Equality and Diversity, Equal Opportunity

 

 

 

An equality and diversity policy:

• states your values on equality and diversity (fairness) and how they will be put into practice.
• shows your staff, potential recruits and customers that you are serious about fairness and helps them understand:
  • What behaviour you expect and what is not acceptable;
  • what they can expect of you;
    
• Helps win business. Public sector and other large organisations may take equality policies into account when awarding contracts.
• Underpins your action plan.
• Helps you comply with the law.

How should the Equality and Diversity policy be developed?

For an equality policy to be effective, it must have the support of everyone in the organisation and be an integral part of the business strategy. Involve managers at all levels to gain their commitment and develop the policy in consultation with employees and their representatives.

What should be included in your Equality and Diversity policy?

All equality policies have many things in common and you will find a sample policy later in this booklet, however, your policy should relate to your organisation's size and make-up and the nature of your business.

The opening section of your equality and diversity policy should contain:

• a statement of your aim to encourage, value and manage diversity.
• your commitment to providing equality for all.
  
• your wish to attain a workforce that is representative of the communities from which it is drawn.
  You should then identify the areas of discrimination that you will counter, usually:
• gender (including sex, marriage, gender re-assignment).
• race (including ethnic origin, colour, nationality and national origin).
• disability.
  
• sexual orientation.
• religion or belief.
• age.

You can then go on to state that you will ensure a working environment in which all people are able to give of their best, that is free from harassment and bullying and that all decisions will be based on merit.

(Many companies choose to have a separate policy concerning harassment and bullying.)

The policy should then contain more specific actions such as:

• setting an action plan with clear measurable objectives and targets;
• a strategy for making the policy known to all workers, including all management levels;
• providing training and guidance for all staff;
  
• dealing with harassment and bullying;
• monitoring the workforce;
• reviewing all personnel procedures including recruitment, selection, promotion, training, discipline and grievance;
• how you will regularly review and update the policy.

What about the action plan?

The action plan that backs up your policy should go into detail about what will be done, by when and by whom. You should:

• set dates on when you will do the things such as monitoring, reviewing procedures, training and guidance mentioned above;
• expand on how these will be done and by whom;
  
• say how you will tackle harassment and bullying (both preventing and dealing with it) or where this has been covered in a separate policy make clear reference to it;
  
• consider targets that result from what you find from monitoring, such as increasing the number of management jobs open to job sharing to allow more women to do them, interviewing more disabled people, changing the way you advertise to attract more people from minority ethnic groups;
  
• consider whether Positive Action measures are appropriate;
  
• consider targets that specifically refer to the percentage of people from particular under-represented groups that you will aim to have in your workforce after a defined time period. If you adopt this approach you must be careful that such targets do not become misunderstood and seen as quotas that have to be achieved by any means. Quotas are unlawful;
  
• consider in setting your plan what will be your measures of success and how you will evaluate these and how and when you will review the overall working of your policy.
  A good action plan therefore:
• focuses attention on the key tasks to be tackled;
• enables equality to be tackled like any other management task;
  
• gives an impetus to your policy;
  
• shows that the implementation of your policy will be monitored and reviewed and is not just a piece of window dressing;
• becomes part of the objectives and responsibilities of named individuals within management.

What do the policy and action plan need to support them?

Consultation with workforce representatives in drawing-up your policy and ownership and commitment from the very top of your organisation is key to the success of your policy and action plan.

Ultimate responsibility must rest with the most senior person in the organisation who should ensure that there is a strategy in place for disseminating the policy to everyone in the company. This may mean consultation and involvement at all levels and training for existing and new staff on what it means in practice.

Promoting your policy publicly is also very important so make sure all employees get a copy, you use the policy statement in advertising and other literature and give a copy to all job applicants.