Equality impact assessments
Whilst the New Equality Duty does not specifically require Equality Impact Assessments they are still probably one of the best tools for stopping and considering the impact of a policy, procedure or action of your organisation on the wider community. It considers equality impact in a pro-active way, meaning that you can take a positive action to make your organisation accessible and not wait to be re-active. Not being pro-active can put you at risk of legislative action, exposed to fines, its not good for your organisations image, it breaks down relationships and it takes up valuable resource time. So Equality Impact Assessments should be part of your best practice and not just a legal process.
Often Equality Impact Assessment processes are ill effective because whilst you set a clear process to complete them and you provide toolkits and guidance for filling out the forms often organisations fail to provide their managers and key staff the thinking behind the process to really understand how actions impact on people. Everyone can fill in a form if they understand its purpose, have completed the research and understand the implications, to do this needs people need deep training and awareness to understand the implications of their actions. The risk when we do not understand something, is that we avoid the process or we do the least possible to meet the aim of the policy.
HUSK can provide support in your organisational planning and procedures for Equality Impact Assessments both to deliver on your legal obligations but more importantly best practice, helping you to develop a meaningful process and training senior managers so they can go back to their teams and develop strong equality awareness and not merely a written policy and form to complete once every two years.
What is an equality impact assessment?
An equality impact assessment is a tool that helps you make sure that your policies, and the way you carry out your organisational functions, do what they are intended to do and for everybody.
Carrying out an Equality impact Assessments involves systematically assessing the
likely (or actual) effects of your policies on people in respect of disability, gender
and racial equality, and, if you choose, wider equality areas. This includes looking
for opportunities to promote equality that have previously been missed or could be
better used, as well as identifying negative or adverse impacts.
Why impact assess?
The simple answer is that for many it is a legal requirement. But more importantly, it is an effective way of improving your policy development and service delivery, making sure that you consider the needs of your communities, identify potential steps to promote equality and that you don’t discriminate. It enables evidence-based policymaking, which is at the core of modern public policy, and can allow efficiency savings through more effective services.
Equality impact assessments can assist in making sure your services are both more efficient and more effective. Efficiency savings can be found in a way that doesn’t create costly problems further down the line or for other parts of your organisation.
We had in England the forerunner in developing policy that would protect the rights of ‘people’. It started with the Magna Carta in 1215 it had the long title of The Great Charter of the Liberties of England.
We have continued to write policies right up to the Equality Act 2010 and yet people still claim discrimination, why?
Its people not the written word that change attitudes.
Equality impact assessments
