Outcome 3: Becoming more accessible and inclusive

What have we achieved?

We have carried out a range of activity to make us a more inclusive organisation.

To date, we have focused on building the strong foundations we need to be an inclusive organisation.

We continue to raise awareness

We have completed two years of communication plans, continuing to align our communications with national and international awareness campaigns.
We ensure that we cover all protected characteristics across our communication plan, including the following topics:

• Race Equality, sharing resources from the Race Equality Matters materials
• International Women’s Day, International Men’s Day and International Non-Binary People's Day
• Neurodiversity
• Disability
• Pride and Transgender awareness
• Mental Health Awareness

Through our communications, we have shared information, resources, and given updates on the actions we have taken to support colleagues and customers.

In December 2024, we held our first D&I webinar. Our Director of People and Operational Services led the webinar. It included presenters from People and Change, Customer Experience, and our Trade Union, PCS. The purpose was to inform colleagues about our D&I work and encourage their participation.

Specifically, we covered:

• Why we ‘still’ need to prioritise diversity and inclusion.
• Where we are on our journey to advance diversity and inclusion in RoS.
• How we – as an organisation – are supporting colleagues and our customers.
• What we all – as individuals – can do to make a difference.

Throughout the webinar, our presenters shared their personal lived experiences related to various protected characteristics, highlighting that we all may need support at different times.

Results

• 178 colleagues attended the webinar, and 76 watched the recording.

We have built strong foundations through our people policies

We reviewed and refreshed:

• all our family friendly policies, aligning our maternity and adoption policies and ensuring all policies meet the needs of all colleagues who may use them, regardless of gender identity and family circumstances.
• our maximising attendance policy, with a particular focus on ensuring that it accounted for the needs and possible patterns of disabled colleagues.

We will continue to review all people policies, supported by Equality Impact Assessments.

Case study

Listening to lived experience

Our Colleague Voice sessions provide a safe, protected space for colleagues who share specific protected characteristics to input to developments and raise any concerns they may have. Each series consists of 9 separate sessions, focussing on colleagues who are carers, disabled, LGBT+, minoritised ethnic, men, women, younger, older, and transgender.

The sessions are co-hosted by our D&I Lead and colleagues who share the protected characteristic of the group. This fosters a sense of shared ownership and ensures the sessions are welcoming. Having an open conversation facilitated by someone with a similar lived experience encourages colleagues to participate in the sessions.

We work together to identify the experiences that our colleagues would like others to be aware of, and this information is added to our D&I Evidence Bank. This evidence bank is then used to inform our Equality Impact Assessments.

Results

• Approximately 50 colleagues attended the sessions.
• We gained understanding of the lived experience of colleagues and input to key developments, including our Employee Value Proposition, Recognition approach, process for changing personal information and our mainstreaming outcomes. We also captured further insight into our Civil Service People Survey findings.

We sought feedback from attendees of our first set of sessions, with a 91% response rate. The findings confirmed anecdotal feedback during and after the sessions, with:

• All respondents felt that the hosts created a safe and welcoming environment. 95% said they would recommend the sessions to others.
• 92% of respondents felt the sessions were effective in “demonstrating our commitment to creating a diverse & inclusive organisation for all colleagues”.
• In our 2024 Civil Service People Survey, we achieved a score of 87% on this factor — a 3% increase compared to the previous survey.

Our focus for 2025 to 2027

We have made great progress in embedding our approach to listening to our colleagues with protected characteristics and understanding their lived experiences. However, the evidence we have gathered highlights that disabled colleagues feel less positive about working at RoS, compared to other protected groups.

In our Civil Service People Survey, our disabled colleagues responded much less favourably in terms of their experience of change management, access to the tools they need to do their job, and their overall wellbeing.  As a result, we are refocusing this outcome on improving their experiences, as outlined below.

Outcome 3

We will become a more accessible and inclusive organisation, with a focus on improving the experiences of our disabled colleagues.

To achieve this, we will:

• focus our new change management framework on supporting colleagues who find change more challenging, including providing learning for managers and resources to facilitate conversations.
• provide learning and development opportunities, along with resources, for managers and colleagues to understand various conditions and effectively meet the needs of disabled colleagues. This will include a focus on effective reasonable adjustments.
• ensure that our wellbeing communications and initiatives specifically consider the needs of disabled colleagues, directing them to organisations that can provide tailored information or support.
• share personal stories of disabled colleagues at RoS, highlighting the reasonable adjustments that have worked for them and celebrating their achievements within RoS.

We will also continue to support the inclusion of colleagues with all other protected characteristics. Our Colleague Voice Sessions will identify any improvements we can make for each group, and we’ll take them forward over the next two years.