United we stand, divided we fall: National Inclusion Week 2021

Over these unprecedented times, businesses, global leaders, and society, now more than ever have realised the importance of people coming together to innovate, create, resolve, and inspire. At Countryside, we value and celebrate our workforce everyday and are constantly looking for ways to improve and educate ourselves of ways to be more inclusive.

During this National Inclusion Week, we join thousands of inclusion practitioners to further renew and create opportunities for employees at all levels to be part of the conversation around everyday inclusion. We are proud to demonstrate our values and determined to create one of the most equitable and inclusive workplaces in the industry, where everyone feels a sense of belongingness and are able to thrive.

Countryside takes this responsibility to build a diverse and inclusive workplace very seriously and are committed towards building a fair and inclusive culture where difference and individuality is celebrated across our workforce and our communities. To achieve this, we have positively disrupted the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) space by looking beyond traditional DEI interventions and focus on building sustainable efforts that impact long term change, through empowering all our people to create true inclusion.

Our culture is defined by our commitment to invest in equity and inclusion as we believe by achieving this, we will create more diversity. We want all our employees and leaders to realise the contribution they can make to advancing equity and inclusion and provide a pathway towards getting more involved.

At Countryside, we want each and every one of us to thrive and this doesn't just mean we want to hear from our colleagues about their experiences. We want to offer colleagues a safe and supportive environment where they are encouraged to reflect, tell their stories, practice self-care, and feel seen by their community.

To support these ambitions, all of us must have the awareness, understanding and be equipped with the right skills to build and work with diverse teams, advance equity, and foster inclusion in every aspect of the ways we work. 

With this in mind, we will be launching our four-week inclusion challenge to help us recognise the needs of our workforce. The challenge is an opportunity for us to come together as a community to learn, to take action and to make deep, fundamental change happen. At the end of this challenge, we hope to apply a lens of equity in our daily life to identify barriers that stand in the way of equity, understand how to personally begin to enable equity through intergroup interactions, and reflect on the role each one of us play in creating an inclusive culture at Countryside.