Equality Act 2010
Submitted by Lai-Har Cheung on Tue, 24/08/2010 - 16:12
As I'm sure you'll know, the Equality Act 2010 comes into force in October and I wanted to pose a few questions to colleagues in the sector:
What challenges do you envisage when implementing the new legislation?
There is written guidance available - is there any additional sector specific support or guidance needed?
Any information you share will help inform how NCVO's Workforce Development team might respond to the needs of the sector; I look forward to hearing your thoughts and views.
Lai-Har Cheung, Employment Practice Manager, NCVO, Workforce Development
The challenges will be:
training managers about not asking 'illegal' questions about health at interview
protecting staff and volunteers from 3rd party harassment
as the list of capacities will be removed it will be even easier to successfully claim that someone is disabled and consequently even harder to know what to advise with someone who 'might' be disabled
As the sector is so varied it is difficult to envisage anything specific
For me the challenges will be:
Securing 'buy-in' from managers and staff in the voluntary sector and convincing them that we in the sector need to seriously raise our game on equality and diversity i.e. not just 'talking the talk', but walking it!
Diversity monitoring: From my experience, this is still generally poor, particularly in the protected characteristics of sexual orientation and religion/belief. Voluntary sector staff are still generally reluctant to 'ask the questions' on monitoring, and are still not grasping the importance of diversity monitoring on all strands as a way of ensuring that we are actually providing a fair and equal service, and that the stats we collect helps provide the evidence of need amongst a diverse range of 'vulnerable' groups.
Performance management on equality and diversity: How do we measure up? The public sector have the 'Equality Framework for Local Government' (and previously the 'Equality Standard') to help them measure how well they are practically implementing their 'good intentions' on E&D. What do we in the voluntary sector have in place? From the work I am currently involved in with some other voluntay sector partners, there are a few out there, but are they publicised sufficiently by the infrastructure organisations, and are robust enough?
I think these are the key issues we need to iron out, teh voluntary sector can be credible and serious players in promoting and ensuring a truly equal and non-discriminatory society.
Thanks both for your comments.
Peter's post mentioned that it may be easier for someone to claim they have a disability. Is the concern that people may falsely claim that they have a disability? Can anyone offer any thoughts / guidance on how employers manage this? Should employers be worried?
Ade's post mentions diversity monitoring. I would agree that getting staff buy-in in order to monitor diversity is important. A question I'd pose is: how might employers engender the trust from their staff in the first instance, in order that they (staff) would feel comfortable to disclose (even anonymously) potentially sensitive information? If an organisation doesn't have a culture of respect for diversity it will be difficult to get the buy-in regardless of the business case for providing an equitable service. It may be useful for organisation's to review their own diversity awareness and practices first to see if these will impact on staff willingness to complete monitoring information.
The other question I'd pose is - what does an organisation do with the diversity statistiics they collect? For example, if an organisation's diversity monitoring shows a statistically lower number of LGBT staff compared to the 'national average' or the 'community average', is the rationale that employers now prioritise recruiting LGBT staff?
Lai-Har
I was not suggesting false claims by any means
Only an employment judge/tribunal can decide if someone is disabled for the purposes of the law
in practice it is worse than betting on the horses to guess whether someone will pass or fail the 'disabled test'
Very few organisations will ever succeed in monitoring all 9 protected characteristics and even fewr will be able to do anything useful with the data. If you were a LGBT support group such data might be helpful but what are most organisations going to do?
Peter
I would have thought that the other organisation would look to work better at using data collected to ensure they are targetting their services or jobs effectively at these groups, if they are under-represented within their agencies/workplaces? Also, am I right in saying that monitoring willl be mandatory under the Equality Act?
Ade
Monitoring will not be manadatory. Unless data is good then it is always potentially dangerous/misleading.
It's in an interesting point re: targetting jobs at underepresented groups. What I find challenging is when does an organisation know it's 'got it right' / 'getting it right'? Should an organisation's workforce aim to be equally representative of all 9 protected characteristics? Or should it prioritise some protected characteristics and if so, on what basis?
I think diversity monitoring is often done without a clear rationale for what an organisation will do next with the data.
Good point Lai-Har. If that is the case, is this an area of development and learning for the voluntary sector? How do we then know we are getting it right without any robust measurement framework? How do we ensure we get good quality data and we are making good use of this?
Inevitably it probably means focussing on the relatively easy data ie race and sex.No organisation can be equally representative of all nine characteristis,if prioritising is apprpriate it hs to be on that which can be easily measured/compared. External data on say relgion and sexuality is very unreliable and information collected internally probably even more so. Sadly i think that brings me back to the concept of a hierarchy of protection which is not where i would want to be.
Statistically on large third sector employers will be able to get good quality data.if we take an organisation with say 100 staff (10 claiming to be gay)and one gay person leaves. Have they deriorated by 10& should they seek a gay person to keep up the numbers? Does a gay Muslim count double? if external staitistics say 10 of the worrkforce is gay are they better than average? What if a new survey suggests it is 12%, are they now worse than average
Lai har mentioned early on 'national average' or 'community avarge'. Where would you get these stats from?