Standards Development

Managing and measuring equality and diversity is increasingly being seen as part of an organisation’s overall performance management process.

We help our public sector clients to integrate equalities within the Best Value framework and meet the requirements of the Equality Standard for Local Government and the Diversity Excellence Model™. We also help organisations achieve Investors in People accreditation by integrating equalities within the framework of the standard.

We do this by working with clients to create robust equality and diversity policies and to carry out employee and community consultations. We also conduct employment and service delivery equality impact assessments, and review ways in which an organisation can mainstream equalities as part of its day-to-day activities.

Case studies:

Transport for London: Achieving Level 5 of the ESLG

Transport for London (TfL) has recently been awarded Level 5 of the Equality Standard for Local Government (ESLG). TfL is by far the largest and most complex organisation to meet this standard and one of very few who have achieved Level 5, which is externally assessed in a rigorous way.

Ryedale District Council: Audit and Consultancy Support

We have recently undertaken an audit of equalities processes and performance across Ryedale District Council in order to support the Council in progressing to level 3 of the Equality Standard for Local Government. This has included a review of systems for the collection of workforce monitoring data. We are currently developing the next stage of our intervention to provide some capacity-building workshops around workforce monitoring for officers from Human Resources and senior managers. These sessions are likely to include:

North East Lincolnshire Council: Consultancy Support

We were commissioned by North East Lincolnshire Council (NELC) in February 2008 to support them in establishing the evidence base for Level 3 of the Equality Standards for Local Government to meet their target of external assessment in October/November.

The Council had established Corporate and Directorate equality groups and had identified the need for further one to one support for Directorates to ensure that they were confident in the requirements for evidence at Level 3.

We facilitated a workshop with the Corporate Equality Group which allowed us to identify:

North East Derbyshire District Council: Equality Consultancy

Equality Works were commissioned by North East Derbyshire District Council (NEDDC) to carry out an audit of Equality and Diversity. This involved providing a programme of consultancy support to help the council progress rapidly from Level 2 to Level 3 of the ESLG.

Beginning work with NEDDC in July 2007 we also had to be sure that the Council could effectively manage Equality and Diversity in the future without growing the staff resources needed to achieve this aim.

London Borough of Tower Hamlets: Equalities Consultancy

Since 2006 Equality Works has been providing a range of on-going expert support to the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. This work has involved supporting the Equality Action Team within the Communities, Localities and Culture directorate to identify key priorities for embedding equality and inclusion into a range of their work streams, as well as reviewing their Corporate Programme and Project Management Competency Framework.

WHAT WE DO