The OPSIZO partnership aimed to create a transformative impact on the diversity and inclusion landscape within micro-enterprises in Europe. By implementing this project, the consortium aimed to develop and disseminate innovative tools and tailor-made training programmes for small businesses, enabling them to promote more inclusive workplaces. Through their collaborative efforts, they sought to reduce the gap in D&I practices between large companies and smaller entities, ultimately contributing to a more equitable and productive business ecosystem across the EU. In terms of results, the ideal outcome was a training programme for micro-enterprises in the DEI area, but also a very specific set of guidelines and policy documents to ensure that learning and training could be widely disseminated across our networks. This is crucial to address the barriers women and sexual minorities meet in the workplace.
The OPSIZO partnership applied for this project to address the urgent need for Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) in micro-enterprises, particularly with regard to gender and sexual orientation. The partnership recognised that while larger organisations are often equipped in terms of inclusion policies, micro-enterprises are not equipped operationally to understand, prevent and manage exclusion, discrimination and micro-aggression. By bringing together complementary experiences from different European contexts, the project aimed to improve the competitiveness and efficiency of micro-enterprises through innovative training and operational tools. The partnership sought to promote the culture of D&I as a corporate welfare tool, to provide micro-enterprises with training resources and operational tools to promote governance processes, strategies and actions for inclusion and the valorisation of differences, and to support the personal and professional growth of all the actors involved.