Human Resources Committee

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1 Human Resources Committee Paper Title: Annual Equality & Diversity Compliance Report 2017 Origin: Abida Akram: Staff Development Adviser (Equality & Diversity) & Manuel Alonso: Director of Student Services Date: 27 th February Decision Required by Committee To ENDORSE and REFER to Council for Approval and Publication 2. Executive Summary This report, along with the two background equality and diversity (E&D) statistical reports on staff and students at: meet the legal general and specific duties in the Equality Act Committees/Groups previously considering item. The report provides brief summaries of our achievements and progress on staff and student issues during 2017 as well as recommendations for further action in both areas for discussion and approval. 1 Executive Summary 1.1 The University is required to publish an annual report on how it is complying with the Public Sector Equality Duty in the Equality Act 2010, as well as on the specific legal duties on key E&D objectives and the publishing of staff and student statistics by 30 th March The draft statistical reports can be accessed here: The progress on the new E&D key performance indicators (KPIs) on staff and students, which were agreed by HRC in Oct 2016 (staff) and early 2017(student), will be reported on separately to HRC by the Planning Department. To meet the specific legal duty of publishing the key indicators/objectives it is requested that HRC and Council approve the publication of said indicators and any progress reports when received (the previous six objectives have been integrated into the new KPIs). We therefore do not need to publish new key indicators/objectives for another four years, other than progress reports. This report highlights some of our achievements during last year on staff and students along with some areas for action and therefore includes recommendations for discussion and approval. 1.2 The University has made considerable and positive progress on integrating E&D in This is demonstrated by mainstreaming of E&D across key areas, supported by the new E&D staff and student KPIs and the E&D working groups set up (including a new Transgender and Non-Binary Group). There is a need to develop a coherent Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (ED&I) Strategy for the University and to ensure that appropriate governance and reporting mechanisms are in place to Copyright Loughborough University. All rights reserved. 1

2 deliver this strategy and our legal duties along with a review of resources required to drive this strategy forward. Recommendations in respect of this are included in section 5. 2 Main Achievements for Staff 2.1 Athena SWAN: The University submitted for a Silver award in November 2017 and is awaiting the outcome. The University currently holds the following awards in Schools and departments: Silver awards are held by SSEHS, Maths and Math Education Centre (in School of Science). Bronze awards are held by Design School and SABCE. Three Schools will be submitting for awards in 2018.We are continuing to organise our successful Annual Claudia Parsons Memorial Public lectures with external guest speakers. In 2017 Dr Emily Grossman was the guest speaker on 13 th March, speaking on How to build a scientist and we had schoolchildren attend along with interactive activities for the day. 2.2 The University was awarded Disability Confident Employer Level 2 award in November 2016 and is due for renewal in March Evidence on actions will be gathered during 2018 for the renewal submission. The aim is to work towards Level 3 Disability Confident Leader in 2019/ In September 2017 the University ran a staff survey for Maternity Returners to understand their experiences and support needs. This was further explored in two focus groups facilitated in October 2017 and an outcome report and action plan will be drafted soon. Actions will include reviewing the Maternity Guidance in order that more effective support is provided to returners as well as providing better local facilities for breast feeding and expressing milk. 2.4 A new race action plan has been devised around raising awareness and training for both staff and students in response to a number of student race incidents in 2017, including some that were posted on social media and one that was highlighted in the national and local press. The Chair will be briefing HRC about the incident and measures put into place at this meeting. 2.5 A new Transgender and Non-Binary Inclusion Task Group has been set with staff and student representation, chaired by the Director of Infrastructure & Commercial Services. Signage was agreed in 2017 for unisex toilets and a programme for work is in place for 2018 on, for example, requesting changes to ID cards and systems and processes to support Trans staff and students. 2.6 Awareness on E&D issues and legal responsibilities have been raised through a variety of face to face and online training to well over 1,000 staff during 2016/17. Staff Development purchased a new 20 minute online Unconscious Bias (UB) training course for staff in June 2017 to add to the 19 videos on UB that were already provided as a resource. 23 sessions of the mandatory Respecting Diversity were delivered. 2.7 Eleven staff support groups/networks were supported. The International Network and the BME group had increased membership as a response to Brexit and racist incidents during And a new network was set up for Apprentices in The Students Union Welfare and Diversity (W&D) Executive Officer was supported and mentored by the E&D Adviser and the Director of Student Services (DSS) on a regular basis. The W&D Committee and the Ethnic Minorities Steering Committee in this section were also supported and had direct access to the Chief Operating Officer, the E&D Adviser and the Director of Student Services (DSS) to raise any concerns or issues. 2.9 Equal Pay audits were conducted by the Planning Department and were reported to this Committee in Information will be posted onto the Government website by Planning as required by 30 th March Main Achievements for Students 3.1 The Student E&D Working Group, chaired by the DSS, has been working on the Student KPIs and the annual statistical report for legal compliance. The group spent time looking at a range of data sets and indicators around student outcomes and experience from an E&D perspective. This work Copyright Loughborough University. All rights reserved. 2

3 has identified a set of key concerns which need consideration and addressing; these are predominantly around outcomes and experiences of our Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) students. A number of steps have been taken to begin to address this issue: Work has been carried out in conjunction with the PVC (T) to review Pass at First Attempt rates by ethnicity (and qualification on entry) across schools. As a result of this pockets of concerning performance have been identified and will be discussed with relevant schools during the Annual Programme Review Process in January and February The E&D Working Group supported a project run by the School of Political and Geographical Sciences (SPGS) to work with its BME students to understand their experience at Loughborough. The outcomes of this work will be reported back to the E&D Working Group in spring A new role has been created in Careers Network with a specific function focussed on supporting BME students to take up placement and professional work experience opportunities. We believe that ensuring as many BME students as possible take up such opportunities will have a positive outcome on degree outcome and employability. In 2017 the following activities have been undertaken as part of this work: Targeted workshops have been organised in conjunction with employers to help develop awareness of placement opportunities amongst BME students and to help create links with employers which BME students can be supported to exploit for professional work experience Focus groups have been run with a group of 28 BME students to explore barriers to professional work experience and broader issues around their experience at Loughborough. This work has identified a number of key themes which need consideration, including: familial and cultural pressures to complete a degree quickly in order to start earning, financial and economic barriers, a lack of role models for our BME students here at the University, a perception on the part of BME students that they are inherently disadvantaged when looking for placements or professional work experience as a function of their ethnicity; a lack of diversity in some of the industries which students were looking to go into and a consequent lack of self-belief or confidence in their ability to find and secure placement and professional work experience opportunities All oncoming Hall Chairs, Vice Chairs and Social Secretaries will have E&D training with a specific focus on ensuring inclusivity in halls. 3.2 The Sexual Violence (SV) Working Group has continued its work in this area. The need for such work was affirmed by an analysis of qualitative comments in last year s NSS in which the theme of lad culture was pervasive. A report of this matter has already been considered by Learning and Teaching Committee (LTC). Notable achievements on the theme of SV in 2017 include: Finalisation and refinement of the University s SV Policy; Creation of an online resource for students offering information and signposting for people who have experienced SV; Creation of a parallel staff page with information and resources to support staff who receive a disclosure of SV; Training of 96 frontline staff (a mixture of hall and community wardens, security, counsellors, mental health advisers and some LSU staff) on responding to disclosures of SV; The creation, together with LSU, of mandatory online training for Hall Committees and Fresher Helpers (who help students settle into halls on arrival). The training addressed issues around peer pressure, role modelling, alcohol and sexual violence and set out the University s expectations around the type of environment fostered in halls. 742 students completed this training before they were allowed to take up leadership roles during Freshers A briefing for all hall committees was provided before the start of term in which expectations around behaviour, hall culture and sv were clearly set out by the DSS and the Head of Security The launch of online consent training. This was launched in November 2017 through halls and with the support of LSU. This was not made mandatory but is being incentivised by linking completions to the Hall of the Year prize. As of 31 January 2018, 609 students had signed up to complete the training. We plan to keep completion rates under review before the wider roll-out and consideration of whether to make the training mandatory for all Part A students Supported the creation of a new LSU-fronted campaign called Speak Out Now. This campaign aims to encourage students to challenge sexually inappropriate behaviour and sexual harassment wherever it occurs Successfully bidding for HEFCE funding to develop interventions related to sexual violence. The SV Group has designed and piloted a bystander intervention tool to support students to challenge Copyright Loughborough University. All rights reserved. 3

4 inappropriate behaviour and attitudes. This will be launched and tested during Consent Week (starting on 12 th February 2018). 3.3 Data considered by the E&D working group indicated that disabled students were over-represented in academic appeals. In discussion with colleagues in the Counselling and Disability Service (CDS) a view was reached that this was in part due to a poor process around delivering exam arrangements and wider adjustments for disabled students. A change project is underway looking at improving the effectiveness and efficiency of delivering adjustments and looking more broadly at the experience for disabled students. As part of this project a set of standard adjustments have been agreed by LTC which will help ensure consistency of experience. In addition to this, a major pilot has been run in the Semester 1 exam period for 2017/18 to better co-ordinate and centralise the delivery of exam adjustments for disabled students. The success of this will be reviewed in February 2018 with future learning to be taken forward into the Semester 2 exam period. 3.4 LTC has been overseeing a pilot of new Student Wellbeing Adviser positions. The purpose of these new positions is to support student wellbeing in academic schools, thereby enhancing existing personal tutoring functions. The Wellbeing Advisers work with a wide range of needs, many of these aligning with protected characteristics (such as mental health, disability and gender identity). The pilot ran across four academic schools in Semester 2 of the 2016/17 academic year (SPGS, Design School, AACME and Wolfson). Two Advisers were appointed as part of this initial phase of the pilot and were based in academic schools. The pilot was successful and positively received by both students and staff in the schools concerned. Some future learning was also identified. As a consequence of the successful pilot a further bid was made to extend the work and as a consequence a further two Wellbeing Adviser posts were approved. The pilot is now being rolled out across all schools in Semester 2 of the 2017/18 academic year. The impact of these new roles will be kept under review by LTC. 3.5 In 2017 the University introduced the Loughborough Bursary for Unpaid Placements (LBUP) pilot scheme. This was designed to support students who might want to carry out an unpaid placement and who were from lower income households (under 25,000). The bursary provided students with a total of 12,831 over the course of the year (equivalent to the National Minimum Wage). In total 51 students received a bursary of which 13 were BME students (25% of recipients, higher then the proportion of BME students as a whole), 9 were disabled (17% of recipients, higher than the proportion of disabled students as a whole) and 24 were from POLAR Quintiles 1-3 (generally indicators of socio-economic disadvantage). 4 Areas for improvement 4.1 Staff: Further action is required for BME staff as statistics show that BME staff are more likely to be unsuccessful in the recruitment and selection process (3% success rate compared to White applicants at 8% in 2017). BME staff are still underrepresented in receiving awards and are leaving in a higher proportion than their profile (18% as compared to 13%). There needs to be higher BME representation at senior levels and at decision-making committees/bodies A new Performance Development Review (PDR) process was successfully rolled out for 2017 and reward was clearly linked to excellence rating. However, an equality impact assessment was carried out by the Planning Department. This found that employees at grades one to three had a lower success rate across the University than the total average. This has influenced lower success rates for part-time employees and BME employees across the University (as they are represented in higher numbers at those grades) and employees over the age of 65 for rewards. Grade was the factor that had an impact rather than the E&D protected characteristic Male recruitment and selection success rate has improved slightly from 4.3% from 2016 to 4.99% in 2017 as compared to the female success rates of 8.10% in 2016 to 8.04% in Whilst the female success rates points to the success of the Athena SWAN agenda, male success rates should also be monitored to ensure they do not drop any further in Copyright Loughborough University. All rights reserved. 4

5 4.1.4 Monitoring on E&D has improved in general for staff and students, however, monitoring by E&D characteristics of membership at governance and decision-making levels need to be improved in 2018 in order that detailed information on representation can be reported on in line with the legal duty in Students: There continue to be a range of indicators which suggest that our BME students may be disadvantaged and may have less positive experience than their peers. These include: Lower degree outcomes (between a 29% and 48% lower chance of a first-class or uppersecond class degree and, on average, between one and three marks lower in overall degree mark); Higher rates of failure at first attempt for some BME groups in comparison to their White peers (at Part A for example only 61.9% of Black or Black British-African students passed compared to 89.3% of their White peers); Over-representation of BME students in academic appeals (45% of academic appeals were from BME students whilst only around 15% of our students are identified as BME); Over-representation of BME students in student disciplinaries (29% of disciplinaries were carried out by BME students, an over-representation based on their profile at Loughborough) As the majority of Hate incidents and high profile social media incidents were around racism therefore action has been identified to improve the reporting of such incidents earlier and direct to the Chief Operating Officer, DSS, Head of Security & E&D Adviser by students and through the W&D section in LSU Due to a number of race incidents occurring in Halls and during Freshers week in previous years; training on E&D & Inclusion for all Hall Committees (400 to be trained in 2018) to be delivered by DSS & W&D Executive officer to try and prevent further incidents from occurring. Online training on ED&I has to be completed by Fresher helpers before being allowed to become a helper (as outlined above in the student achievement section). Training and awareness along with improving process to deal with complaints quickly and effectively will be reviewed in Recommendations For Staff & Students 5.1 Through the two background statistical reports and this report, compliance has been amply demonstrated. It is recommended that HRC endorse this report and refer it to Senate and Council for full approval and publication in line with the specific legal duties under the Equality Act 2010 (along with the new staff and student KPIs). 5.2 HRC is asked to endorse work to create a University-level ED&I Strategy to help further define our aims and priorities in this area of work, clarify governance of this agenda and provide a coherent approach to driving forward our work in this area. 5.3 As data is still inconsistent across protected characteristics. HRC is asked to recommend that a thorough review should be conducted of the E&D data currently collected as well as consideration given to the appropriateness, robustness and quality of the data currently collected as well as considering what further data we should collect to enable us to more effectively monitor our performance in E&D terms and to design interventions to address potential inequalities. 5.4 HRC to agree to sign up to the Race Equality Charter Principles during 2018 given the data presented on BME staff and students above and incidents during The University could then work towards an award submission and identifying resources and submit in 2020/2021. The Race Principles are in line with our Building Excellence and inclusivity agenda and will support the University in effecting a culture change and impact the outcomes and experiences of BME staff and students. Signing up sends a clear and positive message about our commitment to staff, students and parents and enhances our reputation given the incidents in Copyright Loughborough University. All rights reserved. 5

6 5.5 Staff: HRC to agree that the 20 minute online Unconscious Bias (UB) course be made mandatory for all staff to complete (due to the low take-up by staff of the three hour face to face monthly course) within twelve months, with new staff completing it within their probation period, thereby supporting the University in managing the legal risk. This will also free up the E&D Adviser to deliver bespoke UB face to face courses targeted at key staff such as School SMTs, Wardens and Sub Wardens and Security staff or as required. 5.6 Students: HRC to continue to support the work of the Student E&D Working Group, in particular its efforts to understand and address issues around BME student attainment and experience HRC to continue to support the work of the SV Working Group in operationalising the University s SV policy and addressing the issues around lad culture and gender-based violence which exists at Loughborough HRC are requested to support the improvement of systems for receiving and dealing with a range of complaints which have an E&D component, including reports of Hate crimes, bullying and harassment and SV. This work would enable individuals to raise concerns more easily but would also improve our ability to monitor and report on complaints in this area more robustly and consistently. Copyright Loughborough University. All rights reserved. 6