GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS celebrates Pride month

We know what you’re thinking. Another Pride logo?

Let Guinness World Records (GWR) take you on our journey to get to this point.

WHERE DID IT ALL START?

As with many companies, the BLM movement was a catalyst for change at Guinness World Records. After many conversations emerging across the world around race and inclusion, we understood the importance of introducing and accelerating several diversity and inclusion (D&I) initiatives across the business.?

D&I is a wide and complex maze to navigate and even more difficult to ‘get right’. In fact, we’re not sure anyone can ever get this 100% right as each individual is made up of multiple characteristics, journeys and life experiences which make for a unique and ever-changing landscape.?

One of our focus areas as an organisation is to make ourselves more LGBTQ+ inclusive and demonstrate our commitment to our LGBTQ+ employees, customers, record applicants/holders, allies, and partners.

We started our journey by partnering with Stonewall, a leading LGBTQ+ organisation in Europe, as part of their Diversity Champions programme. The programme has given us a clear framework on how to make GWR more LGBTQ+ inclusive and we have started this largely from an internal standpoint, focusing on our policies, training, and sense of belonging within GWR.

SOME OF OUR MILESTONES

The last two years has seen GWR re-visit and change its internal people and culture polices, some of which are already seeing a positive impact on our staff like our family leave policy which has given employees the right to time away from work, regardless of their family set-up.

“When my wife and I decided to have a family, it was important to both of us that we could spend the first year of our child’s life sharing parenting responsibilities. Through the hard work of our People & Culture team, we now have a policy that is available to everyone (regardless of gender parenting dynamics) who is thinking of splitting parental leave. As all parents will know, the juggling act is real and challenging at times, but having this policy has meant that we both got to spend quality time with our child. This is a positive for work life balance, mental health and for our child.” – Fiona Gruchy-Craven, Head of Event Production - London Consultancy

As part of wider internal training on D&I, all employees received allyship training from an external partner, including the importance of allyship and ‘how to be an ally’ to under-represented groups such as the LGBTQ+ community.?

Alongside this training, one of the most popular initiatives launched in 2021 was a series of virtual fireside chats with staff and speakers who shared their personal experiences, giving others the chance to learn about and celebrate the LGBTQ+ community, including topics such as trans experience, and celebrating Pride. Our first fireside chat took place during Lesbian Visibility Week and featured staff volunteers and their partners across different teams bravely sharing their experiences at work and in the home. The topics touched on surrogacy, raising a child in a same-sex setting, unconscious biases, religion and how to be an ally.

As well as these internal conversations, we are also looking at representation in our content and inclusivity in our application process.?

Towards the end of the year, we participated in the Workplace Equality Index for the first time to understand where we are in our journey and what steps we must take to improve. As an organisation we have taken some important first steps, and we have received some overwhelmingly positive feedback from our employees as part of a staff survey.

• 100% of non-LGBTQ+ people respondents from our London office support LGBTQ+ equality in the workplace (above industry and London averages).
• On allyship, non-LGBTQ+ staff scored above the average for companies on ‘understanding’ how to be an ally to the LGBTQ+ community.

As we slowly emerge from the pandemic, we have also started to look at how we celebrate offline too across all our offices. Our team in Japan, along with their friends, families and partners, recently attended Tokyo Rainbow Pride, and this month in our London office we are looking forward to running a variety of Pride-related talks, activities and celebrations.

OUR COMMITMENT GOING FORWARD

This is a commitment across the business from a grassroots level, but also is confidently supported by the GWR leadership team.?

As a company, Guinness World Records has clear principles set out in its Business Partner Code of Conduct, which includes working with business partners who also encourage and promote a similar commitment to diversity, inclusion and belonging.

"Guinness World Records must be a safe and welcoming place for everyone in the LGBTQ+ community” - Alistair Richards, President of GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS

We look forward to continuing our journey over the coming years to becoming more inclusive for everyone, especially our staff and our record holders. It’s safe to say we are all on a journey, but through our continued learning, education and driving positive changes across our organisation we will strive to live and celebrate our core value of Inclusivity and our purpose to make the world a more interesting, fun and positive place.