Equal - Digital Repository

The cemeSME project is focused on employment, enterprise and the corporate culture of British small and medium sized firms regarding diversity in the workplace.  Schemes promoting employment of ethnic minorities usually address training and the improvement of the participants’ job skills and appeal to employers through a variety of guidance and skills activities. cemeSME has been taking a different approach.  It has been concentrating on the ‘demand’ side of the problem by demonstrating to employers the important contribution of ethnic minorities to UK firms, by showing how their rich cultural background impacts on business performance. By demonstrating these benefits, the case for British firms to employ ethnic minority workers is strengthened.

Aims

The overall project aim is to demonstrate the business advantages of diversity in employment by assisting employers to understand the arguments for race equality in the workplace and promote employment of ethnic minority employees in enterprises at all levels. . It does not aim to prove racism within an organisation, but to clarify the implications of diversity management on the firm’s general business performance and more specifically, on the SME’s internationalisation.

Objectives

• To promote employment of the ethnic minority workforce in the UK and Europe
• To work towards the elimination of racial discrimination and promote equality of opportunity
• To encourage good relations between people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds
• To clarify the positive implications of workforce diversity management on the firm’s business performance
• To disseminate good practice on inclusion of ethnic minority employees
• To make the corporate culture of British firms more sensitive to diversity

• Research Services: orientated towards small and medium sized firms and ethnic minority issues in the UK or internationally.
• International Business and Employment Training: diversity awareness and international business training. All courses are aimed at SME managerial staff who would like to make their firm’s corporate culture more sensitive to diversity issues while improving their internationalisation and performance.
• Distance Learning Materials: on international business and diversity related issues. Materials include computer-aided learning packages and the latest Multimedia and Internet technologies. Specialised CD-ROM packages have been produced and distributed regularly to SMEs.
• Personalised Mentoring: with the support of academic staff from various Universities in the UK, the skills of experienced UK ethnic minority and overseas postgraduate students are used to research specific international business projects for interested SMEs.

Target Groups

BME workforce and SMEs

Although not part of Round 1 activities, original work that pre-dated the current partnership had taken place in the area of looking at firms with an import export profile. From this, the idea of measuring the performance of a business in international markets in relation to its diversity profile has become the original premise of the current partnership.

Large impact due to innovative nature of partnership which will also strongly affect mainstreaming. It is intended to produce a model of the innovative approach that will be applicable Europe wide. By design a number of partners are close to policy makers in that they are national organisations themselves.