For over 10 years, CatSci has shown a clear commitment to diversity, equality and inclusion within the workplace. We are dedicated to creating a rich and diverse workforce where everyone is supported, enabled, and encouraged to share their experiences and views.
Our Diversity, Equality and Inclusion strategy focuses on scaling up CatSci’s efforts to further improve workplace equality and diversity. We rolled out a series of training session on how and why to become more inclusive, including discussions on pronouns, inclusive language, and more. Furthermore, to address the gender imbalance in the sector, we launched a Women in Leadership pathway hoping to see more diversity across our future Senior Leadership team and the STEM sector.
In 2021, we also joined the Government’s Disability Confident scheme, achieving Level 2 certification. This initiative helps employers commit to attracting, recruiting, and retaining people with disabilities. Despite the certification being valid until 2024, we are already exploring ways to further improving the working environment for all employees with different abilities, whilst achieving the Disability Confident Leader status.
We are convinced that embedding these values into our internal strategies has been paramount to our continued success and growth, creating a rich and diverse team with a plethora of experience who feel supported and included in their work.
We spoke to some of the senior CatSci team to get their thoughts on Diversity, Equality and Inclusion at CatSci, and why it is so important to us:
Our Talent & Inclusion Manager, Seb York, said: “Steps towards equality, diversity and inclusion of the workplace should never be seen as extra paperwork or burden on the business. By promoting and working towards a better culture, employers can only win and become stronger. Diversity sparks innovation – recruiting and retaining a diverse workforce helps ignite and sustain business growth. Having a diverse workforce is not only the right thing to do but this is what makes us stronger.”
Our Head of People and Culture, Leanne Jones, said: “To be the very best we can be for our customers and patients, we must have continuous innovation and improvement. Diversity of thought is essential to this process. By having a diverse and inclusive workplace, our people can feel confident sharing their own experiences within the team as they know their perspectives will be valued and appreciated. Inclusivity ensures that everyone feels ‘welcome’ at CatSci, and that way we can attract the very best talent in the industry. Our differences make us who we are – and that should be celebrated!”
Our Commercial Director, Dr Simon Tyler, said: “Not only is ensuring that diversity and inclusion runs through our company simply the right thing to do, but the competitive advantage of a workforce that is able to leverage the full gamut of available talent is well established. We will continue to build a company wherein ‘where you can be the best you’ applies to all of us.”
Our Head of Process Research & Development, Sam Whitmarsh, said: “Diversity and inclusion is an important aspect of everything we do at CatSci. We take the time and consideration to address how do our different procedures affect different people, as well as how we can take into account the different needs of everybody and ensure our ways of working are relatable, relevant and accessible to all.
Everyone sees the world through their own their background and experiences; we all have our own favourite ways to solve problems. Having a group of different people look at the same problem generates a wealth of ideas and allows us to choose the right tool for the job, and allows for creativity and innovation to prosper. This approach keeps us all learning and gives the most value to our customers.”