Other aspect of diversity
Overview
We are committed to anti-discrimination in all areas of diversity, including race, disability, gender, transgender, age, sexual orientation, religion or belief, and work-life balance. To help translate this commitment into action, we work with partners and community groups to find out more about the issues that affect our customers and employees.
Benchmarking our performance
As well as benchmarking on race equality, as mentioned in the Awards section, we also benchmark across the other strands of diversity. For example, we take part in the annual Opportunity Now Benchmarking Exercise to assess our progress towards gender equality and diversity. We were awarded the 'Gold' standard in 2003 and in 2004 - with our score improving by 13% on the previous year. We also take part in the annual Stonewall benchmarking exercise.
Diversity and equality staff networks
We have six internal staff networks on gender, race, work-life balance, age, sexual orientation and disability. Each has a Champion at Executive Board level. We also have network groups at regional and local level. The groups work to:
- actively promote and implement the principles of diversity and equality;
- contribute to the development of our diversity and equality policies and procedures and represent their views to the appropriate management body;
- help to embed the principles of diversity and equality in our day-to-day practices with all our customers, colleagues and partners; and
- help to raise general awareness across the Department of the diversity and equality agenda through communications and the development and sharing of good practice.
These groups are a valuable addition to our formal consultation with Trades Unions. A good example of this is the work of the National Race Network Group. It helped plan a workshop to identify areas for Departmental action and is now working with our Diversity and Equality Centre of Expertise to improve our targets, training and development, and communication.