Equality, Diversity & Inclusion in Heritage: Toolkit

Ten Objectives for Putting in Place a Best Practice Survey

When putting your survey together, it is really important to make sure you have a few key things in place to get the most out of the questions you are asking your people. Here are ten objectives to help you:

1. Define a clear, attainable goal for your survey

2. Keep the more personal questions to the end

3. Don’t let your survey get too long

4. Focus on using close-ended questions

5. Consider including an incentive to completing the survey

6. Don’t ask leading questions

7. Keep your answer choices balanced

8. Don’t always use Yes/No answers for your questions

9. Make sure you only ask one question at a time

10. Test your survey on colleagues before you send it out to participants

How to Convene a Focus Group

There is no better substitute for understanding how an organisation operates than speaking to the stakeholders of that organisation. This can be employees, volunteers, senior leaders, trustees or external suppliers – anyone who has an interest in the organisation and who could affect or be affected by the organisational practices and culture. The lived experience of these groups of people is vital to understanding how the organisation works in practice and is an effective partner in reviewing policies and procedures. They offer the context and backdrop to how these that are influencing the workplace.

Hearing from the voice of lived experience is a powerful and valuable addition to the toolkit for change.

1. Once you’ve decided you want to have a Focus Group, you need to make sure you get a cross-organisational view of feedback on your subject. For participants to feel they can speak freely, participants come from the same level in the organisation – one for managers and one for staff. Equally, if you want to use the opportunity of a focus group for one of these groups to hear directly from the other, you can mix them up.

2. It is quite common, when conducting focus groups and interviews for an EDI Review, for people to be keen to share their experiences of what has not worked well rather than highlighting positive examples. This is not a bad thing. If you allow time for the negative experiences to be aired, you will get a lot richer positive feedback. Progress is never made unless people first feel heard.

3. Think about the objective of the Focus Group. For example, do you want to understand how a new policy or procedure has been embedded; perhaps you want to know more about how your staff or volunteers feel about EDI. Make sure you are clear about the objective before you get the group together.

4. Keep the length of the Focus Group to about 90 minutes. Experience has shown this allows sufficient time for people to have a good conversation about the subject matter. And Focus Groups don’t need to be face-to-face. They can be just as successful if they are held via Zoom or MS Teams.

5. Make sure all participants feel comfortable that the Focus Groups are confidential, and comments will not be attributed to a particular person. This will encourage open and honest discussion and enable you to get a good level of granularity of feedback.

6. To help structure the sessions without restricting conversation, offer some questions to the participants of the focus group ahead of meeting with them to help them start thinking about their own experiences. In this example, we are asking questions about EDI:

• What have been your good EDI experiences of working/volunteering at [name of organisation]? Can you give some examples?

• What have been the challenging EDI experiences that you have faced? Can you give some examples?

• What are the key barriers to an inclusive culture? These could be physical, policy or procedures or about the culture of [name of organisation].

• Name one thing you would like to change around EDI at [name of organisation].

EDI Audit

The intent and purpose of EDI policies, processes and procedures has changed over time; as has the language we use when talking about EDI. It is good business practice to regularly conduct an audit of these policies to make sure they are up to date. As a rule, policies, procedures and processes should be reviewed by HR at least once a year.  But sometimes other work can take priority and suddenly more time has gone by than we would have liked.

Conducting an EDI audit of a small number of policies can highlight current good practice as well as areas that need more focus. Trends in language and tone used, consideration given to accessibility as well as the commitment to accessibility, the future proofing of policies and how they support the Lived Experience for people who use them are all key indicators to look for. Historically we have tended to use more formal, legal language when writing policies.  However, policies are increasingly being written in plain English to make them easier to understand by everyone.  More information can be found at www.plainenglish.co.uk/

Accessibility Audit and Digital Audit

An accessibility audit is a combination of automated and manual testing done by accessibility experts using assistive technologies in various testing states. A detailed, physical audit is a thorough review of accessibility providing full coverage, that automated testing alone cannot provide.

While it may seem relatively easy to conduct a Digital or a Physical Audit of your websites or buildings, unless you are accredited to do this or have a specialist in your organisation, we would recommend you ask an organisation such as EMBED to support you. There are several standards and regulations you need to be aware of to ensure you are meeting the requirements of these audits such as the Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations 2018 and experience of evaluating services against WCAG 2.1.

EDI Strategy and EDI Action Plan

Now you have gathered all the information together to understand where your organisation is on your EDI journey, you are now ready to start creating your new EDI Strategy and Action Plan. Remember that the EDI Strategy states the EDI objectives for your core business whereas the EDI Action Plan is an expanded version of the EDI Strategy with actions related to delivering the strategy. If there is no clear line of sight between the two, the EDI Action Plan will fail.

It is also helpful to remember that less is more. The Strategy will have more chance of succeeding if there are, say, three main objectives to deliver over a year, rather than 10 or 20. Make sure you have the resources to deliver your objectives; it is not the job of HR to deliver a successful EDI Strategy, everyone across the organisation has a part to play in embedding EDI into the culture of the business.

Your EDI Action Plan should begin with a statement about your organisation’s vision for the future within an EDI context. It should have a narrative which explains to the reader what you believe in and introduce the Plan to them so that it is clear what you are doing, why you are doing it and what you expect to change within the timescale of the Plan. The next step is to identify and describe what your EDI Objectives are.

Helpful EDI Information

Below is a summary of EDI legislation that you may find helpful.

The Equality Act 2010

The current Equality Act came into force on 1^st October 2010. It brings together over 116 separate pieces of legislation into one single Act. This Act provides a legal framework to protect the rights of individuals and advance equality of opportunity for everyone. It protects individuals from unfair treatment and promotes a fair and more equal society.

The nine main pieces of legislation that were merged are:

• The Equal Pay Act 1970

• The Sex Discrimination Act 1975

• The Race Relations Act 1976

• The Disability Discrimination Act 1995

• The Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003

• The Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2003

• The Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2003

• The Equality Act 2006 Part 2

• The Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2007

More information can be found at: https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/advice-and-guidance/equality-act-guidance

Protected Characteristics

Under the Equality Act 2010, there are nine protected characteristics that form the core of the Act. These are:

• Age

• Disability

• Gender Reassignment

• Marriage or Civil Partnership

• Pregnancy and Maternity

• Race

• Religion/Belief

• Sex (Gender)

• Sexual Orientation

Public Sector Equality Duty

The broad purpose of the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) is to make sure public authorities give consideration to equality and good relations in their day-to-day business activities. If you don’t consider how a function can affect groups in different ways, it is unlikely to have the intended effect. This can lead to greater inequality and poor outcomes.

There are three main aims of the PSED:

• Removing or minimising disadvantages suffered by people due to their protected characteristics;

• Taking steps to meet the needs of people from protected groups where these are different from the needs of other people;

• Encouraging people from protected groups to participate in public life or in other activities where their participation is disproportionately low.

The general equality duty requires public sector organisations to think how they could positively contribute to the improvement of equality in their business. This includes the design of policies and processes, the delivery of services and for these to be kept under regular review.

The specific duty assists organisations to comply with the general duty and improve an organisation’s focus and transparency in relation to equality. Organisations are required to publish sufficient information to demonstrate their compliance with the general equality duty across all their functions.