38 C O N T E X T 1 7 3 : S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 2 The second strand looks at the people who make up Historic England, ensuring that our people better reflect the communities in which we work, enabling us to benefit from a diverse range of perspectives and recruit from the widest pool of talent. We have created a new employer brand which aims to make us more accessible and relevant as an employer, and are piloting new approaches to recruitment such as sending interview questions to candidates in advance. This strand looks inwards at the culture of Historic England. So far we have taken steps towards shifting our approach to recruitment for all our roles, and are broadening the way in which we advertise our roles and appeal to more candidates. We have established a series of staff networks relating to various communities within our Historic England staff, such as a Pride network, a Race Equality network, a Disability network, and most recently a Neurodiversity network and Social Mobility network. These networks, as well as our newly recruited and trained Inclusion and Diversity Champions across all teams within the organisation, are helping to hold us to account on our delivery of the strategy, as well as providing creative, safe and supportive spaces for conversations around how we can better support and engage people. We have focused on creating early careers opportunities for young people through apprenticeships, Kickstarter placements, partnering with diversity-focused work placement schemes and through virtual work experience. We have also begun a rolling series of training opportunities for staff to familiarise themselves with various aspects of diversity and inclusion, and to help them understand the roles they can play in supporting the ongoing delivery of the strategy. The final strand considers our role within the wider sector and sets out approaches to becoming leading advocates for inclusion and diversity, learning from others, facilitating partnerships and sharing best practice to enable the heritage sector to become more diverse and inclusive. There are three key pieces of work here that we feel will be of most value to the sector. First, we undertook research with the University ofWarwick’s Institute of Employment Research, to understand the current diversity of the historic environment workforce. This proved a useful exercise, revealing that the sector does not feel confident in collecting data about its staff and highlighting the role Historic England can play in supporting organisations of all sizes to do this. Second, through formal and informal conversations with the sector, especially with the amenity societies, we established the need for an inclusion and diversity advice hub, where organisations can easily access case studies, best practice guidance, and simple resources for ensuring that their work and workforce are as diverse and inclusive as possible. We are aiming for the hub to be launched in autumn 2022. It will be an evolving and responsive resource, and we will actively encourage other organisations to share case studies and showcase the progress they are making. Third, we are undertaking a project with Getting On Board, a charity that aims to diversify board trustees. Getting On Board is conducting research to understand the barriers that young people, Black, Asian and other minority ethnic people, and disabled people face that prevent them from applying, or succeeding in taking on governance roles in the sector, as we recognise the need to diversify the decision makers in order to support and influence all other work we are doing. Following this research, we will explore with Getting On Board how best to remove those barriers, which might be through shadowing and training opportunities. As well as developing a training programme for our own staff, Historic England is committed to extending these opportunities to the wider sector. More than 150 professionals from small museums to planning officers in local authorities recently participated in free disability awareness training led by Celebrating Disability (one of our training partners). We are currently planning an inclusive communication training programme. This, to be rolled out in 2022–2023, will be designed to increase confidence around the language of diversity and inclusion. We know that this is a work in progress for Historic England and the sector, and that the three-year strategy is just the beginning of a larger ongoing project. But we feel confident that the progress we have made so far, and the enthusiasm and interest our recent work has been met with by the sector, indicate that we are moving in the right direction. Children from Ashby Willesley primary school carrying out a condition survey of the war memorial in Ashby de la Zouch, Leicestershire
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