Equality scheme and objectives
Valuing each other's varied contributions means we can all achieve more. That's why we support a diverse community through our equality objectives.
Diversity matters
The University of Plymouth strives to be an open and accessible organisation; one that upholds the values of equality and diversity and actively stands against all forms of discrimination.
Whether you are a member of staff, a student, one of our alumni, or a member of the community, the University champions and promotes freedom of speech and expression, and celebrates diverse views and experiences. Indeed, equality and diversity is fundamental to the institution’s Vision to ‘make a positive difference to people’s lives’ and provide ‘an inclusive and inspiring university community'.
Our Equality Scheme
How do you measure the true value that diversity brings? At Plymouth, we do this through our Equality Scheme, which recognises the good work that we’re already doing, while setting new challenges and goals for the future.
The Equality Scheme helps us to drive positive change through clear equality objectives and targets, which challenge the University to use its resources to deliver sustainable, successful outcomes.
The University’s current Equality Scheme covers 2017 - 2021 but every year, the institution reviews and documents its progress through its Annual Equality Report. This helps it to update its objectives and targets and respond to new challenges and priorities. For example, the University is seeking to address some specific gender imbalances that recur at a national level, such as encouraging more female staff and students to take up STEMM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medicine) subjects, as well as recruiting more male staff and students to specialisms such as health sciences. It is also examining attitudes of males from lower socioeconomic groups towards higher education, both as a means to understand the University’s own position better, as well as engage with external groups to identify potential actions.
Our Equality Objectives
The Equality Act is often described as having three specific ‘aims’.
These are:
Equality of opportunity
Advance equality of opportunity between people who share a protected characteristic and people who do not share it.
Elimination of unlawful discrimination
Eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment, victimisation and any other conduct prohibited by the Act.
Fostering good relations
The objectives and targets the University has currently agreed to work on with the Board of Governors are:
Objectives and targets:
Promotion of opportunities through support, practices and communications for all protected characteristics.
Staff objective
- Focus on gender as a key priority, using Athena SWAN as a model to drive action and embed equality of opportunity.
Target impact (by 2021)
- The percentage of professor posts held by women to be at least equal to the national/regional benchmark (as per Athena SWAN action plan).
- The proportion of female applicants and promotees from eligible female population to be at least equal to the proportion of males for each of the career pathways.
- The gender pay gap within professional services grades 1 to 9 to be a maximum of -8%, and within executive and senior manager grades to be a maximum of -4% (where minus indicates in favour of men).
Student objective
- Advance equality in student achievement, focussing on the core areas of attainment, retention and employability.
Target impact (by 2021)
- The University gender gap in student attainment to be at least equal to the national benchmark.
- The new DVC (Education and Student Experience) to set agreed improvement targets for the ethnicity gap in student attainment for UK and non-UK domiciled students by 2018 to drive improvement action by 2021.
Objectives and targets:
Ensuring that our policies and practices are fair, reasonable, inclusive and free from discriminatory practices.
Staff objective
- Use equality training to inform decision making and support staff to own, understand and enact their duties.
Target impact (by 2021)
- Equality eLearning is completed by 90% of all employees at the University.
Student objective
- Provide equality and unconscious bias training for students to raise their awareness of equality, diversity and inclusion.
Target impact (by 2021)
- Equality awareness training is available for all students by 2018.
Objectives and targets:
Ensure that our culture is welcoming, inclusive and open.
Staff objective
- Staff surveys (Annual and/or Pulse Surveys) demonstrate an improvement in the way staff "feel valued", and an awareness of the opportunity to "input into decisions that impact them".
Target impact (by 2021)
- Staff surveys (Annual and/or Pulse Surveys) demonstrate an improvement in the way staff "feel valued", and an awareness of the opportunity to "input into decisions that impact them".
Student objective
- Ensure our students feel that the University is a welcoming and inclusive environment.
Target impact (by 2021)
- To demonstrate an improvement in line with comparable benchmarks by 2021 against the new question in the NSS "I feel part of a community of staff and students" (Q21).
The actions that the University intends to take over the next four years to realise its objectives will evolve over the lifetime of the Equality Scheme. The Annual Equality Report provides an update on the actions taken in the preceding year, their impact, and what our next steps are as we move towards our targets. Some of the actions we plan to take this year include:
- Completing the roll-out of a new academic promotions process with
training, workshops and support for managers in our work to encourage more eligible
female academics to apply for promotion
- Reviewing feedback on new mentoring and training programmes
targeted in the first instance at women as part of our work to encourage more
women to apply for promotion and also providing support to early career
researchers
- Development of local accessible data to support School and Faculty
teams with their Athena SWAN applications and impact monitoring
- Partnering with the Students’ Union (UPSU) to develop workshops on
workforce equality rights awareness for students
- Further developing and promoting our annual calendar of events
underpinning cultural, religious, health and wellbeing awareness activities
- Further development of campus accessibility information and maps to
enable staff and students to navigate around the campus effectively
Annual monitoring data
Having an equality scheme is one thing, but informing people about the work the University is doing, helps to bring it to life. By law, the University is required to publish an annual update on the work it has undertaken to meet its equality objectives, and as outlined earlier, this takes the form of an Annual Equality Report. The report includes all of the equality monitoring data linked to the scheme. Information about the progress we have made against our previous equality objectives can be found in our Equality Report archive.
Support our policies
Whatever you’re doing at the University, whoever you’re working or studying with and in whatever capacity, our equality and diversity, religious diversity and anti-bullying and anti-harassment policies apply to you.
We also have a specific policy for trans applicants, students, and graduates.
We all have a responsibility to respect and follow our equality policies, and to try and make sure that what we do and how we behave doesn’t amount to discrimination or harassment in any way.