Equality and Diversity Monitoring Information For Period 6 (September 2009) Source ESR Database

Equality & Diversity Monitoring - EMAS What is Equality and Diversity Equality Equality is ensuring people are treated fairly and given fair chances. Equality is not about treating everyone in the same way, but it does recognise that their needs are met in different ways. Equality focuses on those areas covered by the law, namely the key areas of race, gender, disability and, more recently, religion or belief, sexual orientation and age. A recent amendment to the Race Relations Act adds a duty for us to actively promote race equality and avoid race discrimination, by acting before it happens. People must not be unfairly discriminated against because of any of these factors and we must all work towards creating a positive working environment where discriminatory practices and discrimination do not happen. And diversity? Diversity is about valuing individual differences. Diversity is much more than just a new word for equality. A diversity approach recognises, values and manages difference to enable all employees to contribute and realise their full potential. Diversity challenges us to recognise and value all sorts of differences in order to make EMAS a better place for everyone to work. Why are equality and diversity important? Diversity is about recognising that our clients come from different backgrounds. If we welcome diversity as colleagues, value each other and treat each other fairly, we will work better together. In doing so we will provide a better service to the citizens of the East Midlands. It will help our clients to approach us and use our services if we have a diverse workforce that feels comfortable with and understands their different needs. So diversity will also contribute to improving the services we provide.

Total Summary of New Starters EMAS Jan’09-Oct’09

Summary The gender differential for the age band shows a significant difference between men and women – 34.4% more women then men aged between 16 and 25 have been hired into EMAS, which equates to a total of 22 more women than men. Although Christianity shows as the most dominant religious belief of all new starters to EMAS, the propensity of new starters to not disclose this information is by far the prevalent trend. If Christianity and those choosing to remain undefined are removed, only Atheists constitute the remaining new starters in this age band. This data can not, however be fully relied upon as those remaining undefined may have religious beliefs. It is inaccurate to conclude that EMAS did or did not hire sufficient Muslims or Buddhists, for example, as the undefined category may contain those individuals. It would, however be wise to state that a very low number of openly religious individuals joined EMAS. The sexual orientation data shows that although a significant number of new starters did identify their orientation as Heterosexual and, to a lesser extent, lesbian, 82.8% did not disclose this information. That equates to 53 people. Due to this fact, the true representation of sexual orientation can not be adequately identified as within the 82.8% who remained “Undefined”, a sexual orientation of one class or another must exist without now being specified. The ethnic diversity figures show that 46.9% of every new starter aged between 16 and 25 disclosed their ethnic background. Of that 46.9%, the most prevalent ethnicity is White, however Asian and Mixed ethnicities show a total 7.8% representation. This figure equates to 5 people out of 64 being either ethnically Asian or Mixed. However, the true figures are, once again, obscured by those choosing to remain undisclosed. Since it is impossible for someone to have no ethnicity, the 53.1% remaining undefined must fall under one category which means there may in fact be a more diverse ethnicity present here, however based on this information, this hypothesis can not be proven.