Positive About Inclusion’s seventh Inclusion Forum North East event was held on 29th April and was titled The Gender Agenda – an exploration of bias and balance in the workplace. To welcome our keynote speaker Lyndon Campbell, Head of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion for HomeServe UK who is based in the Midlands, we hosted this session online which resulted in approx. 40 attendees registering their place. As well as Lyndon, we were delighted to welcome Inclusion Forum North East member Lianne Knotts of Medical Architecture who kindly volunteered to share her insight and experience from a long and successful career at the highest level in the traditionally male dominated profession of architecture.
Our Director, Lucy Malarkey set the scene for the session by sharing some of her reflections on gender bias and balance, not just from the work of Positive About Inclusion but also as the outgoing Managing Director of Women in Social Housing, a national networking community for women across all disciplines in the social housing sector.
This was followed by a presentation from our keynote speaker, Lyndon who shared with attendees a full and frank overview of the project delivered by colleagues at HomeServe UK to proactively meet their duty to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace, as stipulated by the recent introduction of the Worker Protection Act 2023, an addendum to the Equality Act 2010.
We then moved on to the ‘fireside chat’ element with Lianne, Lyndon and Lucy sharing their experiences and responding to questions from our Director, Karen Faulkner and other attendees. This provided some excellent reminders on actions we can all take to call out gender bias and the importance of supporting each other.
“The Gender Agenda session was excellent as always and I am already looking forward to the next one.”
Alex Jenkins, Recruitment Manager, Changing Lives
“Brilliant event, very insightful! I was well impressed with the speakers’ input. Thank you for organising this Positive About Inclusion.”
Aurore Nfazio, Communications Officer/Staff Network Group Representative, Bernicia
Our next Inclusion Forum North East will take place in July 2025. Please contact us if you would like to be added to the mailing list or to find out more about the consultancy and training services we provide.
