Diversity in my workplace

At Arriva, diversity means valuing differences in our employees and customers. Diversity is about recognising and accepting that anyone can be successful at work.

At the moment, in many Arriva companies, most of our employees are white male and most work full time. We know that within the next 10 years, only 20% of all working age people will be white men and will want to work full-time. If we do not offer jobs to other types of people and offer more choice about working hours, we will not have enough people to run our business.

Definitely not. We have to do this to have a successful business.

There are all sorts of differences and Arriva values positive differences in people. For example, skin colour, religion, where you were born, men and women, gays and lesbians, how old you are, which school you went to, what you like and don’t like, what you believe in, what things are important to you and so on

There are many laws aimed at ensuring equality / protecting people at work. Arriva’s policy is to fully comply with all such laws, much of which now come via the European Union and affect all the countries in which Arriva operates

By recognising and accepting that all types of people can be successful at work, Arriva can be better than other companies. Our employees will be better and we will offer a better service to our customers. If we do this then all of us benefit.

A minority group is simply a way of describing the types of people that there are less of. These people need to be encouraged to join Arriva and be treated the same as the rest of us.

No, this applies to all of us.

It means that you will have to recognise and accept that all types of people can be successful at work and be glad about and appreciate working alongside lots of different people. We all need to understand that we could offend another person without meaning to and we must respect what is important to them. The better we are at this, the more success and opportunities there will be for all of us.

This is not a choice. We all have to work together.

It matters because if we don’t change we won’t have enough people to run our business in less that 10 years time.

This is a myth. As diversity means that we can all be successful at work, then we must work together and ensure that everyone is treated fairly.

No, Arriva would not save money and your assumptions are not correct. Arriva determines its wages at the local level and adheres to the requirement of like pay for like work.

The trade unions naturally value and support different people and we will therefore work together to make this happen.

Please tell your manager or any other manager in the business. We will also be asking you what you think in an Employee Survey on a regular basis.

By understanding the needs of local communities and our customers and how they change over time. For example, we need to recognise that Sunday is no longer associated only with going to church, that other faiths have different traditions and needs and that the growth of retail activity on Sunday has been a major change to the pattern of life in the last few years.

We know that customers like to see people like themselves in the companies they use and that Arriva therefore needs to visibly demonstrate that it employs and values all different types of people.

Because customers like to see people like themselves in the companies that they use and because we work in a lot of different communities, we need to offer jobs to a lot of different types of people and be seen to give a positive welcome to all different types of people from all communities.

No, but it does mean that we will make sure that we consider as many types of people as possible and employ the best person for the job.

There is no reason why different types of people can’t work at Arriva. It is up to us to make this a place where they would want to work.

The fact is that women are doing this right now, and doing it very well. There are risks to all of us in life. At Arriva, safety is important and we provide training and support to help all people to do their jobs safely.