Experience visits to Spain
This week, my colleagues and I from the Diversity Development Group are in Madrid, where we met with a range of state-owned and other companies and NGOs that have diversity and inclusion at the heart of their operating models and strategic objectives.
Some insights:
In Spain, the practice of companies paying for housekeeping, nursing and childcare services for their employees for the sake of work-life balance is gaining ground. Vivofácil Grupo started this a decade ago and now several hundred employers have it. If an establishment in Spain has more than 15 employees, there is a 2% rule – that is the number of people in the team who must have a disability. Some of the companies we met double or triple this figure. The national broadcaster RTVE recognises that its workforce does not reflect the diversity of society and hopes to change this through its recruitment process this year (more than 1 000 employees are due to retire in 2023). RTVE’s audience spokesperson/ombudsperson conducts public reviews of listener/reader complaints and questions every three months. Recently, most of these have been related to the portrayal of women on air and gender equality in the broadcaster’s programmes.