Newsroom
05.04.2022
SOCIAL DIALOGUE

INTEL Project: CoESS and UNI Europa host EU-funded webinar on diversity and inclusion

On 4 April 2022, CoESS and UNI Europa, the EU Sectoral Social Partner in Private Security Services, held a webinar with roughly 100 participants on "Best Practices for inclusive training, career pathways and workplaces in the Private Security Services" – funded by the European Union for the strengthening of Social Dialogue. Participants discussed a large range of best practices in Social Partner initiatives that aim at increasing diversity and inclusion in workplaces of private security services.

The webinar was the third in a series of online meetings that CoESS and UNI Europa jointly organised in the context of their EU-funded project "INTEL: Skills Intelligence for the Private Security Services".

It featured speakers from EU Institutions, companies, and Sectoral Social Partners from different EU countries - including sessions on:

  • job orientation and integration of vulnerable employee groups
  • inclusive and qualitative training
  • workplace policies supporting diversity

The aim was to exchange best practices on how to promote diversity in the workforce and workplaces in the private security services – and to inspire Social Partners at national level to drive forward comparable initiatives in order to enhance inclusion.

Different best practices were presented – such as joint activities of the Sectoral Social Partners in Spain to promote and enforce gender equality; training frameworks of Sectoral Social Partners in Germany and Belgium on supporting disadvantaged young people in vocational education and training; and Social Partner perspectives from different countries on how to support LGBTQI+ workers in the industry. Interesting company initiatives were presented in this regard from Securitas UK and Avarn Security in Sweden. The European Public Employment Services Network presented best practices on Social Partner collaboration with employment services in order to enhance inclusion and workforce diversity.

As a next steps, CoESS and UNI Europa will bring the EU-funded INTEL project to the national level: CoESS’ national members in Germany (BDSW), Sweden (Säkerhetsföretagen), and Croatia (CSA) will host Social Partner workshops during autumn 2022 to discuss national challenges and best practices to tackle labour and skills shortages in the private security services.

The Best Practices that were discussed in the past online seminars will further be assembled in a best practice report, to be published by CoESS and UNI Europa by the end of 2022.

In June 2022, the Social Partners will further publish the results of the first EU-wide survey on labour and skills shortages in the private security services.

All project results will be presented at a final high-level conference in Brussels in February 2023.