Culture

For this reason, we ask everyone at the BDA to put members first. To remember the value they bring to society, the isolation their work often entails and the pressure of working with ill people in an often hostile commercial and regulatory environment. We fight their corner with the NHS, governments and other bodies but also listen to their concerns and problems and support them whenever they need us. We want members to come to the BDA for support, expert advice, and empathy.

We ask that you try to embody these qualities when working with or supporting our members. We also ask that you remain up to date with best practices related to your area of work and take shared responsibility for ensuring that you are competent and confident with appropriate tools, software and resources.

Our employment relationship with you

We believe the people we employ are key to achieving our mission. As a service brand, staff are our biggest asset. We consider ourselves to be a flexible employer and are focused on creating an empowered culture with an environment that engenders the following:

Trust. We trust you to behave in a manner that is consistent with our core values, and we’ll create an environment that allows you to complete your work without unnecessary oversight or bureaucracy.

Diversity and inclusion. Whether diversity stems from differences in age, race, gender, education or experience we value diversity and want a working environment that is inclusive for all.

Respect. We value your opinion and take the view that respectful interactions are those that are considerate, honest and tactful. We want you to be free to express your ideas without fear of ridicule, criticism or punishment as we strive for ways to continually learn and improve.

Effective communication and interaction. We want to get to know you and want you to get to know each other. We encourage regular face-to-face interaction as we feel this is important to help build both the employment and social relationship. We think face-to-face meetings or video-calls are more appropriate for messages that may have the potential to be unclear or have sensitive content.

Wellbeing. We place your wellbeing at the heart of our culture. We will ensure a healthy, safe and supportive working environment. Training and development. We value expertise and learning in our support for members and in our work culture. We will give you autonomy to develop within your role at the Association and the training and support you need to do this. As a small organisation we recognise that we cannot always meet your career expectations but aspire to ensure you can develop in your role as much as possible and have the tools and experience to progress whether with us or elsewhere.

Consultation. We will seek your views and knowledge on how we work and the future of the Association. We will actively respect and engage with your views and concerns.

Your employment relationship with us

We expect everyone working for us to help instil the culture and environment that we are striving for. This means adopting the principles we have set out above as well as the processes, policies and procedures that we put in place to facilitate these. We expect you to:

• Be respectful towards members and your colleagues
• Be mindful of the needs of the organisation and those of your colleagues as part of your employment relationship with us
• Work within the hours you agree with us and make yourself available during these
• Make yourself visible. A supportive and collaborative culture needs staff involvement. This means coming to the office to meet with colleagues, as part of any induction or training processes or to carry out certain types of work as and when required. Small things also matter: making a call instead of emailing, turning your camera on at remote meetings and uploading a suitable picture of yourself on our IT platforms so that colleagues know who you are. We try to foster an active social community and hope you will wish to join us in making this possible
• Take your health, safety, and wellbeing seriously. This means sharing in the responsibility for your day-to-day health and safety and make any issues known to us
• Talk to us. If you are experiencing any issues affecting your working life, we want you to tell us so we can help support you wherever appropriate.

Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion

It is important to us that our staff and members are treated inclusively. We share our collective knowledge and expertise with each other, focussing on ensuring that everyone is treated fairly and has access to equal opportunities across the association.

We have four core values which help us to make judgements about what we should be doing, as well as how we should be doing it:

• Be inclusive
• Support our members
• Use our influence
• Share our knowledge and expertise.

Dentistry is becoming increasingly diverse, to ensure we reflect and represent the profession we welcome diversity. We champion the different voices in dentistry by making sure that we:

• Act with respect, integrity, courtesy and honesty
• Are clear and consistent across the organisation
• Never look the other way or ignore actions which marginalise people  
• Do not subscribe to stereotypes and assumptions
• Make sure things are inclusive for all
• Make equality, diversity and inclusion matter 
• Create a workplace that reflects the communities we serve 
• Create a supportive environment where everyone can do their best work.