Everyday Inclusion - Charley Johnson at UK Athletics

I am the HR Officer at UKA. I’ve worked at UKA for 11 years now, 9 of those spent in the HR department. My role is to support the Head of HR in providing a high-quality HR service that meets customer needs and corporate objectives.

I am the first point of contact for all HR related queries, providing information and advice and supporting employees, managers and the public on Human Resources issues, as well as managing the administration side of the function.

I’ve been an ED&I advocate since returning to work from maternity leave in October 2019. When I initially joined the group, I took a lead on the pregnancy and maternity area as this was a real interest to me following my recent experience. As the team developed and grew, this recently turned into the wider subject of ‘Inclusion’ and I joined forces with Robyn and Becky who are a great little team with some brilliant ideas.

Inclusion is important to me both in my role in HR being responsible for employee wellbeing, but also something I personally feel very passionately about. To me, Inclusion is about valuing every person in the organisation as an individual and acknowledging and celebrating our differences by creating an environment that allows everyone to feel comfortable to be themselves.

As a group we want to raise awareness to encourage all employees to get involved and feel engaged and by creating an inclusive environment we can help make everyone feel accepted and part of UKA. In these especially difficult times, we realise that everyone has different challenges to deal with so we really need to look out for each other and put employee wellbeing as the priority to the organisation. We decided to create the blue Monday survival kit to acknowledge that a lot of people are probably feeling quite demotivated and possibly down at the moment, so we hoped that some ideas of things to keep busy and lift our spirits might help support our fellow colleagues. It was also a great excuse to have a virtual catch up and a chat with Becky and Robyn.