Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Annual Report 2023

We have committed to addressing pay gaps and producing a wider Equalities Pay Gap Report, expanding our duty to report on gender pay gaps, publishing this on our website.

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 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.

We engaged with the National Centre for Diversity (NCD) to undertake external auditing to independently assess our performance in EDI and shared the results with colleagues. In July 2022 we received notification that we had successfully been accredited with the Investors in Diversity award. We were reassessed in October 2023 and successfully retained the award until October 2025.

We mandate essential training for all colleagues on EDI and mental health awareness. We also make additional EDI training available through our Beyond Learning portal.

We’ve enabled ReachDeck, Text Help’s website 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 having a function to read website text aloud. It also meets the needs of 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, and by the end of 2023 we had over 83 allies across the business.

We have consulted with customers on our EDI statement of principles and reviewed our established EDI policy. We also continue to provide WhistleB, an anonymous whistleblowing tool that enables colleagues to report inappropriate behaviour if they feel they cannot raise it another way. No reports of inappropriate behaviour related to EDI were received during 2023.

We have established grievance and bullying/harassment procedures. During 2023 there were no allegations related to EDI.

We have expanded our numbers of 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 in December 2023.

We collect data on customers at tenancy sign up, and on colleagues and the board when they start employment or tenure. 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 survey). We worked on this during 2023 reducing the gaps in our data, however, this remains a work in progress.

Members of our EDI Champions Forum and EDI Steering Group have attended network meetings, training sessions and forums to learn from others about what works best to have the most impact.

In 2020 we identified that our board could benefit from being more diverse and worked with the Housing Diversity Network and other housing associations in the region to deliver a board trainee programme aimed at underrepresented groups. We sponsored two board trainees on this programme, one trainee completed the programme.

We continue to collaborate with a number of organisations in our regions through sponsorship to bring awareness to EDI 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.

In Scarborough, we worked with Scarborough Borough Council to sponsor the National Armed Forces Day event, a high-profile event to celebrate the contributions of the Armed Forces to our country. We acknowledge that former service members can often face challenges in transitioning back to civilian life, including joblessness, homelessness, and mental health issues. We are also a silver member of the Armed Forces Covenant, a voluntary pledge to ensure those who serve or have served in the Armed Forces are treated fairly. We are committed to providing support and assistance to help reduce challenges and promote social integration. This, in turn, breaks down social stigmas and misconceptions that can be associated with ex-service members, creating a more accepting and inclusive society.

We were extremely proud to join other local businesses in sponsoring Scarborough Pride 2023, the first Pride event the town has held in 10 years. Colleagues came out to represent Beyond Housing in the parade, helping to promote compassion and understanding for all people, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity. By aligning our brand with the values and inclusivity of Pride, we can show the LGBTQ+ community that Beyond Housing is a safe space as an employer and landlord, helping us to attract a more diverse customer base.

We conducted regular campaigns throughout the year covering topics such as International Men’s and Women’s Days. We focused on EDI during an ‘EDI month’ in March with a campaign named ‘Marching Together’, and shared and promoted all the above. We sponsored the Scarborough Pride parade in September, promoting this on internal and external social media as well as the media, making clear our stance on inclusion to those who might otherwise potentially feel excluded, or those who might seek to exclude.

We did this as part of EDI month, above, as a result of which we recruited five more allies and three more champions.

We completed an accessibility survey of our Ennis Square, Redcar premises. Details of the accessibility of this building, and of Brook House in Scarborough which was surveyed in 2022, can be found on accessable.co.uk.

We completed the review of our dignity at work procedure and launched it to colleagues on 3 April 2023, to round off our EDI month. We also consulted with the EDI group and with a selection of customers on our EDI statement of principles and our EDI policy. Minor changes of language were made as a result.

We signed up for Dementia Friends in February 2023.

Our Learning & Development Manager is on our EDI Champions group and our EDI steering group. They liaised closely with our chosen training provider and ensured EDI was sufficiently incorporated into our leadership and management development programme, which commenced for all people managers across the company in September 2023. This programme will continue to run until at least March 2024.

We dealt with a large backlog of customer data and found issues with the process that prevented the information from being stored on our customer database. The backlog has been cleared and the process has been re-evaluated to ensure data is automatically stored in a more user-friendly and streamlined way.

We also conducted campaigns to colleagues to encourage them to provide their data where it was missing, and to update their data if it was out of date. This reduced the number of colleagues with data missing from 300 to under 100.

We explored the language we use and as an example, changed our internal scheduling system language from ‘two-man job’ to ‘two-person job’.

We were reassessed against the Investors in Diversity standard in October 2023 and received notification at the end of the year that we were successful once again.

• Data sourced – 13 December 2023
• CEO is included in both board and colleague data given the dual role.