
• Attract and retain a diverse workforce who feel included and treated fairly

We have these aims because we care about our people and want to make our company a supportive, fair and equitable place to work.

Our working practices support these aims, including our emphasis on employee voice, our flexible working options, our interview training, our networks and STEM activities, as well as our ongoing learning and development.

The global pandemic has forced all of us into a different context and without doubt that has brought unique challenges. But this new world has also brought benefits as we take the opportunity to have more social check-ins with colleagues. We’ve got to know one another better over the past few months and this has led to more meaningful relationships and mutual respect.

Like many organisations, we recognise that we must do more and that action is crucial, especially in enabling us to achieve our mission of ‘creating a world fit for the future’, because where inclusion and diversity has room to flourish then so too will our business and our people.

Dave Shemmans (Chief Executive Officer)

26 June 2020