Macmillan Cancer Support has set out a new four-year strategy with measures to tackle the “problem with the diversity of its workforce”.
Lynda Thomas, chief executive of the charity, says in a blog post that the charity’s new strategy will prioritise equity, diversity and inclusion and hold everyone accountable for it.
She says the charity wants to better engage people from diverse communities and evolve its internal culture.
“Macmillan, like the wider charity sector, has a problem with the diversity of its workforce, especially at a leadership level,” writes Thomas.
The charity said it planned to invest in targeted leadership training, remove ingrained bias from its recruitment practices and recruit more people from underrepresented groups.
The second focus, says Thomas, is making sure the charity is seen as representative.
This involves reviewing its communications to make sure it is “challenging the stereotypes and tropes that we unknowingly might perpetuate”.
The final focus is making services inclusive and accessible.
“Our priority here is to invest further in supporting people living with cancer from seldom-heard communities because we know they have a worse cancer experience,” says Thomas.
It will do this by investing in direct services such as its helpline, and by “advocating for better and equitable outcomes for everyone living with cancer”.
The charity has created a new governance panel, chaired by Thomas and comprising representatives from across the charity, to oversee the strategy and hold employees to account.
It has also created Perspective Panels, which Thomas says will “give a platform to real voices in our organisation from a range of backgrounds to talk about their lived experience”.
She concludes: “We have a long way to go and to get there we need to be ready to face the inevitable difficulties that will come using our core values of heart, strength and ambition.”