RisiAlbania organized a one-day workshop with partners representing different industries, such as tourism, media, ICT, agribusiness, local government, non-formal skills providers and civil society organisations to discuss about gender and social inclusion and raise awareness on their importance creating a better working environment.

Participants learned through theoretical examples based in the best world practices, European and Albanian legislation updates combined also with practical examples of how different private and public entities can integrate and own these practices to improve different aspects such as work-life balance, fairer internal procedures, increase employee performance and have better outcomes and results in their daily work.

“Creating jobs in strong, competitive enterprises and following principles of gender and social inclusion (GSI) looks sometime like the squaring of the circle; inconsistent and costly. A multiple number of examples presented in the training has shown that this has not necessarily to be the case. GSI can perfectly well become part of the business philosophy. Risi keeps supporting such companies who seek qualitative growth and increasingly sell products and services to a distinguished clientele” – stressed Stefan Joss, RisiAlbania Project Director .

“Learning more for diversity, inclusion and equity will change forever how I look at working procedures and relations with my colleagues”- said one of the attendees from the private sector. Xhafer Rakipllari from “Aleksander Moisiu” university in Durres expressed the desire to extend such workshops to younger audience as his university students.

Having more diverse workforce improves business profits by a considerable margin.  Productivity per worker could rise by up to 40% by eliminating all forms of discrimination against female workers and managers according to recent studies.