Diversity & Inclusion at Bedford: Celebrating Pride Month

At Bedford, Diversity & Inclusion amongst our team is of the utmost importance to us. To mark the end of Pride month, our latest blog discusses the steps we are taking to continue to increase D&I across the business and we’ll also hear from some of our team who are celebrating Pride.

Bedford’s DNA and core values (Partnership, Innovation, Teamwork, Customer Focus, Humility and Quality) runs through everyone in the company and creates an inclusive and diverse environment for all. We encourage applications from all backgrounds, and would love to see even more diversity, in all its forms next year, so please check out our job descriptions and get in touch.

Diversity enriches us as an organisation and enhances the quality we can deliver. We all bring a different lens to solving problems, which allows us to work together to be creative and innovative with our solutions, as we can plug gaps in each other’s knowledge. Our work environment is a safe and supportive space, through understanding, appreciating, and celebrating our differences, as much as what connects us together. As we grow across EMEA, we strive to continue to provide this safe, diverse, and inclusive working environment for all our employees.

Pride month is being celebrated across the globe, and we wanted to ask our employees what the occasion means to them personally and how they’ll be celebrating. As you would expect from such a diverse team, we got many different viewpoints and opinions, below are some who are happy to share their answers.

We also recently celebrated with a rainbow shirt themed All Hands Call to mark the occasion with the Bedford Team.

Marcella Hynes

What does pride month mean to you?

Pride month is significant for so many reasons. For me a time to reflect on personal journeys and progress we’ve made as a community towards equality. It’s important to acknowledge and celebrate this, also to keep raising political awareness of the issues which still affect the LGBTQ+ community. It’s great more and more towns and cities in the UK are now hosting pride events and globally it’s become bigger and bigger. There is still a still long way to go to fight discrimination and encourage inclusiveness, so it’s essential the Pride movement continues and grows every year.

What are you doing to celebrate?

I live in Brighton which now hosts the UK’s biggest Pride festival. The city is a great place to live, very diverse with a great energy. Pride attracts a wide demographic of international audience from all over the World. I’ll celebrate by watching the community parade which is always the most important part for me as it reinforces the messaging through floats, flags and banners of the struggle for acceptance and equality. The theme this year is Love, Protest and Unity.

Dani Ruiz

What does pride month mean to you?

Pride Month is a time to celebrate the strides we’ve taken and for us all to stand as allies with our LGBTQ+ friends and colleagues. The LGBTQ+ community has fought long and hard to be visible, to have our space and voice in the society. However, there is still so much more to do. For me, now is the time to stand as an ally to people who identify as transgender, people who struggle to get a job after they finish college, people who are still fighting for their voice and place in our society. Every day, they face fear, prejudice, and violence, just because they are brave enough to be their true authentic self. Would you stand by a transgender colleague, manager, or CEO? Happy Pride everyone.

Ava Whybrow

Why is it important to you to celebrate Pride?

Pride is about standing alongside the LGBTQ+ community to raise awareness of the issues they face as well as celebrating queer art and culture. The community has made great progress over the past 50 years and this month provides an opportunity to reflect upon this and commemorate the journey so far.  However, it is also a time to acknowledge how far we have left to go. This year I am thinking specifically about intersectionality within pride and how taking the time to educate ourselves benefits not only the whole community but helps to build a more open and tolerant society.

How will you be celebrating pride this year?

A great thing about pride is that just as it means something slightly different to everyone, there are many ways to celebrate. Pride festivals are always a good time, whether you belong to the LGBTQ+ community or are just an ally. They are extremely welcoming and allow the opportunity to dress up, meet new people and have a drink. You can also help the movement in other ways, such as supporting queer events and media, or in everyday actions such as providing and asking for pronouns which helps reduce the stigma surrounding them.

“I’m looking forward to parade day. The whole city comes alive, and you can feel the positive energy buzzing around. It’s also a great excuse to get together with a big group of friends, get dressed up in something ridiculous and just party all day and night.”

We’re hiring across EMEA, if you’d like to find out more about joining our team, visit our Careers pages.