Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI) Training?

              

What is Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI)Training?

Diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI) training has become a permanent fixture in the modern workplace, mainly due to the Equality Act 2010. DEI training serves as a proactive means to educate employers and employees on best practices for achieving a fair and just working environment.

The Equality Act 2010

The Equality Act 2010 is a comprehensive piece of legislation in the United Kingdom designed to safeguard individuals against discrimination and to promote an environment of equality and fairness. The Equality Act 2010 effectively consolidates numerous existing anti-discrimination laws into a single DEI framework, making it easier to understand and enforce.

It addresses nine DEI "protected characteristics," ensuring the protection of diverse individuals within society. These characteristics include:

• Age: Discriminatory practices based on an individual's age, encompassing both younger and older individuals.
• Disability: Protection for individuals with physical and mental disabilities, ensuring they are treated with dignity and have equal access to opportunities.
• Gender Reassignment: Safeguards for individuals undergoing, having undergone, or intending to undergo a process of gender reassignment.
• Marriage and Civil Partnership: Protection against discrimination for individuals who are married or in a civil partnership.
• Pregnancy and Maternity: Prevention of discrimination based on pregnancy or maternity-related issues, thereby protecting women in the workplace.
• Race: Ensures that individuals are not discriminated against based on race, colour, nationality, or ethnic origin.
• Religion or Belief: Protects individuals from discrimination based on their religious beliefs or lack thereof, promoting respect for diverse faiths and philosophies.
• Sex: Gender-based discrimination, ensuring equal treatment regardless of sex.
• Sexual Orientation: Protection for individuals regardless of whether they are heterosexual, gay, lesbian, or bisexual.

The Equality Act 2010 serves as a comprehensive legal framework for DEI, aimed at prohibiting discrimination, harassment, and victimisation against individuals.

The Act is significant as it consolidates nine major pieces of anti-discrimination legislation into a singular statute. This harmonisation simplifies the legal landscape, making it more accessible and easier for individuals and organisations to understand their DEI rights and responsibilities. The consolidation is a strategic effort by the Equality and Human Rights Commission to streamline equality law and enhance comprehension.

Some of the key elements of the Equality Act 2010 include:

• Direct Discrimination: Occurs when an individual is treated less favourably than another similarly situated individual due to a protected characteristic. For instance, refusing to hire someone solely based on their race constitutes direct discrimination.
• Indirect Discrimination: This involves policies or practices that, although seemingly neutral, disadvantage individuals with a protected characteristic. For example, a hiring policy that requires a specific number of years of experience, which disproportionately excludes candidates of a certain age, may be deemed indirectly discriminatory.
• Harassment: Refers to any unwanted conduct that is related to a protected characteristic and which creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating, or offensive environment for the victim.
• Victimisation: Occurs when someone is maltreated because they have made or supported a discrimination complaint, or have participated in an investigation regarding discrimination.
• Public Sector Equality Duty: The Act imposes a Public Sector Equality Duty on public authorities, requiring them to consider the potential impact of their policies and practices on individuals with protected characteristics. This duty aims to prevent disadvantages while actively promoting equality and fostering good relationships among diverse groups.
• Disability Provisions: The Act includes specific provisions that address the rights of individuals with disabilities, placing a legal obligation on employers and service providers to make reasonable adjustments. This could include modifying workspaces, providing auxiliary aids, or adjusting policies to effectively accommodate individuals with disabilities.
• Scope of Application: The provisions of the Act apply across a wide range of contexts, including but not limited to employment, education, and the provision of goods and services. This extensive scope ensures that individuals are protected in various aspects of public and private life.

In summary, the Equality Act 2010 plays a pivotal role in safeguarding the rights of individuals in society, ensuring that discrimination is actively recognised and addressed while promoting a diverse and inclusive environment for all.

Why is Diversity, Equality and Inclusion Training Important?

Equality and diversity training shouldn’t be seen as a virtue-signalling exercise; rather, it should be seen as a core part of your employee training programme. DEI training is important because not only does it raise awareness of unconscious biases, and discriminatory behaviour, it also fosters a workplace culture where employees feel comfortable being their true selves - which in turn leads to increased job satisfaction, higher levels of trust, innovation, productivity which all contribute to a healthier bottom line for your business.

Equality and diversity in the workplace have been heavily researched topics in recent years, and the evidence of the benefits of a diverse workforce is in the data. Companies with higher diversity in management earned, on average, 38% more than those with lower diversity, and companies with higher diversity among executives are 21% more likely to be more profitable and 27% better at creating value. 

If you aren’t convinced that diversity and inclusion training is worth its weight in gold, check out Janet Stovall’s excellent TED Talk ‘How to Get Serious About Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace. 
How to get serious about diversity and inclusion in the workplace | Janet Stovall

DEI Case Studies for Training

Hiring is a particularly susceptible area to biases, which can advantage some candidates while disadvantaging others. The most common bias in hiring is similarity bias—a bias towards hiring candidates who are similar to the hiring manager. This occurs because we are programmed to seek out people who are similar to ourselves in race, religion, background, and beliefs, as this makes us feel comfortable and safe. 

If a diverse workforce is your aim, then removing biases from the hiring process is paramount. For inspiration, here are some initiatives that other UK firms and organisations are implementing to tackle this issue:

The BBC

As part of the BBC Journalism Group's efforts to improve ethnic diversity, it set up a Journalism Talent Pool. Successful candidates joined the JTP for six months, receiving extra training and support to help them apply for BBC jobs. 

The positions were advertised on ethnic minority websites and media, as well as in databases and networks. All selection panel members underwent fair selection training; consequently, one-third of those admitted to the Journalism Talent Pool were BME individuals. 

British Telecoms (BT)

BT launched an extensive recruitment campaign for engineers and set targets to increase the proportion of BME staff from 6% to 15%. Employee mentors assisted potential BME candidates from inner-city areas in understanding the recruitment process. The job advertisements incorporated various media and imagery representing individuals from diverse backgrounds, and recruiting managers collaborated with an agency to ensure that a wider talent pool was available and no individual was disadvantaged. As a result, BT doubled the number of BME employees from 6% to 12%.

Lancashire Police Service

To address underrepresentation among ethnic minorities in the police service, the service appointed an action coordinator to focus on the recruitment process and identify barriers for Black, Minority, and Ethnic (BME) candidates. In addition to engagement initiatives, familiarisation days were available for BME individuals interested in joining the service.

Examples of Equity in the Workplace

There are various ways to improve equality within the workplace, and aside from implementing robust diversity, inclusivity, and equality training, here are three easy wins and areas of focus:

Unbiased Hiring Processes 

As mentioned, hiring is an area that is most susceptible to biases, and as such, is an area that you should focus on when it comes to creating a diverse and equitable workplace. You can take many steps to reduce unconscious biases, some more extreme than others, such as blind hiring. One less extreme but more inclusive way is to involve more of your team in the design of your hiring process, from writing the job description to the final decision, and by incorporating hiring biases into your DEI training. 

Salary Equity

To achieve equity within an organisation, it is vital to address wage gaps. If people earn drastically different wages for the same jobs, it's impossible to level the playing field truly. Make salary discussions transparent to ensure everyone is fairly compensated for their efforts and eliminate the taboo surrounding salary discussions. Companies such as Buffer take this topic to the extreme by publicly posting everyone's salaries for all to see - even if you don’t work at Buffer! Now that’s transparency… 

Gender Diversity and Equity

Gender diversity is positively correlated with profitability and value creation. Despite this, women in the workforce still face a tougher plight than their male counterparts regarding salaries, promotions, and even the likelihood of losing their jobs when job cuts are made.