Diversity & Inclusion Statement

(Wokingham, UK) August 4, 2020

At IFIS we are committed to encouraging equality, diversity and inclusion and eliminating unlawful discrimination for all.

As our equal opportunity policy illustrates, we are committed to a culture of fairness and respect regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race (including colour, nationality, and ethnic or national origin), religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation, and any combination of these. However, we wish to take that further and proactively support diversity and inclusion.

Our mission is to fundamentally understand and best serve the information needs of the food community. We strongly feel this also includes fundamentally understanding, respecting and welcoming diversity in order to best serve our colleagues and the wider community. We are committed to eliminating discrimination and supporting diversity where we can. We feel that through recognising and appreciating uniqueness we can gain wider insight, knowledge and understanding of our community and thus aide our community more fully.

How are we demonstrating this?

For FSTA, we continue to work on sourcing information globally to represent all countries, areas of work and research within the context of food. We currently provide records from 62 countries, in 37 languages. Additionally, we work with Research4Life to ensure colleagues in developing countries are able to access our wide-ranging, quality information, to help with their scientific progression related to food and health.

In-house, we:

• Rolled out unconscious bias training to employees, managers and board members.
• Are proud to be part of Time to Change supporting mental health and wellbeing.
• Are developing and rolling out educational and support-based diversity and equality resources.
• Regularly host internal charity fundraisers, for a range of causes, including supporting LGBTQI rights and anti-racism.
• Will be removing personal identifiers from job applications going forwards, so that individuals are assessed purely on their skills and ability to perform the role.