Arriva Blog: On National Inclusion Week, we're celebrating inclusion and highlighting the importance of creating a society where all people can thrive.

On National Inclusion Week, we’ll see organisations across the UK celebrating inclusion and highlighting the importance of creating a society where all people can thrive.  This is something I feel passionately about, and I’m proud to be leading Arriva’s work on inclusion to ensure we can reflect the diverse communities we serve up and down the country.

At Arriva, we want every colleague to feel comfortable being themselves at work. We recognise that being confident in who we are positively impacts both our personal well-being and our ability to do our best at work. 

This week, we’ve announced that we have joined an organisation called Inclusive Employers, which supports employers who are committed to prioritising inclusion and creating truly inclusive workplaces.  We’re looking forward to working with them and learning from other members who excel in this area.

Through our partnership, we’ll be launching a new Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion strategy, and we’ll be working with every corner of Arriva to ensure that inclusivity is always at the forefront of our minds. We will use our values and behaviours to support this and continue to encourage our 46,000 colleagues to reflect the welcoming and accepting environment our organisation aspires to be.    

We have started training Arriva’s management teams in inclusive leadership, and how to confront and tackle their own biases, which is something I’m really excited about. 

Inclusion Week is also an opportunity to re-launch our Global Arriva Inclusion Network (GAIN), our employee resource network, which we started in 2019. This time, we’re doing things a little differently, and I'm thrilled that each GAIN group will now have representation from a member of our Management Board, who will be able to use their position to call for action and influence change.  

Arriva’s people will lead our GAIN groups and be the voice of our employees – collating feedback, finding solutions to challenges, celebrating key events, and raising awareness throughout the year. Our aim is to create a diverse network, owned and led by colleagues, who will directly contribute, influence, and shape our Diversity and Inclusion strategy, giving us honest and constructive feedback.  The success of our Diversity and Inclusion strategy is dependent on this.