Equality & Diversity Services

This year proves to be an exciting time for organisations and Equality and Diversity Practitioner’s, with new opportunities opening up. The Single Equalities Bill is due to be announced in April that will have a package of measures to tackle multi-strand problems we will look at the implications of this more closely.

By radically streamlining and strengthening current equality legislation giving an opportunity for organisations to incorporate all the equality strands into their overall business strategy and culture and building in a standardised approach.

The new Single Equality Duty on the Public Sector will give a fairer and more responsive public service, promoting cohesion and learning from others. It covers the already established equality legislation strands of race, disability and gender. However this now gives a more pragmatic approach towards age, sexual orientation, religion/belief and gender reassignment. This Bill has a workable content that is both permissive and enabling as well as setting basic standards. This initiative can help the public sector to achieve their equality and diversity strategies and should be considered as part of an overall package to obtain the best results. There is a risk that an equality scheme can end up with organisations not looking at it so it’s important to remember that it’s integral to all strategies, all aims and that it is constantly updated.

In line with European Directives this country will see and end to Age Discrimination in goods facilities and services. It is already banned in workplaces but there is evidence of problems elsewhere such as health, social care and financial services. There will be a ban on unjustifiable age discrimination, firming up this strand of equality is imperative.

By promoting transparency- The public sector has been criticised in the past for not being harmonised on reporting and transparency. We cannot tackle issues of unfairness if its concealed. So it needs better reporting and monitoring measures in place. To a greater degree, the organisation needs to reflect the diversity of its workforce and the public and constantly deliver against its aims. Pivotal to the success of this is a thorough understanding of your employee base, and client base, a commitment to narrowing the gender pay gap and BME /disability employment gaps. Using public procurement effectivley and banning secrecy clauses.

Positive action will open up opportunities, by giving more equal political representation, women only short lists, speakers conferences and a councillors task force. This will undoubtedly improve the diversity of public appointments and tackle the root causes behind fairer representation and the reconvening of the Women and Work Commission.

So how will this all work? By strengthening enforcement, by enabling effective enforcement of the duty we need to see a reduction in the amount of bureaucracy involved in conforming to equality law. There will be a raft of measures that will help, recommendations given for employment tribunals, more support for equality representatives, closer assessment of representative actions and better quality guidance through the encouragement of successful everyday practice.

This is longed for news to those of us who choose to change things in a grass roots level considerably more than ticking relevant boxes on forms. This is a time of extensive change in the law for the 60 million people in the UK, which will mean fairer workplaces and a fairer delivery of services for the general public.