Evaluate policies, systems, processes and practices that promote equality, diversity and inclusion

Part of your role as a leader and manager will involve evaluating current organisational policies, systems, processes and practices to ensure that they are not discriminatory and that they promote equality, diversity and inclusion.

Of course, policies, procedures and protocols will be reviewed at least annually as part of your quality assurance process, however, you may also choose to evaluate them at any time to ensure that they are working as intended. Staff should also feel comfortable approaching management with any concerns they have about equality, diversity and inclusion. Fostering an open and transparent culture can help with this.

Sometimes, policies may be inadvertently discriminatory and this may not come to light until someone informs you. When this happens, you should make efforts to revise the policy as needed. For example, you may have a policy that states all staff must work weekends for the equitability of shift patterns, but this could be discriminatory to a Jewish employee that observes Saturday as a holy day.

Whenever policies or procedures are revised or updated, this must be communicated to employees so that they can follow the new guidelines – you can not expect employees to follow procedures that they do not know about and you can not expect them to check every single policy and procedure each shift for updates!

There are several ways that equality, diversity and inclusion can be promoted in your organisation. Staff will have mandatory training in this area (as part of the Care Certificate) and you may also decide to provide additional training. Awareness can also be raised through posters, flyers and discussions during team meetings, supervision and appraisal. Role modelling good practice and challenging discriminatory attitudes and behaviours can improve the knowledge, competence and confidence of others and reinforce that discrimination is not tolerated in your workplace.