The Business of Diversity

A new CIPR report, The Business of Diversity - How performance can be improved by embracing diversity, has been launched following the Institute's first diversity conference.

The report aims to help PR practitioners to understand the business case for embracing social diversity and includes:

• Findings from the recent CIPR/CEBR survey, benchmarking for the first time just how diverse the UK PR profession
  actually is
   
• Information to demonstrate why taking a positive attitude towards diversity is good for business, offering practical recommendations for how practitioners can be more effective in this area
   
• Case studies from BT, Tesco and Davies Associates and other resources to help organisations in their work on diversity

Chris Genasi FCIPR, Chair CIPR Diversity Programme, believes that PR has a crucial role to play: "It makes clear business sense to engage with our changing society - and that means understanding, and being sensitive to, cultural beliefs, disability, sexual orientation, age, ethnicity, gender and so on. While our profession has long accepted the moral case for diversity, it has failed to present the business case. We hope that this report is the first step towards addressing that failure."

The CIPR half-day conference, Diversity Means Business, saw the launch of the report alongside a thought-provoking afternoon of presentations focusing on communicating in an increasingly diverse UK.

In her forward to the diversity report, Zena Martin - Managing Director, Acknowledge Communications, a member of the CIPR Diversity Steering Group and guest speaker at the conference - argues that the UK PR industry is becoming dangerously homogenous: "Walk into any agency, and with only a handful of exceptions, you will see very few ethnic minorities or people with disabilities at any level; and hardly any one over 50 unless they sit on the Board.

"The PR industry will have to work much harder to make itself more diverse, which means it will have to be committed to it... Diversity is the only way forward if the UK is to successfully compete in an increasingly global market."

The Business of Diversity is available for CIPR members to download in the Member Area of the CIPR website. Non members can purchase the report for £50+VAT via the Publications section.