Competing for contracts

Overview

Supplier diversity is a business necessity for both large organisation and SMEs. As a supplier, effectively managing the diversity of your own organisation can help you to win new contracts. 

When tendering for large contracts with other businesses and in particular the public sector, proof of commitment to equality and diversity is business critical to many purchasers.

This section details the areas that you should consider within your organisation to support your supplier diversity programme.

What do I need to know?

Proof of commitment to equality and diversity is becoming business-critical when tendering to public sector purchasers. As a supplier, you can demonstrate this by:

• Having an equality and diversity policy
• Training employees and contractors in the policies and the actions to achieve equality goals
• Having a supplier diversity policy
• Devoting adequate resources to delivering those policies
• Keeping simple records – the diversity composition of the workforce; equality and diversity training given; minority owned suppliers and sub-contractors