In 2023 new intent conducted three international roundtables in three countries, here are the outcomes.
2023 saw three diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) international roundtables held in Glasgow, Frankfurt, and Las Vegas, welcoming destinations, suppliers, associations, and corporate agencies from Europe, the UK, and North America. The sessions revealed gaps in our industry in embracing diversity, equity, and inclusion. These outcomes will be used to implement the new intent 2024 DEI Survey. Before the survey is launched, here are some key findings and questions the participants voiced.
Training & Education: How we educate ourselves and our teams was raised at each session with two key questions. Do we train our teams on DEI, and if we do, is this a one-off or regular training? The key to DEI education is that it is regularly required to understand many different cultures and experiences and to consider that society is consistently progressing in its thinking. We must ask ourselves, are we doing enough?
Industry Associations: We rely on our industry associations, such as ICCA, PCMA, MPI, SITE, and many more, to lead the global community. But how many of them have DEI policies and strategies that dictate how their organisations are run, how education is planned, marketing executed, and how engagement & recruitment is conducted? Statements on websites are one thing, but much of DEI is embraced and practiced by all team members and used to set an example for others to follow?
Technology: How does technology apply to DEI? There are several examples. Hybrid has been spoken about negatively recently as face-to-face has returned in abundance. However, hybrid increases our industry's DEI efforts by opening access to events to demographics that may not have had access before COVID-19 due to illness, accessibility, socioeconomic status, or politics.
Conference apps, meet-up apps, live translation and caption apps, and previously mentioned live streams/hybrid are everywhere. Are we confident everyone has access to the tech to allow access to this technology? Does everyone have access to training for use? How do we know? If not, what solution can the industry support and advocate for to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion?
Recruitment: Are our recruitment practices allowing access to our industry? Do we consider where we advertise, how we promote, and the language used to ensure we reach different ethnicities, ages, genders, and socio-economic statuses? Tech conferences live and stress their values to attract Gen Z - are there learnings for the business events industry?
Leadership Boards: Are leadership boards representative of our teams, members, and attendees? Why do so many ask for director/senior level only? Consideration should be taken to ensure that leadership is representative, including ensuring all voices are heard and listened to and are part of the decision-making process.
Subvention: Many events require government investment or subvention to take place. Is this an opportunity to put in place requirements from the host to ask for DEI policies to be put in place and evidence supplied on how access is given to the community? This opens up a further question: Whose responsibility is DEI? The event or the destination? Our answer, it's everyone's.
UN Sustainable Development Goals: The UN SDGs guide what success looks like in fighting the climate crisis. Within the 17 goals, there are goals specific to DEI. We need to raise living standards to combat climate change. The industry needs to understand the UN SDGs for their true nature fully. Peace and prosperity.
Boycotts: The roundtables were universal in the desire that the general stance of 'not boycotting' is reset with more voices of differing opinions brought into the conversation for a statement from an industry representative of the industry. More transparency in the decision-making process is applied, and the requirement is to consider human rights and our industry's role in upholding them.
The 2023 roundtables offered up many questions and concerns that new intent is committed to moving forward in 2024. In our drive to move DEI forward, we must consider resources and funding to make this happen - where will this come from? How do we create safe spaces and remove the scare factor for people to ask questions, share mistakes we can learn from, and communicate errors in a constructive way that advances DEI? If we can improve on these big questions, we can embed new intent in our collective DEI efforts.
Rory Archibald
Founder, new intent