BCR Law has announced that it has won the category of “Best Small to Medium Employer”, for CI businesses of up to 80 employees.
The awards were judged by an independent diversity panel on behalf of Liberate and presented on Friday 16 March at a ceremony with 116 guests, representing a cross-section of Channel Islands businesses and charities.
BCR Law has been a DIFERA accredited employer since 2017. In June last year, BCR Law became the first firm within the legal profession in the Channel Islands to seek independent accreditation for being and having a diverse, fair and accepting workplace culture. In November 2017, it achieved this goal and became a DIFERA accredited employer.
Partner Wendy Lambert directed the accreditation and BCR’s DIFERA champions, Joanna Gardiner and Katherine McKerrell, are being trained with Wendy to deliver ongoing training about the DIFERA principles of promoting diversity, inclusion, fairness and equality, to current and future staff members. The next stage will be for the diversity champions to train their current colleagues about DIFERA principles and for these principles to form part of the firm’s ongoing induction and training procedures.
Recently, the firm also enrolled in the Every Child Our Future (ECOF) primary school volunteer literacy scheme, to enable certain staff to be trained as reading volunteers in Jersey primary schools. Five of its staff members will begin helping pupils towards greater literacy, and therefore greater inclusivity, later this term. Liberate noted BCR’s adoption of the scheme as a further unique and positive factor in their nomination for the award.
Wendy Lambert said: “Our enrolment in the DIFERA scheme was a great opportunity to be assessed independently by a ground-breaking charity and to be educated further about diversity and inclusion. We have a thriving team and believe that this initiative will only help the positive culture of the firm to continue. We consider that our membership of the Scheme will be viewed positively by staff, recruits and clients alike and hope that even more Jersey businesses will join DIFERA during 2018.”
