Hi Nina, a big one for us (and probably the most straightforward lens to look through in terms of protected characteristics) has been ensuring that our policies are using LGBTQIA+ inclusive language. In particular our family leave related policies. On a basic level we have ensured where relevant to use “the employee” or “they” rather than “the mother/father” or “she/he”. We have ensured our policies account for surrogacy and adoption arrangements, including where parents may be same-sex. A bigger move we are considering making (and I know other employers in our sector have made) is changing the name of our paternity policy, as the paternity entitlement doesn’t only apply to fathers but is essentially for the ‘main or birthing parent’s’ partner. We’ve had female employees in same-sex relationships who have taken paternity leave and it just doesn’t feel good to tell a woman she is taking paternity leave when we could change the language to be more gender neutral and inclusive. Another organisation I’m aware of now calls it “parent support leave” for example.

Another couple of things we are doing, is ensuring that it’s clear that miscarriages are covered by our occupational bereavement policy and that both parents are eligible to take this leave.

Also, other than where it’s required to be Male/Female for HMRC purposes, we are allowing people to indicate if they have a non-binary identity and where that’s not possible we’re making clear why.

Those are just a few examples but I’d definitely recommend engaging in discussions with all of your diversity networks about how policies or procedures could be more inclusive. On a personal level I always try to read policies through that lens, e.g. how would I feel reading this if I were X minoritised identity. But you are definitely best off engaging staff from different groups as they are bound to think of things you won’t.

A final point is to manage expectations, a lot of things like inclusive language can easily be changed and don’t really have any negative impact. But engaging with staff always presents challenges. We’ve had requests from our disability network to change our sickness policy to say that we’ll never manage disability related absence, which obviously we’re not going to do. We’ve had to have some challenging conversations to explain this in a sensitive way.

In reply to Katie:

Thanks so much Katie, that's very helpful.