To all women in PR and comms,
In February, we unveiled our Shadow Board for this year which fell short of representing women from racially diverse backgrounds. We are sorry for the hurt this caused and we know this simply wasn’t good enough from an organisation which exists to help ALL women rise to leadership positions in our industry. We are determined to do better.
Firstly, thank you to the many people from across the industry who have taken the time to engage with us both publicly and behind the scenes to offer your ideas and input to help us be more diverse and inclusive. We know this takes emotional energy and we appreciate your time and generosity.
We know this isn’t something that we will solve overnight. It needs 100% commitment from us to do the work and learning, and to seek the voices and input from the communities we seek to support, to be effective. We want to be transparent about work in progress so we can be held accountable by the women in our industry and to ourselves. With this in mind, we are sharing an update on the work we have done so far.
Our mission is to increase the number and diversity of women in positions of leadership in PR and communications. To do that we need to be an organisation that engages, represents and advocates for senior women from all backgrounds, ensuring they are at the heart of our network as we support them to succeed.
Today [Thursday 14th March] we are setting out three Equity, Diversity and Inclusion goals that are central to us achieving our mission:
· to improve representation across all aspects of diversity
· to create an inclusive culture that fosters a sense of belonging; and
· to advocate for issues that affect our diverse membership
This also means a commitment to more transparency in our processes and procedures across everything we do.
In the coming weeks we will be:
· Executing an audit of WiPR to better understand the experiences of our members (past and present). We want to understand where we supported them or have let them down, what they would like to see more of, and how WiPR can be a better network
· As part of this, asking our members to voluntarily self-identify and share their diversity data with us. This will help us understand the backgrounds of our members and women in our industry so we can prioritise those groups who are underrepresented and be truly representative
· Recruiting additional committee and Shadow Board members, so we are better represented. This will be informed by data we collect so we know how our committee and board reflects the diversity of senior women across the industry. Details on the application process to follow shortly; and
· Launching our upcoming mentoring programme with clear, transparent benchmarks in place for representation of both mentors and mentees, and a broader process for encouraging additional diverse talent to apply
At the same time, we have kicked off a refresh of the full scope of our EDI strategy to make reforms that impact everything we do – from our Shadow Board, main committee, mentoring, events, panels and membership as a whole. Currently, this work includes:
· Instigating a listening period where we welcome input from women working in PR and comms. We will also be seeking opinions from other industry organisations and special interest groups and will share a summary of what we have heard
· Using insights from this listening and our own learning to inform our refreshed strategy
· Commissioning a review of the strategy with external experts and advisors* before agreeing a final version to be published on our website and reported against
We are looking to have completed this initial work in the Summer. Bringing as many voices as possible around the table is paramount to this evolution and anyone wishing to get involved can talk to us by emailing info@womeninpr.org.uk for more details.
We will endeavour to keep everyone informed along the journey with regular updates and are committed to championing ALL women so they fulfill their leadership potential.
Thank you,
Women in PR Committee
* All experts commissioned to support women in PR will be paid for their time.
