We were delighted to pick up this award yesterday at the British Diversity Awards.  It recognises the amazing effort and commitment from our joint Disability and Neurodiversity employee resource groups (ERGs), led by my colleagues Jamie Shields and Stella Steigleder and supported by our Exco Sponsor, Maxine Pillinger. We are committed to creating an environment in AMS for all disabled and neurodivergent colleagues to thrive, we have made great progress, but we know we have more to do.

Following are some examples of initiatives that we have embedded in the last year, to enhance our disability inclusion approach:

• Our ERGs hold joint monthly meetings and biweekly regional meetings across the UK, APAC, EMEA, and Americas.  We have seen a 12% increase in membership in the period.
• We have a “DEI Milestone Moments” calendar to amplify the voices of colleagues and external guests across the year for important milestones such as International Day of Persons with Disabilities, Accessibility Week, Autism Acceptance Month and Neurodiversity Month
• We have strengthened our partnership with the Valuable 500 and due to the strength of this relationship, we have been selected as one of 75 organisations invited to participate in the Generation Valuable programme, providing mentorship for people with disabilities to build the disabled leaders of tomorrow.
• We were awarded Level 2 Disability Confident Employer status in March last year
• Our ERG members have also designed and delivered training to our sourcing, recruiting and marketing teams, and client accounts on various accessibility and inclusion topics
• Within the ERG, parents of neurodiverse and/ or disabled children support colleagues across the organisation by sharing their experiences and creating an online forum to encourage conversation between other parents

We proudly accept this award and acknowledge the amazing work from the other shortlisted organisations in the category.  I’d love to hear your feedback around how we can all collectively progress the disability and neurodiversity inclusion agenda for the future!