Testimonials

Here's what previous winners have to say...

Dublin Bus

Winner: Tourism Attractions & Transport Operations

"In Dublin Bus we have been developing an Equality and Diversity Strategy over the past five years.      We are committed to providing an environment that treats our employees and our customers with dignity and respect and accommodates and values differences between people,

We entered the Diversity Awards to benchmark our Equality and Diversity Strategy against others in the Tourist Attractions and Transport Operators area. 

Winning an award brought us positive publicity and gave us an opportunity to meet people from other sectors who have developed good practice in diversity management.        Taking part in the Diversity Awards is a good way of highlighting good practice among employers and service providers in developing strategies to meet the changing needs of an increasingly more diverse marketplace."

Patricia Normanly, Dublin Bus

Fitzgerald's Woodlands House Hotel

Winner: Hotels - Individual

We submitted our application for the "Diversity Awards 2006" for the following reasons

1. We have a lot of different cultures working in Fitzgeralds Woodlands House Hotel and Leisure Spa.

2. We felt that we facilitate their diverse cultural needs eg. Polish food day on our menu name badge flags (all different countries are displayed on our name badges)

3. We wanted to benchmark ourselves in relation to cultural practices 

4. We wanted to identify new ideas in order for us to progress in the world of cultural diversity in the workplace

5. We wanted to show our personnel what we do to ensure a smooth integration into Fitzgeralds Woodlands House Hotel and Leisure Spa.

Karen Glynn, Fitzgerald's Woodlands House Hotel

O'Connell's, Ballsbridge

Winner: Restaurants

O’Connells participated in the 2006 Diversity Awards because we felt that Diversity was never a challenge, we wanted to share our experience.Since the earliest days of planning, through the opening in August 1999, Diversity (a word we did not know in its present understanding) was core to our thoughts.We have always seen diversity’ as ‘normal’ and ‘central’ to what we believe in’.

We opened the business with up to 13 nationalities in year one, the present number is 16.   Management in itself has nine nationalities over three continents.Core diversity issues have never been issues with us – because we never allowed them to become issues.  

We opened the business with a strong sense of respect of the individual.   Management and staff were expected to adhere to this principle.   Any slight deviation was met ‘head on’ and dealt with immediately.    As a result, all knew that any lack of respect for a colleague or a customer was met with zero tolerance. Management led by example and team members adopted the same ethos.

Diversity has never been an issue – as a result we were somewhat uncomfortable even having to define ‘how do we do it’!  For us it is normality. Winning the Award has been a bonus, it has demonstrated to our team, that we have been recognized by our peers as a genuine team.

Tom O'Connell, O'Connell's, Ballsbridge

Skibbereen Residential Care Centre

Winner: Catering Operations

Skibbereen Residential Care Centre is a purpose built 50 bed Nursing Home in the heart of West Cork. When we opened in 2005 we had difficulty in recruiting competent personnel for many of the positions in the Care Centre. We then set about trying to attract personnel from other countries to work here. We implemented policies that we felt would attract and retain employees from other countries. We now have staff members from India, South Africa, Scotland, France, Hungary, Latvia and Lithuania. Cultural Diversity in our team brought with it both opportunities and challenges. We entered the Diversity Awards in 2006 to seek an external award to recognise the efforts of all of our personnel in meeting and overcoming the challenges that cultural diversity brought. We found that winning the awards gave a great boost to the staff morale. 

Our entire team was jubilant that they were all recognised. The true testimony however is that we have almost 100% staff retention of our overseas employees since that speaks for itself!

Colette Moyles, Skibbereen Residential Care Centre