Equality and Diversity Consultancy: Collecting, Monitoring and Analysing Equality Information

Overview:

The collection and monitoring of equality information is one of the most vital and strategic tools in understanding the diversity of your workforce, customers and service users and identifying underrepresentation and gaps.

Equality information can also allow you to understand the impact your activities have on the different sections of the community you both serve and employ It is also a useful tool to monitor outcomes and the successes of any previous Equality and Diversity initiatives. 

McKenzie can help you to develop systems, analytical tools and reporting templates to allow you to capture, analyse and report equality information that is:

• Relevant to your organisation

• Proportionate 

• Reasonable

• Meaningful 

What Information do I have to collect by Law ?

The answer to this is surprisingly simple. The answer is none ! However, if you are a public sector (or related) organisation, the Equality Act Public Sector Duty places a statutory obligation to assess the ‘impact of your activities’. It is difficult to imagine how this can be  performed effectively without collecting and monitoring Equality information.

Should I ask everyone about all ‘Protected Characteristics’  .  

Once again, our answer is surprising simple. No. What is important is that you develop a robust, relevant and proportionate approach to the collection, monitoring and reporting of equality information to allow you to monitor outcomes, identify disadvantage and develop approaches to improve equality, access and outcomes.

Life -cycling:

A rudiment in respect of Equality information is analysing equality data e.g. by Race, Gender, Disability and Age at each stage of a person’s experience with your organisation known as Life Cycling. 

For example, in employment this begins when a person applies for a job with you, if they are appointed, if they are promoted, when they leave etc. 

A key error made in many organisations is to capture such data once, for example, on an application form and then never refresh the information !

McKenzie can help you to:

• Review your current approaches in respect of collecting equality data  

• Make detailed recommendations including industry / sector best practice

• Supply template collection, analysis and reporting tools

• Collect equality data externally on your behalf

• Provide definitive answers in respect of what information you should be collecting

• Advise on life cycling stages and options

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McKenzie Resources Section and Web Site Links: 

  

You may find the following document published by the Equality and Human Rights Commission to be useful. It contains very detailed information about collecting and monitoring Equality Information. Download it for free by clicking on the green link opposite Equality Information Guidance

The Government Equalities Office have published a quick start quide to the Public Sector Equality Duty which may be useful in determining a proportionate and relevant approach in this area. You can download this document for free by clicking on the green link opposite: equality-duty

For further and higher educational institutions, The Equality Challenge Unit provides excellent examples of Equality Information collection and benchmarking. 

Acas have also produced some example templates for Equality monitoring. Download an example by clicking on the green link below.

Equality-and-diversity-monitoring-form-template

To find out how McKenzie can help you in this area, please contact us by clicking the link below

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