Hello LGBTQ+ community!
We’ve noticed that this community isn’t as active and engaged as we’d hoped it would be so we’d appreciate your thoughts on how we can turn that around. Why do you think that it’s not very active? Is it something about the group itself or the technology that stops you from participating?
The team and I, along with Jo Foster our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Manager, have had a few ideas and suggestions that we’d like feedback on so please have a read through and let us know which of these ideas you think we should implement. Or of course if you have any suggestions of your own please get in touch and let us know.
We could:
1. Close the IET LGBTQ+ group and move the discussions to a new overarching category on the theme of diversity and inclusion and hosted in our site-wide public forum space. The new category would also include discussions from the Women’s Network and other existing groups that also come under the banner of diversity and inclusion. Conversations in the new forum category will be publicly visible and therefore have the opportunity to attract a wider audience and increased engagement.
2. Keep the group exactly as it is but be more active within it. Currently the group is a public group within the online community so all discussions etc can be read by the public but as they are within a group, you only find out about the discussions if you visit the group itself.
3. Keep the group but change it to a private group (so you need approval by an admin to join it and content within is only visible to members of the group) So you can discuss topics etc that you’d prefer not to be visible to the public but then have a sitewide forum area as well for topics that you don’t mind discussing in public.
We’ve also created a poll on the group's homepage for you to indicate which of the suggestions you’d prefer.
Happy to take private feedback either by PM or via my email address of Lmiles@theiet.org
If you have any questions at all then please don’t hesitate to get in touch!
Lisa
