Our progress across 2021 to 2023

Published: 28 April 2023
Freedom of information class: How we deliver functions and services

Reviewing our outcomes

Our EDI Steering Group regularly reviews our progress in taking forward equality-related activity, including our mainstreaming outcomes. This allows us to respond to any changing circumstances and challenges as they arise.

To prepare for this update, we asked our colleagues for their views on our progress. We spoke to the colleagues who had responsibility for taking forward activities and key groups across RoS. This included our colleague-led equality networks, EDI Colleague Forum, and Trade Union officials (PCS).

We asked colleagues:

to describe where we are now in terms of equity, diversity and inclusion
how they felt we had progressed our 2021-23 outcomes, and
to share examples of good practice and areas for improvement.

We also looked at our EDI data and the progress made against our EDI action plan.

We used all this feedback to determine the status of each outcome and provide an update on our progress. These updates include:

a summary of our progress
examples of our activity and a case study, and
the next steps to continue our efforts under each outcome.

Progress against our 2021-23 outcomes

In 2021, we set four outcomes to take forward across 2021 to 2023. We have completed three and made good progress against the fourth. We will continue to take it forward as an outcome for 2023 to 2025.

Outcome 1	Publish a finalised Diversity Strategy and develop an action plan, based on colleague feedback, to further improve and support the employment experience of colleagues across all the protected characteristics.	Done
Outcome 2	Support colleagues to establish a comprehensive set of colleague networks, including an Inclusion Forum, and support the Equality Impact Assessments of internal policies and procedures	Done
Outcome 3	Raise awareness of EDI issues through development of a comprehensive communications programme.	Done
Outcome 4	Develop methods and targets to measure progress, including a new EDI dashboard for discussion with the Board and Executive Management Team.	In progress

We have outlined our progress against each of these four outcomes.

Against each outcome, we have provided:

a summary of key milestones completed, and
examples of our activity, including a case study.

Although we have mainstreamed three of our outcomes, we need to sustain this progress. They will now become part of our ongoing EDI activity. For each outcome, we have set out our next steps in “maintaining our mainstreaming".