GC Diversity and Inclusion interview
Matthew Flood talks us through his work as a champion of diversity throughout his career, and his experiences of setting up the LGBT network at previous employer Balfour Beatty.
Ingeus principally provides employability, skills and training, youth and justice services for the governments, with its largest market being in the UK. People come to Ingeus because they have barriers to employment for all sorts of reasons, many of which are protected characteristics under the Equality Act. We also run probation services through our Community Rehabilitation Companies in the Midlands, and many of our service users are ex-offenders so, again, there’s quite a big diversity angle. We need to consider race, age, disability, LGBT issues, and all sorts of other factors when designing programmes for our clients.
We have an equality and diversity committee that meets two or three times a year. It does two things: it reviews our performance outcomes for diverse classes of service users under our contracts,, and it sets a diversity strategy for the wider organisation. I’m involved and lead that Committee because of my background in doing lots of diversity-related work at my former company, Balfour Beatty, and leading external LGBT networks.
