EDI Strategy Interim Report

Introduction

We recognise that a diverse workforce is a more productive one; understanding our people enables us to ensure that our support networks, services, and forums are adequate and accessible to everyone. As part of our strategy, we set ambitious targets against each of the eight goals that we planned to reach by 2024. When developing the key performance indicators, we were aware that we needed to refresh our data and give all employees an opportunity to declare their personal information using the most current accepted terminology. We had a high number of ‘prefer not to say’ in our original data set and we were keen to give our people a safe environment to record their information confidentially. Internal consultations also identified that not all of our people were familiar with the new, or indeed, some of the existing terminology being used for equality, diversity, and inclusion. Our data collection form also required updating and reformatting, and also needed to be added to our new eSignature tool “DocuSign.” As a result, a new form was created which included comprehensible explanations on how to complete it and clearer definitions alongside the traditional data capture lists to explain acronyms of categories. For example, alongside disability we listed some very common hidden disabilities.

We launched our new strategy and data collection form together and a new toolbox talk was created and delivered by specially trained EDI individuals. The goal was to ensure everyone attending was:

• Aware of the new strategy and shown how to access it • Given an overview of equality, diversity, and inclusion terminology, with an explanation of acronyms • Given the opportunity to become a champion of, or join one of the new EDI employee forums • Made aware of the new data collection form, the importance of capturing accurate data and a clear explanation of how their data would be used positively, adhering to GDPR guidelines • Informed of client and community EDI expectations

All new employees also complete the new data collection form automatically and are invited to attend an EDI talk during their first three months.

Our data collection exercise has been so successful that just by understanding the makeup of our workforce better we have met our targets. Our missing data for sexual orientation accounts for only 5% of our employees and ethnicity is only 2% .

Two years into our four year strategy we have completed almost 60% of our actions, with a further 16% in progress.

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