We are in the middle of some really important cultural changes regarding inclusivity. #MeToo, Black Lives Matter are two of the more visible movements but issues such as the gender pay gap, immigration and mental health are getting more attention.

In April this year, the ED&I team started to enjoy the benefits of a new approach to leading on these important issues. While everyone in the organisation has responsibility for ED&I, the PVC for Learning & Teaching, Professor Peter Lambert, the Dean of H&SS, Professor David Galbreath and I now share an equal responsibility for ED&I at senior leadership team level. This is my chance to provide an update on some of our activities in this area.

STATEMENT OF EQUALITY OBJECTIVES: We have published our Statement of Equality Objectives. These may be high-level, but they signal our commitment to some important themes over the next three years. You can expect to see us reporting on these.

NEVEROK: The wider-reaching #NeverOK awareness campaign continues to grow, through the collaborative efforts of the SU and University ED&I team. It covers all areas of anti-harassment, and includes anti-hate crime content including online and religious hate. We have trained over 600 student leaders, and in the last year over 300 members of staff in these training packages.

REPORT AND SUPPORT: Our newly developed report and support tool launched in September 2018, allows all staff, students (including those on placement), and visitors to report discrimination, misconduct, harassment or assault. A user can report anonymously or get support from an adviser, and can report as a witness to an instance of harassment or having experienced it themselves.

ATHENA SWAN: It has been a very busy time for Athena SWAN activities. The Athena SWAN Anniversary Stories highlight the wider impact on the culture of the organisation. As of this month the University of Bath has 10 Bronze and 4 Silver Departmental Athena SWAN awards. This is a tremendous achievement for the University in five years, since it achieved its first Bronze Department award in 2014 (Pharmacy & Pharmacology), and will be invaluable for our Institutional Silver submission in April 2021.

DIVERSITY CALENDAR: The month of June was LGBT+ Pride month and Kaleidoscope, the LGBT+ Staff and Postgraduate network ran an event on 12 June: Hate Crime and Discrimination. July focuses on disability awareness and 14 July is Disability Awareness Day. We all have a responsibility to help celebrate and raise awareness of the diversity of our campus, so if you wish to host an event or activity, please do so, just let the ED&I team know and they will help you integrate it into other initiatives and publicise it. The Mental Health and Wellbeing workshops that are being run throughout the Summer are completely sold out and demonstrate the hunger for activity in this area.

TRAINING: We highly recommend that you take the ED&I team up on their training opportunities which can be run locally and adapted to your needs. Each Masterclass lasts for 30 minutes, so can easily be built into a team meeting or away day and aid your commitment to creating an inclusive and respectful community for everyone at the University. On the 11 and 17 July AdvanceHE are providing some of our senior staff with a full day training workshop that looks at ‘The Danger of the Single Story’. They will help you think about the services your team delivers, about the language you use and the way you present things.

The topic of ED&I is always a challenging one. It can challenge our beliefs and lead to uncomfortable conversations. Most of this is due to not knowing how to have difficult conversations, and feeling afraid that we are going to say the wrong thing. We hope we can encourage at this University an openness and willingness to discuss all of these issues. Many of the problems we see in both the HE sector, and in wider society, appears to me to be caused because people won’t, or can’t discuss these issues in a respectful and supportive manner. We haven’t got it right yet, but we are learning and I would encourage everyone at the University to commit to at least one ED&I-focused activity this year. To become more self-reflective. The more aware we all become, the more we will create a community where everyone can thrive.

You can find out more about our ED&I provision at this link and a few personal reflections from me in my blog.

Richard Brooks Director of HR