Inclusion and Diversity Report for 2022-2023 (HTML)

The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) is committed to creating the best experience for our people and becoming a brilliant place to work - an important pillar of our corporate strategy. This helps guide our People Strategy and achieve on our aspirations to make this the best IP Office. It’s not just about the services we provide as an organisation but how we work together as a community to provide for our customers, the UK and its citizens, and the special people that work here. The UK can only achieve its goals for innovation if we draw on the talents of all parts of society. The diversity of inventors, creators and entrepreneurs play an essential role in shaping the world through imagination, ingenuity and hard work.

Part of being a brilliant place to work and ensuring our work supports UK innovation, is having the right culture. The right culture maintains a strong sense of community and belonging and encourages an inclusive, open environment, where people are valued as individuals with diversity of skills and experience and, can contribute their talents as part of something meaningful. An inclusive environment helps us to accelerate innovation, creativity, employment, and economic growth for everyone across the UK. It supports the government’s ambition for the UK to become a science and technology superpower. A diverse and inclusive environment is a critical part of the IPO’s culture from the way we engage with our customers and stakeholders, to our approach to developing and retaining our people. We have numerous successes that you will read about in this report, and of course it is lovely to be recognised in this way. However, inclusion is a journey not a destination, and we will strive for continuous improvement, ensuring that we make more and more lives better through the work we do.

Our culture

At the IPO, we pride ourselves on being an inclusive organisation. In addition to the external validation from awards mentioned later in this report, we’re also proud to run a number of internal initiatives. For example, we recently launched our Empowering Women Programme to “support women’s career goals by having open conversations in safe environments, designed to stretch and inspire.”

Our culture is one of the reasons that this inclusive environment has been possible. Our shared values, practices and principles have played a massive part in making the IPO a brilliant place to work.

The cultural journey we have been on over the last 5 years has helped us become a more principles-led organisation. The Deal is our cultural agreement with one another and with the IPO. It gives us the language to have positive interactions about what we expect from our people, and what they can expect from us, and their colleagues, in return. Its strength is how it encourages us to acknowledge our good intentions and that of those around us. Policies and frameworks are there to protect and guide our people when they need it, but the Deal is a flexible framework for positive interaction with each other. Its five central principles help us work well together and make the best decisions based on a balance of individual and business need.

It’s fair to say that the past few years of change have really tested our culture; a global pandemic, Brexit, and our complex and ambitious Transformation programme, to name three of the bigger things.

Our internal and external environment is expected to continue changing, and some things that we consider a core part of our culture are being tested. We need to make sure the things we tell ourselves about the culture we have, are still the right things, and that they are backed up by how we act.

In light of the changing landscape, we decided that the time was right to look at our culture and see whether it is helping us be the best IPO we can be. This year we have been undertaking a review of our culture and we hope that aligning our cultural ambitions with our strategic ambitions will help us achieve and implement our strategy, motivate us to do great work, and give us a sense of belonging and community.

We get to decide the future culture we want and need at the IPO, and we should be explicit about what this looks like so that our current and future colleagues know who we are at the core. If we don’t think intentionally about this, we’ll have a culture by default, and this may not be the right one to satisfy our customers or a brilliant place to work in the future.

As with any organisation, everyone who works at the IPO plays a part in shaping the organisational culture, consciously or subconsciously.

Over the past few months, we have carried out workshops with our colleagues across the IPO to review our current culture, helping us to understand peoples lived experiences both as they are now and how they might look in the future.  We have also been working with our staff networks, executive board, senior leadership group and trade unions to define a vision for our ‘to be’ culture. By putting these two pieces of work side by side we can see where we may have misalignment between our ‘as is’ and ‘to be’.

Any cultural work like this is not an exact science, and it’s been said that any attempt to change culture will fail. That’s why we are concentrating on finding out where gaps may exist between our existing culture, and the culture we believe will best help us thrive. This will create the conditions in which the change can happen. This will take the form of a specific cultural development plan, as well as informing our in-flight Leadership strategy, communication approach and inclusion emphasis.

Inclusion and diversity

Making the IPO a brilliant place to work is a significant pillar in our strategy and weaved intrinsically through this, is our spotlight on inclusion and diversity.

We know a diverse workforce is an authentic and innovative workforce and creating an environment where our people can bring their whole selves to work cultivates strong communities. Those communities are at the heart of our intersectional approach to building an environment of openness, trust, and respect.

We can all benefit from an inclusive approach. We know that our connections with each other are a critical part of the IPO culture, and important to building the One IPO approach we strive for. Our focal point has been reinvigorating staff networks and understanding what the barriers are for our people so that we can overcome them.

Often when people think of inclusion, they think of the nine characteristics that are protected by the Equality Act 2010. At the IPO we like to look beyond just these characteristics to think more widely about inclusion as a whole. By doing this we are able to make sure that no one is disproportionately disadvantaged by our processes, policies, or structures.

How do we do that?

Our staff networks are a driving force for change and critical friend to our HR function. This partnership allows for intersectional working across all the protected characteristics to ensure our policies, practices, services and culture are inclusive.

At the IPO, we have a zero-tolerance approach to bullying and harassment. Our Respect at Work campaign continues to remind staff of this. This campaign is tailored to each department and with our central HR function’s support and challenge, we offer training to engage with what respectful behaviour is. Thus, helping us to create an environment where our people feel safe and confident to challenge inappropriate behaviours, which is critical to our success.

To ensure we remain an diverse and attractive employer, we partner with a number of external organisations such as Inclusive Employers and Carers UK to ensure we are up to date with best practices. The challenge and scrutiny these partners provide ensure that we continue to develop and keep our people at the heart of what we do.

Evidence based practice is critical to making changes that are right for our people. Regular scrutiny of data helps us to align our strategy to any development points we have. Using data, we have been able to improve policies and practices around things like recruitment, reward and recognition, shared parental leave and menopause support.

Having an engaged and inclusive workforce, as well as a culture of respecting inclusion, greatly benefits our customers. All customer contact should be dealt with fairly and all issues taken seriously in line with the customer strategy, customer charter, and the IPO complaints process. We have developed policies around gender inclusive language, how we can help vulnerable customers, and raising awareness across the IPO on accessibility.

Recognition and awards

We are thrilled this year to have been recognised by several external organisations for being a fair and inclusive employer.

The list of achievements include:

• Race at Work Charter Signatory from Business in the Community

• Inclusive Employers Standard - Bronze status

• Carers Confident Level 3 Ambassador

• Corporate Health Standard Silver Award

• Gold Award Cycle Friendly Employer by We Are Cycling UK

• British Dyslexia Association SMART Award

• Business Disability Forum Bronze Disability Standard

• Investors in People - Gold

• Corporate Members of Neurodiversity in Business

• Achieving Excellence from MIND Workplace Wellbeing Index, Gold

• Disability Confident Leader

• Menopause Friendly Employer

• Charter signatory of IP Inclusive

Source:EUIPO

Editor: IPR Daily-Horace