OVO Pride was set up around 8 years ago to offer a safe space for our LGBTQIA+ community to come together.
We have had recognition of the network\’s work from the C-Suite, and we were empowered to become proactive; leading on policy changes and writing new progressive policies such as transitioning at work and assisted conception policies. We’ve worked hard and fast to ensure that all our policies, communications, training material and images are gender neutral and inclusive of all identities.
We’ve taken a strategic approach to ensuring that our managers and people at OVO are trained on creating an LGBTQIA+ inclusive workplace through dedicated training courses, lunch and learn sessions, and human libraries. We set up a dedicated learning channel on our internal digital learning platform with hundreds of resources, covering everything from Trans 101 to How to be an Active Ally.
We have worked hard to create a safe space for our trans community by our continued sponsorship of Trans in the City, trans inclusion training, our trans inclusion guide, healthcare and our Trans inclusion specialist – a role filled by one of our own trans people.
We delivered OVO Ally training to all our senior leaders, which includes developing an action plan on what they will do to go from a bystander to an active ally. This supports a top-down approach, highlighting to the rest of the business that all senior leaders are allies, and that the organisation takes allyship and education seriously.
We are members of Pride in Energy and work collaboratively with other organisation in the energy industry to increase workplace inclusion. We recently hosted a panel talk where we had speakers and members of the audience from OVO, NEOS, SSE and Pride in Energy as we know the value and impact on sharing and supporting each other.
At OVO we dont celebrate Pride only in June; we celebrate it all year round with ongoing engagement and awareness activities. We also use our venues – the OVO Hydro and The Arena, Wembley to light up in the colours of the Lesbian, Trans and Pride flags throughout the year and we have our Pride wrapped vans who are on our roads in the UK all year round
