—Hanover receives stage 2 accreditation for commitment to diversity—
Hanover (Scotland) Housing Association has achieved the Investors in Diversity (IiD) Stage 2 standard from the National Centre for Diversity.
The IiD standard is given to organisations that demonstrate cultural improvements around openness, understanding and acceptance of all people it works with. It aims to transform practices and behaviours by promoting greater communication, discussion and engagement around the areas of equality, diversity and inclusion.
To qualify for the standard, Hanover worked very closely with the National Centre for Diversity and a number of key stakeholders including staff, residents, committee members and other service users.
The Association began its journey towards accreditation in November 2012 when a range of detailed information gathering and analysis exercises took place. The results of this work demonstrated how much was already in place with a number of recommended improvements which have and will form the Equality Strategy action plan. Work on these improvements has already commenced and with support from the National Centre for Diversity progress will be reviewed in February 2015.
Helen Murdoch, Hanover’s Chief Executive, said: “I’m delighted we’ve received the Investors in Diversity accreditation and I’d like to thank all staff, residents and committee members who helpfully gave their time to answer questions about their experiences with Hanover.
“Achieving this accreditation perfectly demonstrates Hanover’s commitment to promoting equality diversity and inclusion in all areas of what we do, both for our service users and our staff. In the longer term, many of our stakeholders will benefit from this achievement as it will allow us to continue to recruit staff of the highest quality whilst giving applicants confidence that we are committed to diversity across the organisations.”
Andrew Aitken, Hanover’s Director of HR, said “This is a fantastic achievement for Hanover and its stakeholders. Everyone benefits from this achievement as already our work towards the accreditation has helped Hanover create a real, visible culture of openness and acceptance which helps us stand out as a great place to work, as well as a desirable organisation to do business with.
“We will now be working with the National Centre for Diversity to maintain our accreditation by moving forward with the suggested improvements and continuing with our commitment to our own medium-term Equality Strategy and action plan.”
