What staff equality data do you collect and publish?

The specific duties of the Public Sector Equality Duty require public sector organisations to gather, analyse, use and publish staff equality data. How does your practice compare to others? Would new guidance help?

The Equality Challenge Unit (ECU) conducted an audit of college HR systems to see who was monitoring what protected characteristic. They found that data collection across the sector is incomplete and inconsistent. There is significant variation in the collection and reporting of data, which has proven problematic for benchmarking and comparison exercises, and the subsequent development of improvement measures.

As a result, the ECU have published guidance in March 2018 aimed at human resources (HR) and equality leads.

It is not perfect, for example I don’t like the fact that there are examples where ethnic monitoring categories on E&D forms start with ‘White’ rather than take an alphabetical approach , and the guidance doesn’t follow best practice in some other areas. It’s also tailored to Scottish law requirements. But it should make an interesting read for HR and for E&D leads

You can download the guidance here