To mark International Women’s Day and it’s theme of #inspireinclusion our new female CEO, Sophie shares her thoughts on fostering an inclusive community at FoodCycle.
A key phrase that we use at FoodCycle is ‘everyone is welcome’ and we work hard to ensure this applies to everyone involved including guests, volunteers and employees.
What would you say are the key things that you do at FoodCycle to ensure that everyone feels included?
Firstly, we have an everyone is welcome policy for guests that eat with us at our community meals. This means that we don’t ask any questions and we don’t need to know why you are attending our meals, we just ask that everyone eating with us respects others around them.
This means that our meals are a real mix of people, some attend because they are lonely some attend because they are struggling to buy the food they need. This is something that we think is really special about FoodCycle, people have the opportunity to meet people that they might not usually get to meet. In fact, 91% of our guests said they have met people from different backgrounds.
Our volunteers are similar to our guests, people volunteer with FoodCycle for a myriad of reasons. We have people who are in retirement and want to do something with their extra time, students use it as an opportunity to boost their CV and people will often use it as an opportunity to meet others within their local community.
Volunteering can often feel overwhelming so we’ve made our sign-up process as straightforward as possible and we have a really easy booking system so you can book on to volunteer at a session. We also have processes in place to support those that may need additional support or reasonable adjustments.
We also offer a range of training and resources to our volunteers to support them in their roles and help them to promote and support our inclusive culture. To support our volunteers even further we offer guidance for FoodCycle staff around delivering inclusive volunteering, including how to recruit and support volunteers; equality and diversity training; undertaking accessibility audits of premises; and where to improve knowledge around particular health conditions.
Then when it comes to our staff we have lots of things in place to help foster an inclusive and open culture and ultimately make FoodCycle a really enjoyable place to work. We have a remote-first working environment, with many of our staff working from home but everyone has access to our London office if they want/need it. Our flexible working policy means that people can work in a way that suits them best, which is especially important for people who might have additional needs, children or other responsibilities.
We’re all about creating strong communities at FoodCycle so we have things in place to help support that such as bi-annual all staff, in-person get-togethers. We also have fortnightly online all staff meetings, online social sips, encourage regional get-togethers as well as an active social committee who have recently started an online book club!
What advice would you give to others who are trying to be more inclusive?
The first thing I would say is listen, it’s only hearing from those that are in the roles that we can really learn about what is needed. We encourage an open culture at FoodCycle, seeking regular feedback from employees and volunteer on ways that we can do better.
I think the important thing to do is talk to your staff. Not everyone wants the same arrangement depending on their career stages, commitments outside of work or working styles. It’s about trying to think about different approaches to ensure people’s desires are met; to make sure they feel as productive as possible, which only helps further the mission of the charity.
I really believe that the success of our organisation depends on the people you work with, and we recognise that recruiting volunteers and employees from a range of backgrounds creates a workforce with a wealth of experience, where creativity and valuing difference in others thrives.
