Due to the demographic, social and economic changes in Europe labour force is becoming more and more diverse. With such workforce diversity, it becomes important for national and global companies to put in place policies and practices to build an inclusive and harmonious workplace, to adopt working environment where each employee would feel dignified regardless to his/her ethnicity, religious views, social status or age, to integrate them into mainstream personnel. Effective Diversity Management is proven to produce significant benefits in terms of recruitment and staff retention, creativity, problem-solving and customer engagement. Not only companies can increase their profit margins through efficiency savings and innovation, but the employed individuals also benefit, resulting in increased levels of job satisfaction and employee loyalty. Discrimination is often experienced as a central element of the disadvantage to which groups outside, and inside, employment are exposed. Although combating discrimination and promoting social inclusion have some common features for all these groups – changing the attitudes of managers and co-workers and development of unbiased recruitment procedures. Moreover, promoting access to employment involves, among others, avoiding discrimination against vulnerable groups and improving training policies and preventing possible discrimination as regards access (Eurofound, 2003). For these reasons, the central aim of DIMAIN is to promote diversity management and social inclusion, and ensure equal opportunities for all in the workplace through fostering diversity thinking and implementation of inclusive practices in the companies and organizations. Objectives: • To launch, host, and manage National Diversity Charter in partner countries, which will create awareness, make progress in managing diversity and promote inclusion • To develop and disseminate a Practical Guide, approaches and activities that will support inclusion and diversity and ultimately reduce discrimination and social inequality within the workplace and wider society • To provide training and professional development to managers, HR, personnel specialist and adult educators, equipping them with the necessary knowledge, attitudes and competences to successfully manage and support diversity and inclusion in the workplace; • To provide an OER platform that enables target group and stakeholders to develop networks of practitioners who implement diversity management and inclusion practices, measures and / or policies DIMAIN builds on the approaches developed in the projects that preceded it, while also breaking new ground. Innovation of DIMAIN project is based on two main pillars: Diversity Charter as a new phenomenon in the partner countries; Innovative character of the project products. DIMAIN consortium will gather developed tools, material and studies at EU and national levels, thus project‘s outputs will be based on good practices and know-how but at the same time will be localized and adjusted to partner countires context and needs and implemented into partner countries. There are foreseen three Intellectual Outputs in the project: O1: Raising awareness, informing and communicating: Diversity Charter and the Guide O2 Diversity Management and Inclusion Training Program O3 On-line Collaborative Platform DIMIAN‘s target groups: • managers, HR, personnel specialist • adult educators (trainers of per-service managers) • larger / medium companies The consortium consists of 6 partners from 4 European countries: Diversity Development Group, SOPA, Personalo valdymo profesionalu asociacija (Lithuania), Open Centre (Latvia), Center for Social Innovation LTD (Cyprus), ΚYTTARO ENALLAKTIKON ANAZITISEON NEON (Greece). Thus concortium cover a wide range of expertise and experience related to the scope and the aims of the DIMAIN, as well as they have a Pan-European outreach in their activities. The consortium has ensured both a balanced geographical representation, as well as representation from different types of organizations so as to create and sustain beneficial and fruitful collaboration during the life span of the project. Consortium believes, that the recognition of the right to diversity should be incorporated not only in the entire range of processes, strategies and actions of the companies but in its corporate culture and overall society. Systematic respect for this principle contributes to the creation of an open and productive working environment, where employees are leaders, responsible, active, dignified, motivated, ready for initiatives.
Due to the demographic, social and economic changes in Europe labour force is becoming more and more diverse. With such workforce diversity, it becomes important for various type of organizations to put in place policies and practices to build an inclusive and harmonious workplace, to adopt working environment where each employee would feel dignified regardless of the person’s age, gender, disability, race, ethnic origin or nationality, sexual orientation and gender identity, and religious beliefs, to ensuring equal opportunities at the workplace, strengthening diversity management, and creating a friendly and inclusive working environment for all. The central aim of the DIMAIN project is to promote diversity management and social inclusion, and ensure equal opportunities for all in the workplace through fostering diversity thinking and implementation of inclusive practices in the organizations. Objectives: • To launch, host, and manage National Diversity Charter (DC) in partner countries, which will create awareness, make progress in managing diversity and promote inclusion • To develop and disseminate a Practical Guide, approaches and activities that will support inclusion and diversity and ultimately reduce discrimination and social inequality within the workplace and wider society • To provide training and professional development to managers, HR, personnel specialist and adult educators, equipping them with the necessary knowledge, attitudes and competences to successfully manage and support diversity and inclusion in the workplace; • To provide an OER platform that enables target group and stakeholders to develop networks of practitioners who implement diversity management and inclusion practices, measures and / or policiesLaunch and further maintenance of the DCs at national level in partner countries was one of the most important activities undertaken as well as outcomes of the project. Partners went much why beyond project objectives by launching the Charters, and had joined the EU Platform for Diversity Charters. In this terms project not only met, but mightily exceeded both, objectives and results – in total 129 organizations has joint the DCs, the community continues to grow. The quality of the project results also reflects in the DCs signees list in all partners’ countries: state institutions (ministries, municipalities), worldwide known international companies, local SMEs, media organizations and etc. Both, result and impact is more than clear - progress in managing diversity and promotion of inclusive culture are getting stronger and more established every day. Developed in a high quality, professional design and localized IO1/A2 Practical Guide (4 versions in English and national languages, both digital and printed) was accomplished with good practices and testimonials from partner countries, thus reached target group and met primarily aim to raise awareness on diversity and its management enhancing organizations to join the Charter community and support inclusion and diversity at workplace, thus ultimately reduce discrimination and social inequality within the wider society.IO2/A1 ‘Diversity & Inclusion’ Training program developed in a participatory approach both within consortium and target audience through piloting, is innovative, relevant and needed to managers, HR, personnel specialist and adult educators. Chosen blended learning approach will ensure it remain available for practitioners both for online and self-learning, F2F trainings will continue to be implemented by partners due to the need of equipping growing network of organizations with the necessary knowledge, attitudes and competences to successfully manage and support diversity and inclusion in the workplace. During the implementation phase 84 participants were trained and became multipliers. Due to the hard partners’ work and efforts to promote outputs of the project and relevance of the topic, number of additional dissemination events both for the DCs’ members and wider society took place reaching significant number (2130) persons of target group and stakeholders participated in implementation activities, which were widely spread at national media in all partners countries reaching hundreds of thousands society members.After the compilation of the project, DIMIAN partners are committed much why beyond the project and Erasmus+ program framework to sustain and exploit developed outputs. The processes has started, number of DC signees as well as potential members are willing either to start or to continue implement diversity management and inclusion practices, measures and / or policies, and thus contribute to ultimate goal of this project – enhance social inclusion, which is seen both as long-term benefit and impact.