Fairness, Respect, Equality, Diversity, Inclusion and Engagement (FREDIE) Annual Report 2024

We have committed to addressing pay gaps and producing a wider ‘equalities pay gap report’ expanding our statutory duty to report on gender pay gaps, and publishing this on our website. Our equalities pay gap report covers disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity and religion as well as gender.

We measure equality/inclusivity with our colleagues during our 6 monthly colleague survey.  Colleagues are asked the following questions in relation to overall organisational fit:

1. Organisational fit: Beyond Housing’s values are personally relevant to me
2. Equality: Colleagues from all backgrounds are treated fairly at Beyond Housing
3. Response: If I reported serious misconduct at work, I’m confident Beyond Housing would take action to rectify the situation.

On all of these measures Beyond Housing performs above the benchmark:

(scores are an agreement rating with a maximum score of 10)

We take positive action in recruitment, offering job interview guarantees to applicants with disabilities, armed forces veterans, and currently serving reservists under our disability confident ‘committed’ and Armed Forces Recognition Scheme ‘Silver’ statuses. We also share all of our vacancy adverts with Clean Slate Solutions, who support the rehabilitation of offenders into employment.

We remove personal details from applications in our recruitment portal to reduce the risk of unconscious bias, even though our recruiting panels are fully trained, and we monitor recruitment data at each stage of the application/appointment process.

Equality impact assessments are carried out on all our policies and procedures, to ensure we are mindful of the impact of any changes may have on different customer or colleague groups.

We engaged with the National Centre for Diversity (NCD) to undertake external auditing to independently assess our performance in FREDIE and shared the results with colleagues.  We gained Investors in Diversity award in October 2021 and retained the accreditation after reassessment in October 2023. Our next assessment is due in 2025.

We mandate essential training for all colleagues on FREDIE covering respect in the workplace and also training on mental health awareness. We also make additional FREDIE training available through our Beyond Learning portal.

The benefits of this eLearning are:

• Enhancing Workplace Culture: Respect in the workplace is fundamental to creating a positive environment where everyone feels valued and safe. By ensuring that all employees complete this training, we aim to strengthen our organisational culture and promote mutual respect among colleagues
• Consistency Across the Organisation: Making the training mandatory ensures that every employee receives the same foundational knowledge and understanding of respect-related issues. This consistency is crucial for aligning our values and expectations across all teams
• Addressing Workplace Challenges: In today’s diverse work environment, it is essential that we equip our employees with the tools and knowledge to navigate interpersonal dynamics effectively. The E-Learning module provides valuable insights into recognising, preventing, and addressing any forms of disrespect or discrimination that may arise
• Legal and Ethical Obligations: As an organisation, we have a responsibility to comply with legal and ethical standards regarding workplace behaviour. The training reinforces our commitment to upholding these standards and ensuring a safe  workplace for everyone
• Continuous Improvement: By engaging in this training, we are taking proactive steps to improve our workplace environment continuously. It provides an opportunity for self-reflection and personal growth.

We’ve enabled ReachDeck, TextHelp’s web accessibility and language toolbar on our website to make it more accessible. This tool helps people with common conditions such as sight loss and dyslexia to access our website in the way that suits them best. It allows users to customise how the website looks in terms of background colours, font sizes and font colours, as well as read website text aloud. It also meets the needs of the one in ten people in the UK who don’t speak English as their first language, with the ability to translate our web content into over 100 different languages.

We have an established EDI ally scheme, involving a four-step programme where people can advocate for each other to build a more positive work culture, helping people be aware of the potential for unconscious bias, discriminatory language, micro-aggressions etc. in the workplace, we currently have 126 allies across the business.

We have an established EDI statement of principles and an established policy, and we have consulted with customers about these at each stage of regular renewal or refresh.

We provide WhistleB, an anonymous whistleblowing tool that enables colleagues to report inappropriate behaviour if they feel they cannot raise it another way.  One allegation of inappropriate and potentially bullying behaviour creating a negative and potentially unsafe working environment was received in the latter part of 2024; the allegation is being taken seriously and further information is still being gathered to enable a full investigation to progress, should this be appropriate.

We have established grievance and bullying/harassment (or dignity at work) procedures.  During 2024 four allegations were received related to potential disability, age, pregnancy discrimination and discriminatory language.  Three allegations were not upheld, one was received in the latter part of 2024 and is still pending the hearing outcome.

We have 8 trained Mental Health First Aiders and engaged in several health campaigns and initiatives, led by our team of Health Advocates. This has led to the achievement of Better Health at Work Award at continuing excellence level (this is above gold level) in December 2023, and we await the results of our confident submission which was retained in December 2024.

We collect data on customers at tenancy sign up, and on colleagues and the board when they start employment or tenure. When we started on our EDI journey we knew there were gaps in our data; the data categories we collected had data missing, there was data we did not yet collect such as gender transition or carer responsibilities, and there were disparities in the data collected from each group (customers / colleagues). This issue of data incompleteness reflected the trend across the sector (as found in the NHF EDI surveys 2021 and 2023). We continued to work on this during 2024 reducing the gaps in our data, however this remains a work in progress.

Members of our FREDIE Champions Forum and Steering Group have attended network meetings, training sessions and forums to learn from others about what works and what doesn’t.

We have engaged with sector surveys and reports on FREDIE such as the National Housing Federation EDI data tool 2023 and updated report May 2024.

We continue to collaborate with a number of organisations in our regions through sponsorship to bring awareness to FREDIE topics, supporting us to build trust in Beyond Housing as a landlord and employer amongst under-represented groups. This includes the sponsorship of Redcar and Cleveland’s Inspiring Women Awards each year, which celebrates the achievements of women in the borough, helping to raise the profile of women and their contributions to society. We also take part in the Inspiring Women Shadowing Programme, which allows school-age girls to shadow women at work in a variety of roles. The programme is designed to inspire young women to pursue careers in their chosen field and to help them to develop the skills and confidence they need to succeed. A broad selection of women at Beyond Housing have taken part in this programme, from project managers to senior leaders.

Our partnership with The Girls’ Network is another crucial component of our commitment to empowering young women and fostering a more equitable society. We provide funding and mentors to support The Girls’ Network’s mentoring programme, which matches girls from under-served communities with experienced female mentors from various business sectors. This mentorship helps to broaden young women’s horizons, nurture their aspirations, and equip them with the skills and confidence they need to navigate their educational and career paths.

We regularly support smaller local organisations, including the Tees Valley Women’s Centre and community centres, with hands-on projects such as redecoration. These centres are used by groups that focus on providing a safe and inclusive space for groups like women or elderly people in our communities.

We conducted regular campaigns throughout the year covering topics such as international self care day, international women’s day, LGBTQ+ history month, Chinese new year, Ramadan and many more.

We converted our terminology about EDI into FREDIE and delivered training to colleagues across the business to help them understand the reasons for this and the continued expectation and desire for inclusion.

The plans for Limerick Road depot include disabled parking bays, EV chargers, cycle store and accessible toilet/shower. More detailed plans to support accessibility issues in the final fit out of the kitchen area are being explored by the project team.  Work is anticipated to start on site in Q4 (Jan-Mar 2025).

This remains part of our ongoing plan but was deferred to 2025.

Instead in 2024, we invested in neurodiversity face-to-face training for people managers to enhance their understanding of and support for neurodiverse colleagues. By equipping managers with the knowledge and skills to effectively engage with and accommodate neurodiverse team members, we aim to create a more supportive environment that maximises each individual’s potential.

We built on this training by working with Daisy Chain to develop team support sessions to improve team understanding and implement tailored strategies to support team members who are neurodiverse and help teams work more effectively.  This investment reflects our dedication to embracing diversity in all its forms and ensuring that every colleague can thrive.

We successfully rolled out our new FREDIE framework to all colleagues in November / December, delivering face to face presentations on the principles and values underpinning FREDIE. This emphasised the importance of embracing the framework and encouraged all colleagues to actively advocate for Fairness, Respect, Equality, Inclusion, Diversity and Engagement within our workplace.

Sexual harassment prevention training sessions were also launched for all managers in November, with all managers scheduled to attend sessions by the end of January 2025.  Feedback from training delivered so far to managers indicates this is generating good conversations and is raising awareness about behaviour and the importance of a zero-tolerance approach.  An e-learning module for all colleagues was rolled out in January 2025.

Continued attempts to collect colleague and customer data were undertaken, with most data showing a reduction in the number of ‘unknown’ or blank data fields. By encouraging colleagues to update their personal information, we can better understand the demographic makeup of our workforce and tailor our programs and policies to support underrepresented groups. This will remain an action for us in 2025.

We conducted a customer consultation in October 2024 as part of the creation of a new Beyond Housing Vulnerability Policy to ensure we captured the customer perspective.  There was opportunity for customers to provide feedback and influence the policy draft before it received final approval.

We established our new Independent Living Forum events in 2024, in partnership with our Reach & Respond services, as a way to proactively engage with our older customers.  Two sessions were held in September and November at our community centres in our sheltered accommodation sites to ensure local customers thoughts and views were heard. Our Reach & Respond customers were invited to drop-in for a cuppa and a chat with our friendly team and give feedback for the development of the next five-year strategy.  The success of these sessions means we plan to continue with a session each quarter as a roadshow travelling across our community centre sites for 2025.

Colleague consultation took place via our Colleague Forum, and our twice yearly colleague engagement survey ‘Be Heard’.  A framework for a mutual mentoring scheme was also developed; this will be developed further prior to a pilot in 2025.

While we still intend to work towards achieving Leaders in Diversity award, after engagement with NCD on the process and cost of the assessment and accreditation process, we have taken the difficult decision to defer progressing to Leaders in Diversity until 2027 or 2029 because of other priorities for the HR team and wider business, and pressures on budgets. Maintenance of Investors in Diversity status remains a priority for Beyond Housing, with full commitment to the principles of FREDIE (fairness, respect, equality, diversity, inclusion and engagement).

Training for colleagues and managers:

1. Complete the delivery of sexual harassment prevention training to all managers in January 2025 and launch an essential e-learning module for all colleagues, to deliver against the enhanced responsibility of employers to prevent sexual harassment from October 2024
2. Arrange awareness raising sessions for colleagues on being Dementia Friends
3. Review essential training for FREDIE and ensure colleagues are encouraged to refresh training as required
4. Continue with the roll out of neurodiversity training
5. Roll out further team support sessions to support teams with neurodiverse team members as required; a session is already scheduled for January for a team who have an autistic team member.

Continue to collect and refresh data held about customers and colleagues, and use this along with data about our recruitment processes and data from colleague exit interviews to direct our attentions to where they are needed most, to support our aspiration to create an environment where all colleagues feel valued and included, and all customers believe we understand and meet their individual needs.

Continue with our regular campaigns to colleagues to ensure reminders about WhistleB, zero tolerance, policies and procedures, ally scheme, meet your champions, and how to have conversations about appropriate and inappropriate behaviour

Reassessment against the Investors in Diversity standard, due October 2025.

Complete the transition from referring to EDI to FREDIE, ensuring all our training and documents reflect this change.

Refresh and relaunch our ally scheme and champions membership, encouraging more colleagues to voluntarily take up both roles, embedding our inclusive culture in everything we do.

Pilot and refine a mutual mentoring scheme, this will involve senior managers partnering with apprentices to both share their career journey and experience to support the apprentices development, and to learn from and understand the apprentice experience and perspective.

• Data is at December.
  CEO is included only in board data in 2024.