This week is Diversity, Equity & Inclusion week at Cemex and to celebrate this our Global team hosted a webinar entitled, ‘Embracing Diversity’.

Last week we introduced you to the UK DE&I committee – read HERE. They are responsible for helping to coordinating the activities which promote Diversity, Equity and Inclusion throughout our workplace.

What are we doing to support DE&I in the UK?

• We have seen the creation of the UK DE&I Committee over the past 12 months, the group meets quarterly and helps to coordinate our DE&I activities across the UK.
• Our ‘Inclusive Leadership’ training course has seen a successful take-up across the UK, and we would encourage everyone who hasn’t already, to use the link provided to complete this course and learn about how we can become a more inclusive organisation.
• One of the key objectives of our DE&I activities is to attract more women to our business. Our sector is still sometimes viewed as a more traditionally male-dominated industry, of course this isn’t the case, and our work has seen us steadily increase the number of women working for Cemex both globally and in the UK in recent years, but we know we still have more to do.
• We’ve made a number of improvements to our careers website to better reflect the diverse range of roles that are available at Cemex and to ensure that we present ourselves to future employees as a people-centred organisation with a commitment to the wellbeing, health and safety of our employees. As part of this work, we’ve launched a series of case study videos telling the stories of what it’s like to work for Cemex in the UK from the perspective of our people.
• We’re partnering with a number of specialist organisations, community groups and charities to expand upon our DE&I objectives. This year we’ve partnered with national disability charity Sense, on our journey towards becoming a disability confident employer.
• We hosted our first-ever careers open day earlier this year, to introduce school and college children to our sector, providing career guidance and highlighting pathways into the industry. We’ve supported with school and college visits and as well as hosting work experience candidates to help students make informed decisions about their futures and provide essential employability skills to young people.

What can you do to introduce the topic of DE&I within your teams?

Hannah Hyslop, Specification Manager for Quality and Product Technology in the UK, has taken the opportunity within her team to introduce the topic of diversity and what it means to members of the team. By sharing their views across the team, they have been able to have an open discussion about how they can more widely consider diversity within their team and across their day-to-day tasks.

What can you do to help?

If you’d like to get involved in coordinating future events, let us know of any topics that we may not have considered, or share your experiences of how we can better promote Diversity, Equity and Inclusion across our business, we’d love to hear from you – you can leave any comments you may have using the following link.