MANAGING DIVERSITY AND EQUALITY

BBC Case on Managing Diversity and Equality

BBC Case on Managing Diversity and Equality

Introduction

The paper will present a case study on the diversity and equality issues in the world's largest broadcasting network, BBC. The company has employed around 24000 employees. It aims to reflect its audience with the diverse workforce as diversity is considered as a vital success factor of organisation. The company needs to focus on managing the diversity so that it can engage its audience as it targets the diverse people, in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, faith and religion, sexual orientation, political affiliation social and background. Since the audience is increasingly diverse, the company wants to reflect the diversity of its audience in its workforce.

Discussion

The equality and diversity strategy and initiatives resides with the Diversity Board of BBC, which reviews the progress and sets the essential targets. In the end of 2008, there was a review by the Diversity Board; in which the corporation set targets for workforce in two major diversity areas; which are disability and ethnicity. The paper will analyze the diversity management at BBC and its biggest competitors, ITV and Channel 4.

Diversity Practices at BBC and ITV

The BBC is dedicated to promote the equal opportunities for everyone in the organisation. The management of the company wants to reflect diversity to cater the diverse target market of the United Kingdom. It is committed for providing the workplace environment which does not allow any intimidation, harassment and unlawful discrimination. The company values and respects each and every employee's contribution to the company's targets and mission and it also ensures that no one is disadvantaged unlawfully. The company also sees the diversity and equality as the opportunities for embracing and responding to the UK audiences. In order to achieve this, the company needs to have a workplace environment which empowers all of the employees to achieve their full potential (Harvey 2012, 51). There are many challenges of diversity in the United Kingdom which have provided the company some with creative opportunities to offer its audiences distinctive and original programming that would engage them.

As far as its competitor's strategies and practices of managing diversity are concerned, it can be seen that ITV network has also incorporated some equal opportunity policies which reflect the Equality Act 2010 and desire equality for everyone with the characteristics of disability, gender, parental or marital status, race, sexual orientation, nationality, religious beliefs and origin. It means the policies of equal opportunities are available to every employee of the organisation regardless of their ethnicity and disability. The company also uses its intranet site for increasing the awareness regarding equality legislation and also runs diversity campaigns which are aligned to its business priorities and CR strategy (Cox 1991, 34).

Employment Tribunal Judgement for the Miriam O' Reilly Case

The case is about a 5 year old lady who is the former presenter at BBC, named Miriam O'Reilly. She was dropped from a 23-year-old show, Countryfile in 2009, after that she filed a case ...