March 04 2022
In this week’s blog post Caroline Ward and Chloe Leach-O’Connell, co-founders of the Inclusive Employment Journey (IEJ), write about what the IEJ is and how people can use the resources available.
The IEJ has landed!
Last week we were really pleased to launch the Inclusive Employment Journey on behalf of the Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) Bus Group, all part of Women in Transport. We began meeting with our key partners at CPT way back before the pandemic, and although like everything else it stopped us in our tracks, we were delighted to be able to push forward over the last 12 months to bring the project to life.
In a nutshell, the Inclusive Employment Journey (IEJ) is a database of the very best, and latest projects which represent first-class practice with diversity and inclusion at their heart. The website features case studies which cover every step of employment in the bus and coach industry from community engagement and recruitment, through to support with life once you leave. Basically, it tracks the whole journey!
We believe collaboration is key: by working together we can improve the perception of roles in bus and coach, as well as improving the overall culture that will help us retain talent. And this is exactly what the IEJ does! It shows ideas that help identify and develop the diverse talents within our own industry, helping secure the supervisors, managers and leaders of the future. The IEJ supports us all by demonstrating ways in which inclusive organisations can make this happen.
We work as volunteers, the D&I Bus Group is run solely to help us share knowledge to help accelerate diversity, which in turn will help the overall performance of our industry which we are so very passionate about. The IEJ is a completely free resource for people to use, whether that’s middle or senior management or our leaders. We hope that people take advantage of all the amazing case studies and take inspiration to try new ways or start looking at things from a new perspective. We want you to share the IEJ far and wide, and we want you to be a part of it too. This is just the start and the IEJ will grow organically, so please keep sharing your case studies. Whatever the outcome, all learning is helpful!
We also wanted to mention our sponsors who we couldn’t do this without, we are so grateful for their support. It’s great to see the breadth of sponsor organisations too, it truly shows the importance of the discussion throughout bus and coach operations, as well as the supply chain and those wider stakeholders too.
Overall, it’s been absolutely fantastic to see the IEJ become a reality. We worked really hard making it happen and we’re so proud to be at a point now that we’re here sharing it with our peers and colleagues.