| Date |
|---|
| 21st July 2020 |
Recent events have made us all aware of the importance of equality and diversity within all elements of our society, the procurement profession is no exception. SUPC members, staff and the wider HE sector recognise the challenges associated with under-representation of the BAME community and to support full engagement with those with protected characteristics as defined by the 2010 Equality Act.
Working with sector experts at SUMS Consulting to help address this, SUPC is creating an Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity Group, drawn from across our membership, to help achieve appropriate representation within our HE procurement community.
This group will have clear goals to deliver tangible outputs and benefits. We will seek to shape training on unconscious bias specifically in procurement, not only the people we employ and interact with but also potential barriers we might raise in our tendering processes. The group will also look to produce a set of tools that we can use to work with outreach, diversity teams, careers advice services to highlight procurement as a career choice to underrepresented groups, with the intention of increasing diversity within the procurement professional pipeline.
To nominate yourself or a member of your team to participate in this group, please email Jayne at jayne.thorn@reading.ac.uk. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion is a key focus for universities and a core element of SUMS Consulting activity, one of the SUMS Group divisions, along with SUPC. To read about SUMS Consulting activity in this area, visit www.sums.org.uk