Equality and diversity
00:00 Woman
We are.
00:01 Woman
A company.
00:02 Man
Of many faces.
00:03 Woman
Both on screen.
00:04 Man
And off.
00:05 Man
But exactly.
00:05 Woman
How diverse.
00:07 Man
Are we?
00:08 Man
As a business?
00:09 Woman
As a broadcaster?
00:10 Woman
As an employer?
00:11Woman
And why.
00:12 Woman
Is it.
00:13 Woman
So important?
00:18 Miranda Wayland
When people think about diversity the most obvious ones would be cultural diversity and disability, they're the ones that you see quite quickly. What we're trying to do is to encapsulate the wider breadth of diversity which includes sexuality, family portrayal and gender.
00:33 Bruce Robertson
We're a creative business. Creativity comes from a sort of clash of different backgrounds, different thoughts, different ideas, so it's important that not only do we understand who our audience is but we have an employee population that reflects that audience. And we want to be a great place to work, and being a great place to work means that people have opportunities and regardless of your sexuality, your gender, your ethnicity, your disability that you can progress within the company and that you know, you are made to feel welcome and a part of the family.
01:08 Miranda Wayland
There's been some real significant changes in terms of how we collate and capture the data just to make sure that diversity is being measured accurately. Sexuality is for the first time, being recorded in terms of what our workforce looks like. I think there is a misconception that because we are broadcasters that we're naturally gay friendly. Well we would never be able to accurately reflect that unless we ask the questions.
01:30 Miranda Wayland
As a broadcaster to be a part of the top 100 and the only broadcaster to do that I think that in itself speaks volumes about the journey that we've taken and that we're working alongside the sexuality element of our business to make sure that it's inclusive to everybody.
01:45 Bruce Robertson
We've now got a central recruitment team and previously recruitment was one of the areas that we really needed to improve upon because I don't think we took the time to step back and think, okay we have a vacancy, we need to recruit somebody, let's really think about potentially how we can attract somebody from another area of diversity, somebody with a disability. On screen there are opportunities to develop new on screen talent. If you think about the key soaps, you know they are some of the most popular programming that we have in the country, and they need to make sure that they reflect, you know, the diversity of the UK population. And that people watching those shows feel like they can resonate with the storylines.
02:24 Miranda Wayland
The other thing that we've managed to implement over the last twelve months has been the introduction of our talent champions. They volunteer their time, so this initiative sits alongside their full-time role and through that they're able to network really effectively.
02:37 Bruce Robertson
One of the talent champions has helped us to look at onscreen in a completely different way because the industry very much looks at onscreen portrayal. But what we haven't looked at is the population mix of the viewers that are watching and whether what we are doing resonates with them.
02:54 Miranda Wayland
For us the long term goal around the diversity agenda is to absolutely have it embedded within our business.
03:00 Bruce Robertson
And we create a culture where it just happens.
03:04 Miranda Wayland
So there isn't a segregation or a separate arm to our business.
03:07 Bruce Robertson
I think if we're able to collectively harness more energy and more engagement from everyone who works in ITV we could close that gap.
Duration: 03:17
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