Equality Bill, Diversity Management

Damian Williams 06-Oct-2008

Diversity management is one of the largest challenges organisations will face over the next decade. Making sure an organisation has a successful mix of staff from different genders, races, ages and ability levels is not only becoming a legal requirement but is also crucial to ensuring staff satisfaction and positive career outlook. Staff diversity also brings a varied skill set and a valuable range of experience to the company. Skilfully implemented diversity management can have a large impact on a company’s future competitive success. But what are the key challenges and opportunities and how can an organisation effectively tackle this highly complicated task?

The UK job market is constantly evolving thanks to the thriving EU-wide staff pool, increasing globalisation, a growth in outsourcing and the development of UK-based multinational companies. Alongside the cultural, racial and religious-based issues that must be considered with new staff coming into the country, ever-changing diversity legislation helps to keep managers on their toes.

Global workforce issues, discrimination, gender pay gaps, glass ceilings and providing appropriate opportunities and working environments for disabled staff, ensure the onus is on modern companies to develop extensive and well-planned diversity policies. Managers must then make sure their policies are implemented properly to avoid the various legal consequences.

The days of legislation driving diversity are fading. This year’s Equality Bill tasks public sector companies and their private sector partners to assess their diversity policies and get their houses in order. Attention must be paid to this new legislation to avoid possible employee litigation and hefty governmental fines. Companies are now scrambling to define their policies, establish effective audit procedures and manage their information to adhere to the new rules. Transparency is the key to the Equality Bill. Ensuring companies face up to their responsibilities and be seen doing so, can only bring benefit to the UK’s workforce as a whole.

Developing and adhering to diversity policies does not only benefit an organisation by protecting it from legal risk. Diversity can breed a thriving and profitable company whilst increasing its wellbeing and ambition. A positive atmosphere of equality and fair play, with opportunities clearly available for all, will make the organisation a pleasure to work in and attract new desirable talent. Motivated, fairly-treated staff are more likely to strive to be the best they can be, providing benefits to both the organisation and the individual.

But it’s easy to talk about diversity; implementing diversity policies can be more complicated, especially in larger companies. The execution of new diversity plans and their corresponding results can take some time to appear. For example, simply reporting a snapshot of the current employee makeup may reveal diversity issues but these can take over a year to fix from instigation to impact. Creating and rolling out procedures, assessing their current workforce and predicting future trends all have significant time and cost implications for managers and HR that cannot be overlooked. For this reason, it’s important that organisations start their diversity management as soon as possible.

A good diversity management plan should be quite straightforward and centre on the core topics of gender, race, disability, age and religion. The various issues emanating from each topic are complicated and far too extensive to be covered in one article. However, there are certain all-encompassing areas that can be addressed to put your organisation on the right path.

Firstly, putting the right systems and technology in place will help a company effectively manage diversity. The analysis of existing staff makeup, the tracking and projection of trends and most importantly the logging of documents, communications and other collateral relating to these actions can and should be implemented through an interlinked diversity system. Larger companies will find the size of their task comparative to the size of their organisation, and enlist the support and technology appropriate to their needs.

Secondly, put in place plans and systems for the whole recruitment process, such as advertising, short-listing, interviewing and selecting should be an initial step. Companies can start looking at their existing staff and implement systems for checking staff makeup to ensure that going forward, all groups are represented appropriately. The appraisal system of an organisation should be rigorously over-hauled if necessary. Fair and honest measurement, achievable objectives, appropriate promotion and remuneration should all be provided under an umbrella of accountability and transparency.

Internal harassment, grievance and disciplinary procedures are also of paramount importance to the company. All employees have the right to work in a pleasant environment, free from discrimination and bullying. The Disability Discrimination Act also forced companies to sit up and respond to any potential problems for disabled employees. Companies may think that they already comply well with these aspects of employment law – but is their workforce really able to cope in a sensitive and professional manner with a colleague undergoing gender transformation? Is the line management currently able to adapt to a new team member who needs completely bespoke training due to a physical disability?

There are also likely to be many other processes and actions to monitor and control that are specific to a particular organisation. It’s important that HR professionals pick apart all internal processes for their own organisations that could influence diversity and adjust their own plans and policies accordingly.

Another major part of organisational diversity is being as prepared as possible to counteract criticism. A core benefit of effective diversity management is the creation of clear and interlinked audit trails. Once implemented, these should then be able to help protect against alleged legal breaches whilst also improving the administrative burden of diversity management. Companies can then easily demonstrate their compliance with diversity and anti-discriminatory legislation. They will have access to appropriate and coherent documentation should an employee or union complaint reach a legal stage. The monitoring and recording of information relating to diversity should then become a simple, routine process and thus a way of life for an organisation.

The government’s Equality Bill was specifically designed to create a wave of diversity in public sector and their private sector suppliers. The Equality Bill was initially proposed to cover every company and organisation without discrimination, if you’ll excuse the pun. But with many private sector companies behind the public sector in their diversity management, the Bill was reduced in scope. But this certainly isn’t the end of legally imposed diversity in the private sector and private-sector companies should not sit back and wait for diversity management to be legally forced upon them, especially if they are trading with public sector organisations.

Future legislative changes will only increase the pressure on companies to put diversity on their boardroom agenda. While many organisations will groan, the ramifications of a diversity ‘wave’ can be highly positive. The implementation will be difficult for some but now is the time that savvy companies can take the initiative, dominate diversity and come out better-suited to the needs of our multicultural society and their own respective markets. With diversity being managed properly, we’ll be left with a better environment for the public and private sectors and of course, for employees.

Damian Williams is MD of ROC UK