Advancing equality awards

Did you know that the Equality Challenge Unit (ECU) sponsored equality awards in March? The University of Essex won first place for developing an Essex LGBT alliance. Runner up, the University of Birmingham, advanced equality within employment practice. You may gain some tips from these case studies on how to advance equality in your organisation.

The University of Essex set up the Essex lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) alliance, the first network of its kind in the county. It is an informal network that brings together people working in different sectors and is open to any member of staff, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Having decided to set up the network, staff at the University made contact with five Essex-based Stonewall diversity champions to gauge their interest in joining the alliance. Staff proposed that the university would host the first meeting, and that venues for future meetings would rotate among alliance members, giving people working across Essex an opportunity to attend.

The university committed to providing administrative support for the alliance and acting as the central point of contact. Colleagues were enthusiastic and agreed to promote the alliance to staff within their organisations. A transgender member of staff provided first-hand knowledge of organisations that support transgender people and could be invited to join.

The inaugural meeting of the alliance, held at the university in March 2014 and opened by the vice-chancellor, was attended by staff from the university and a wide range of external organisations, including Essex Police, Colchester Institute and Essex County Council. The meeting agreed three main aims: to raise issues relevant to LGBT people; to promote sexual orientation and gender identity equality; and to seek to involve all member institutions and the wider community in the promotion of equality, and the avoidance of discrimination at all levels.

Several benefits have emerged from the establishment of the alliance, including a 28% increase in the number of staff disclosing their sexual orientation since 2012, becoming one of only six universities in Britain to meet all 10 criteria in Stonewall’s Gay by Degree 2015, and the development of codes of practice to provide staff and students with guidance on specific issues related to sexual orientation and gender identity.

The University of Birmingham was the first university to up an Advancing Equality in Employment (AEiE) initiative. The project was overseen by a group that included staff from across the university and chaired by the provost and vice-principal. A senior AEiE coordinator was employed from December 2013-October 2014.

The project had several achievements which included providing equality training to staff: 40 academic women participated in the Aurora programme, while 1073 attended recruitment and selection workshops and 70 academic staff attended promotions workshops. It recruited 48 equality champions. All science, technology, engineering, medicine and mathematics schools have either received an Athena SWAN award or are preparing to submit an application. The university rose from 259th to 79th in the Stonewall index.

Members of the wider Birmingham community have expressed appreciation that the university was working alongside local community groups to celebrate events such as Black and LGBT History months

You can read further details of the awards here