We’re joining the world in marking Pride Month this June – an opportunity to reflect on our commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging.
Our core values include: trust, kindness, clarity, dynamism, professionalism and equity – all of which we practice every day as part of our vital work with our fire services community.
A message from our Chief Executive, Sherine Wheeler:
“Our goal is to embrace the depth and breadth of diversity at all levels of our charity, and across all our work.
“Pride Month is an opportunity to celebrate our role in making people who interact with Fire Fighters Charity feel that they truly belong here.
“I’m proud of all the ways our culture and environment enable everyone in our community to feel welcome, to feel that they belong and to know that their experiences are valued.
“But Pride Month is also an important opportunity to reflect and assess how we’re progressing. We still have much work to do to ensure our charity and our services are representative of the people and communities we serve, and I look forward to working with colleagues in our wider fire family as we start to develop a new DEIB roadmap for the next few years.”
Ensure inclusion is the norm across our Charity
Inclusion is about awareness and understanding of the actions it will take to create a genuinely inclusive environment, where every individual can be their unique self. Therefore, we always aim to treat one another considerately, respectfully and fairly.
Create diverse and inclusive teams where everyone can thrive
For our people and culture to thrive, we appreciate the positive impact having a diverse range of people from various backgrounds and life experiences brings.
Communicate our inclusive culture internally and externally
We continue to share how we’re developing our inclusive values externally, recognising that many will have different lived experiences and levels of understanding. We commit to considering this in our approach, so that we bring everyone on this journey with us.
Our journey so far
- In 2020, our employees, volunteers and other stakeholders were invited to take part in culture workshops where we considered the values that we saw in our organisation, what we would like to see, what we do well and what fantastic looks like.
- Lots of information was gathered during the workshops and our project team used this to define our values and the behaviours that describe them.
- From this, we created our Culture Code and our Culture Icons and recruited and trained Culture Champions. Our Champions each represent an area of our charity and help drive behavioural change through acting as ambassadors for our brand and our values.
Experiences from our team
We’re always sharing experiences from our employees. Below, you can read some of their stories.