DIVERSITY & INCLUSION
Key ‘people issue’ set for Manchester panel debate
Duane Passman, FIHEEM, Director, Percipio Consulting, who is Co-Chair of IHEEM’s Diversity and Inclusion Working Group, reports on some of the Group’s key activities and areas of focus since its formation six years ago. He highlights particularly a series of recent interviews undertaken with individuals working in the healthcare EFM and engineering field to gauge progress to date – which will inform discussions at a special panel debate taking place on the first day of this year’s Healthcare Estates conference.
The IHEEM Equality and Diversity Group was established in 2017, and since then has examined the following areas of interest to support the Institute’s aims: n Women in Estates Management and Engineering.
n LGBTQIA+ representation – including a significant series of presentations at Healthcare Estates 2021, which are available online.
n Bullying and Harassment, in 2022.
Progress made to date In 2023, the Group is looking at the progress that has been made in promoting inclusion and diversity in the NHS (and comparable sectors), and the estates, facilities management, and estates management area in particular. This work will also examine how we can recruit, retain, and promote, a diverse workforce. Undoubtedly the position has improved over the past 10/15 years, and the theme now is how we can build on the positives to maintain momentum. To this end, the Group has been
establishing contact with other professional organisations, inter alia, RIBA and CIBSE. to ensure that we are all aligned in the overall objective of promoting equality and diversity to reflect our workforce more closely, and the populations that we service in the NHS and the wider public sphere. Our work this year will culminate in a panel debate on 10 October at Healthcare Estates 2023, which will be informed by a series of interviews we have undertaken and form the basis for this article. The broad scope of our interviews was:
n An overview of the careers of interviewees – where they are now, and how they got there.
n Challenges experienced to get where they are (looking also at academic versus vocational where applicable).
n Role models they had at different stages in their careers, and where opportunities to develop and progress came from.
n How people in senior positions can help, and any tips.
28 Health Estate Journal September 2023
Some of the Working Group during a meeting in 2018. Kim Shelley, today Compliance Director at Eta Projects, and Co-Chair of the Group, is pictured front right.
n What they see as the future for further development of a diverse workforce.
We were looking to interview a broad spectrum of people at different stages in their careers. Here are some of the views and experience on diversity and inclusion of two of those we interviewed, working in distinctly different roles.
Adriènne Kelbie, CBE, FRSA, HonFNucl, FEI, FCIPD, CCMI Managing Director of Adriènne Kelbie Coaching
Adriènne Kelbie left school at 18, and started her career as an agency temp. She progressed quickly into Director roles in Lottery-related organisations (her first was at the age of 28), before becoming Deputy CEO for Hull City Council, then CEO of the Disclosure and Barring Service, before becoming CEO of the Office of Nuclear Regulation for just over five years. She is a graduate of the Government’s Major Projects Leadership Academy. She is now a coach and mentor, has a
portfolio of advisory and non-executive Director roles with four organisations, and is Chair of one. She was also Patron of Women in Nuclear. She was awarded a CBE in 2021. She feels that training and development has been key to her career
progression, and has sought out the opportunities which have been available to her to achieve this over the past 15 years. She had been encouraged to be inquisitive by her parents and learnt, through an early interest in competitive showjumping, not to be afraid of failure, and to be resilient when facing setbacks. Adriènne Kelbie is clear that there is
evidence to suggest that balanced teams make better and safer decisions, but says she feels the Business Case is always in need of updating to ensure that this is accepted and reflects the state of the organisation at that point, underpinned by the evidence that balanced teams make better and safer decisions. She says this was particularly important in the nuclear industry. She feels strongly that the key to
promoting diversity and inclusion is for those individuals who may have more entrenched and traditional views to feel safe in being able to try and understand, although she acknowledges that they are perhaps not equipped with the language to do so – there was a view among some that there was a ‘threat’ in diversity, especially in what had been a traditional male, white, engineering environment. Adrienne pointed to the recruitment
materials that the nuclear industry organisation published – ‘pictures of buildings rather than people and teams’,
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