Are you ready to publish your new equality objectives next month?

One of the specific duties of the Equality Act 2010 requires colleges and universities to publish equality objectives by April 2012 and then every 4 years. This means that your next set must be published by April 2020. Are you ready? Monitoring by the Equality and Human Rights Commission has, in the past, revealed that many organisation’s equality objectives were not legally compliant. Are yours legally compliant? Do they, for example, meet the legal requirements to be ‘specific’ and to be ‘measurable’? Are they ‘outcome’ rather than ‘output’ focussed? Would a quick reminder of the requirements help?

The general and specific duties

The Equality Act 2010 introduced a new public sector equality duty, known as the general duty, which came into force in April 2011. This duty replaced previous public sector equality duties to promote race, disability and gender equality. It means that providers must have due regard of the need to:

1. Eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation
2. Advance equality of opportunity between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not
3. Foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not.

Two specific duties came into force in September 2011:

• To publish equality information by 31 January 2012 and then annually
• To publish equality objectives by 6 April 2012, and then every four years.

Not all providers are covered by the specific duties. However, since the purpose of the specific duties is to help organisations meet the general duty, even if you are not subject to the specific duties you may still choose to develop and publish four-year equality objectives and to publish an equality report annually. 

‘Specific’ ‘measurable’ and ‘outcome’ focussed objectives

Equality objectives should be ambitious, explicit about the outcome that they are trying to achieve and clear about how success will be measured. 

The regulations state that equality objectives must be ‘specific’. This means that providers should avoid objectives that are vague or simply overall aims. Each objective should be tied into one or more ‘arms’ of the general duty and explain which protected characteristic they are addressing. You should provide a short rationale for your choice of objectives.

The regulations also state that equality objectives must be ‘measurable’. This allows progress to be clearly measured.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) clarifies that equality objectives should be ‘outcome-focused’ rather than ‘process-focused’ or ‘output’ focussed. ‘Outputs’ describe what ‘gets done’, for example establishing a new HR database, or identifying the number of people completing a survey or attending a training event. ‘Outcomes’, however, are the changes that result for individuals or communities, for example a reduction in complaints of discrimination or the improvement in success rates for a specific group of learners. Outcomes should result in an organisation ‘advancing’ or ‘moving forward’ equality and diversity.

Checks on legal compliance by the Equality and Human Rights Commission

The EHRC sampled organisations to see how education providers were meeting their specific duty to publish equality objectives. They evaluated, for example:

• whether the provider’s equality objectives were explicitly linked to the general duty aims
• what protected characteristics they covered
• the functions they covered
• whether there was a rationale given for the chosen objectives
• whether the objectives were specific and measurable
• whether the objectives were available in alternative formats.

Many education providers at the time of the research were not legally meeting their duties. A common finding was that objectives were not sufficiently specific or measurable to meet legal requirements. They rarely had an accompanying rationale for the choice of objectives.

Annual equality information report

Every year, you should publish a report, made available in the public domain, on your progress and achievements in EDI, including progress in meeting your equality objectives.

This report should include information relating to people that share a protected characteristic (except marriage and civil partnership) who are:

• staff (for listed providers with more than 150 staff)
• learners (including those on 14-16 provision, 16-19 study programmes, adult learning programmes, apprenticeships and provision for learners with high needs).

You may also choose to publish information on customers, for example information about people using your hairdressing salon or training restaurant.  The information you publish will depend, in part, on the size of your organisation. Larger organisations will be expected to publish more information than smaller organisations.

Further information

You can find further information about your legal duties including information about specific duties, on the resource page of my website:

http://www.christinerose.org/cra-resources/

The EHRC published the findings of their monitoring exercise and you can download the report here

Further support

I frequently provide consultancy support to help support organisations to publish legally compliant equality objectives and annual equality reports.

I also provide training to senior leaders, EDI leads, governors and trustees on their legal duties.

Please don’t hesitate to get in touch on the contacts page of my website if you are interested in finding out about this support or training.

http://www.christinerose.org/contact/