Equality, Diversity and Inclusion action plan

These are the 7 main actions we will be taking in 2021 to 22. These aim to promote wellbeing, equality, diversity, and inclusion at Scope.

Prioritise wellbeing and mental health

• Set up a wellbeing steering group.
• Train mental health first aiders across the organisation (pilot ran in May 2021).
• Build mental health and resilience resources and training.

Prioritise inclusive recruitment

• Report and analyse first 18 months of recruitment diversity data.
• Focus on the experience of disabled applicants.
• Develop an inclusive recruitment and onboarding strategy.

Recommendations from our reasonable adjustments review

• Share learnings with other employers.
• Develop an accessibility panel.
• Develop further reasonable adjustments training.

Develop training

• Unconscious bias training.
• Race equality training.
• Executive EDI training for our board and Executive Leadership Team.

Engage with colleagues

Engage with our colleagues and stakeholders on expanding our EDI work. Encompassing all that Scope does, rather than focusing on our employees.

• Bring together our EDI priorities and action plans into one strategy and action plan

Partner with other organisations

Create links with external organisations, share innovative practice, learn and benchmark with others.

• Restart the EDI charity consortium meetings

Race equality action plan

We have also developed a specific set of actions around race. This was in response to our Black Lives Matter listening sessions. The action plan includes recommendations by colleagues, our response, and proposed actions.

Improve ethnic diversity

Publish full equality and diversity data including race and ethnic background pay gap data.

We will benchmark our data with other organisations. In time for our EDI strategy development in 2022

We will build on what we have learnt successfully recruiting more disabled people to our board when recruiting our next committee and board members during 2021 to 22

We will train interview specialists from ethnically diverse backgrounds who can sit on interview panels to improve the diversity of our panels.

Target BAME people

Diverse advertising and an inclusive employer brand have been built into our talent acquisition strategy.

The Equality in Race network and other suitable experts will be involved in the development of this strategy.

Anonymous applications

After investigation into whether our HR system supports anonymous recruitment, we have found that it can.

Following further investigation, the data we received was mixed regarding effectiveness. We are seeking further evidence and advice on anonymous recruitment before implementing. We will report back on this part of the strategy in 2022.

Clearer career development for BAME staff

Analysis of development for the BAME community at Scope started in November 2021 and will be reviewed and reported on in January 2022.

The new reward strategy had an Equality Impact Assessment which included checking that changes did not affect the BAME community in a negative way.

Promote internal roles more effectively

This is included in our recruitment and talent acquisition strategy that we will be completing in 2022.

Mentoring and apprenticeship schemes for the BAME community

We ran a reverse mentoring scheme with BAME and disabled colleagues in 2021.

We will review the mentoring scheme at the end of 2021 and winter of 2022, including the use of co-production. Making improvements and encourage more minority ethnic backgrounds to take part.

Explore the Black Lives Matter meeting model in more detail. Ensuring senior leaders hear from minority groups within Scope.

Make equality policy more robust and transparent

We updated our Equality Policy in 2021. Our EDI strategy will be co-produced to ensure a mix of participants from diverse backgrounds. We will do this in 2022.

Better awareness of micro-aggressions and unconscious bias

In 2021, we delivered new training modules that included unconscious bias and micro-aggressions. We are continuing to give this training.

Champion the BAME community in our work

We are reviewing how we champion the BAME community. But this effects other areas of the organisation too. We will review this in the winter of 2022.

Promote Black History month

An Equality, Diversity and Inclusion calendar has been set up. This includes important days, weeks and months that celebrate diversity.

Employ a Race Equality Officer

An Equality, Diversity and Inclusion co-ordinator has been appointed. This role will lead on engagement and race issues.