This morning I had a meeting, on behalf of the Employers Stammering Network, at New Broadcasting House in London, with the Diversity Manager – Access and Inclusion at the BBC. Before I went, three of my Facebook friends had kindly briefed me on the HR attitude at the BBC, and all the reports were very complimentary. The feeling was that this is a slightly left wing but fairly middle class organisation, with well educated, worldly employees, who are instinctively open to the idea of equality and who receive good quality briefings from their Diversity & Inclusion experts. However, although there were no reports of stammerers having a tough time, stammering was not really discussed openly, and nothing appeared to be going on to specifically address the subject of stammering, or the broader subject of speech. This turned out to be exactly the case. Stammering and speech have been overlooked, in the same way that they have been overlooked by many other employees, not because of any kind of prejudice, but simply because there has been no apparent demand to do anything about it. I cannot tell, at this early stage, if the BBC will join the ESN, but they do recognise that they should catch up and proactively create a more stammering-friendly workplace. We then discussed the BBCs current research project, the initial phase of which will study the knowledge and attitudes towards neurodiversity, focusing on recruitment, support and the management of employees with non-visible conditions such as dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, ADD/ADHD and Autism Spectrum Conditions.’ But there was no mention of stammering.
Posted on: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 12:38:52 +0000
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