What we do

The team

We are a small team based in the HR department responsible for developing, delivering, implementing, and reviewing the University's Equality and Diversity, Inclusion and Wellbeing agenda, which is part of the People strategy.

Jo Bishton - Head of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

Sarah Barley McMullen - Diversity and Inclusion Lead

Nicola Adler - Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Adviser

Equality staff networks

The team supports the various equality groups and consultation staff networks, which include:

• LGBT Allies
• Race Equality
• Gender Equality
• Disability and Wellbeing
• Faith and Belief

We also represent the University at external equality meetings such as the Derby Equality Network, the East Midlands Universities Equality Network, Derbyshire Hate Crime Forum, and the Derbyshire LGBT Network.

Champions and advisers

As equality, diversity and inclusion is everyone's responsibility, we encourage staff to join our Equality Networks and become equality, diversity, and inclusion champions. 

Faith advisers are based at Chesterfield, Buxton and Kedleston Road, and can be contacted through the Chaplaincy team.

Events

We celebrate the diversity of the staff and students at the University by organising a range of events throughout the year. These include one-off ‘Celebrating You’ events and whole history months.

Role Models and Allies

We run a staff and student Role Models and Allies programme, which encourages greater visibility of all underrepresented groups throughout the University. We seek to normalise conversations around inclusion.

Collaboration

The team works in collaboration with academic and professional services colleagues, as well as student groups and Union of Students societies. Through collaboration, equality, diversity and inclusion can become embedded and normalised throughout the organisation.

Equality Impact Assessment

The University is required to carry out equality impact assessments on all of its policies, procedures, guidelines, plans, projects, strategies, and key business decisions. We run regular development sessions and practical workshops to help staff undertake equality assessments. Statistics to help staff carry out these assessments can be found on the statistics page. 

Diversity in recruitment

We ensure our recruitment policies are compliant with legislation and that applicants go through an equitable process. We use recruitment data to ensure that we reduce any barriers to employment and continuously strive to be sector-leading in our approach to equality, diversity and inclusion. Here are some of the ways we are doing this:

• The first University to sign up to 'Ban the Box' - a campaign to increase opportunities for people with convictions to compete for jobs
• Introduced anonymised shortlisting to reduce unconscious bias during the selection process
• Use gender-neutral copy in our job advertisements
• Introduced inclusive language training for our recruitment team

Staff development

We have developed a comprehensive equality and diversity development framework, which includes training sessions designed to help employees be aware of the important aspects of equality, diversity, and inclusion. As part of the development strategy, new employees are asked to make themselves familiar with the content on the EDIW intranet pages, attend a central induction, and undertake the on-line equality and diversity training module.

Wellbeing

The team recognises the important link between equality and diversity and health and wellbeing at the University. That's why we work closely with the Health, Safety, and Wellbeing team on topics such as:

• Occupational Health
• Access to Work
• Hidden Disabilities
• Employee Assistance Programme
• Mental Health

Monitoring

We regularly monitor the equality and diversity profile of our staff and students. We monitor pay for our gender pay gap reporting and equal pay reviews. Additionally, we monitor staff by recruitment, training and leavers. 

The anonymised statistics are published in the Annual Report and also disseminated to colleges and departments via the HR Business Partners. Anomalies in the data are investigated by the relevant staff equality networks.