Disabled Employee Event
Monday 4 December 2023 -11:00am – 3:00pm
Disabled Employee Event
Monday 4 December 2023 -11:00am – 3:00pm
Bellshill Cultural Centre
To mark International Day of Persons with Disabilities the Employee Equality Forum and Disability Confident Leader working group are hosting an event for disabled employees.
Keynote Speakers –
Des Murray – NLC Chief Executive
Dr Julie McElroy – is a tireless advocate for disability rights. As a disabled woman she has overcame many challenges to achieve great success in her life including academia and sport. She will share with us her inspiring and emotional journey.
This programme will cover:
- The reasonable adjustment survery results
- Information on employment and opportunities
- Stalls with information from local and regional organisations supporting disabled people
- Discussion on how we can better advance equality in our workforce
Worried about the cost of living crisis – the Council’s Tackling Poverty / Financial Inclusion team Welfare Rights and Debt Advisers will be there to help with support and advice.
For more information or to register your attendance please email: employeeequalityforum@northlan.gov.uk or call / text: 07583030918
If you have any communication or other support needs please contact us by 24th November 2023 so as arrangements can be made.
All Welcome!
Equally Safe at Work
The Council is one of only four Public Bodies in Scotland to be accredited as Bronze in the Equally Safe at Work employer accreditation programme.
Equally Safe at Work (ESAW) is a world leading employer accreditation programme which was launched in January 2019. It stems from Equally Safe, Scotland’s strategy for tackling violence against women and girls which recognises such violence as being inextricably linked to gender inequality. ESAW recognises the role the workplace has in tackling gender inequality and as such has a key role to play in tackling violence against women and girls. The Council was selected as one of only seven pilot authorities to participate in the accreditation at Bronze Standard. The accreditation requires meeting the criteria set out in 6 standards: Leadership, Data, Flexible Working, Occupational Segregation, Workplace Culture and Violence against women.
In 2021 our success at achieving Bronze Standard was announced along with three other Scottish Local Authorities. The Council is now taking up the challenge to progress to Silver Standard.
Disability Confident Leader
The Council was re-accredited for the 3rd time with the Disability Confident Leader employer accreditation in March 2023. Being a leader requires not only removing barriers to disabled people gaining and sustaining employment but also taking a pro-active approach to encouraging our suppliers and partner firms to also become disability confident. As well as attending employer events to promote the Disability Confident Scheme the Supported Employment team recently supported a local business ACS (Advance Clothing Solutions) on their disability confident journey which resulted in them achieving leadership status.
BAME Employee Survey and Conference held in October 2022
Having analysed the information from the 2021 employment gathering exercise a decision was taken to have a focus on advancing race equality in employment. A race equality in employment action plan was developed to address the issues arising from this analysis. Some of the issues included disproportionate numbers of BAME employees in comparison to the local population, no BAME people were promoted in the Council, interviews for BAME applicants were disproportionately low in comparison to other characteristics etc. To date the following progress has been achieved:
- Council signed up to the seven commitments of the Business in the Community Race at Work Charter;
- appointed the Council’s first Executive Sponsor for Race;
- undertook a survey to gauge the experiences of our BAME employees;
- appointed a BAME employee representative on the short-life Black Lives Matter Working Group;
- hosted a BAME employee event in partnership with the Employee Equality Forum in October 2022;
- our Jobs and Training section on the Council website now includes an equality and diversity section to promote our commitments and policies to anyone checking us out as a potential place to work; and
- through iTrent recruitment we have developed an anonymous recruitment process that was fully implemented in February 2023.
The action plan has been subject to a consultation with BAME employees and they have signed up to be involved in the monitoring and review of the plan to ensure it progresses and remains relevant.
Race at Work Charter
In 2022 the Council was the first Scottish Local Authority to sign up to the Business in the Community’s Race at Work Charter and in doing so appointed the Depute Chief Executive as our Executive Sponsor for Race. Having the Depute Chief Executive in this role is providing the visible leadership needed to drive key actions for advancing race equality in our workforce. Our Executive Sponsor is currently championing a campaign to increase BAME employees in our teaching workforce.
The Charters seven commitments are:
- appoint an executive sponsor for race;
- capture ethnicity data and publicise progress;
- commit at board level to zero tolerance of harassment;
- make equality, diversity and inclusion the responsibility of all leaders and managers;
- take action that supports Black, Asian, mixed race and other ethnically diverse employees’ career progression;
- support race inclusion allies in the workplace; and
- include Black, Asian, mixed race and other ethnically-led enterprise owners in supply chain.
Action Plans to advance the asks of all of these accreditation programmes have been developed to ensure delivery. Working Groups also exist to monitor and review progress and people with lived experience are central to the review and monitoring process.
Our Lives Research
The council commissioned research of the lived experiences and future needs of North Lanarkshire’s Black, Asian and other Minority Ethnic people.
The report by Doctor Mohammed Ishaq (School of Business and Creative Industries at University of the West of Scotland) and Doctor Asifa Maaria Hussain (School of Social Science at Heriot-Watt University) is published on the council website.
Gender Budgeting Projects
In 2022 the Council began a partnership with the Scottish Women’s Budget Group. The project aims to support greater use of gender budgeting tools in local decision making in Scotland to reduce inequalities. The Council’s participation in the project will:
- build the knowledge of key staff and elected members regarding the role of intersectional gender analysis within policy and budget decision making processes;
- ensure that the Council is making best use of data to reduce inequalities;
- Improve the quality of the Council’s equality impact assessments and budget decision making processes in terms of reducing inequalities; and
- assist the Council to meet its Public Sector Equality and Fairer Scotland Duties to advance equality and tackle socio-economic disadvantage.
To date the following has been achieved:
- 42 operational managers and 22 Elected Members have attended gender budgeting workshops and received resources; and
- Three Council projects receiving Shared Prosperity Funding have signed up to work with the Scottish Women’s Budget Group to ensure a gender budgeting approach is utilised as the project plans are developed.
The three projects are:
- The Active Travel Challenge Fund;
- People and Skills; and
- Supporting Local Business.
In February 2023, 18 employees involved in these three projects attended an introductory workshop on gender budgeting and more detailed workshop sessions are being scheduled for Spring 2023 to take this forward.