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Our vision

Our EDI vision is to be inclusive and fair: where colleagues and customers are respected, valued and supported for who they are.

We aim to provide services that are adapted to recognise the diverse needs of our people and communities, enabling them to thrive.

We will achieve this through our values in the following way:

We will be award winning and forward thinking

We will take account of people’s needs and treat them fairly

We will ensure EDI is at the heart of all our decision-making, every day, by everyone

We will listen and respond to people’s needs and talk about what we do

At Beyond Housing we aspire to be an active leader in our communities, aware of who our customers and service users are, and able to quickly adapt to demographic changes and trends. We want to be an industry leader, recognised as an organisation that is committed to EDI by our colleagues, customers, and stakeholders. We aim to be recognised as a Leader in Diversity, or a similar level accreditation, by the end of 2025.

This report is an ‘at a glance’ summary of our achievements and actions in 2023, and main aims for 2024. In 2021 we participated in benchmarking activities with the National Housing Federation (NHF) EDI data tool and the Yorkshire and Humberside EDI baseline survey report for the Yorkshire and Humberside Chief Executives Forum. The recommendations in the latter report form the structure of this report. These surveys were not repeated in 2022 or 2023 but we are committed to full participation as and when they are scheduled. View our actions and achievements by clicking the list below:

Set ambitious and measurable targets

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.

Adopt policies and practices to deliver on EDI

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.

Work to improve the quality and use of data

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.

Commit to engaging with the rest of the sector to share best practice and learning

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.

Collaborate with organisations across the region and nationally to use combined resources and influence improved outcomes for under-represented groups

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.

Our EDI forums and groups

We have an active EDI champions forum, where colleagues who are enthusiastic about EDI come together to research, promote and champion EDI as well as reviewing equality impact assessments. They run regular EDI based campaigns for colleagues to maintain awareness across the company, linking in with national campaigns and religious festivals.

We also have a smaller EDI Steering Group, which ensures we make progress against our action plan, month by month.

These groups are supported by an EDI Co-ordinator who dedicates their time to supporting these groups, researching good practice, promoting EDI and the ally schemes, reviewing website content, and ensuring we progress our action plan to make further improvements to inclusivity.

Frameworks

We are disability confident committed and recognised by the Armed Forces Covenant Employers Recognition Scheme at silver level. We achieved the Investors in Diversity award through the National Centre for Diversity (NCD) in 2021, and were reaccredited at silver level for a further two years in October 2023. We continue to be listed in their UK top 100 most inclusive employers, ranking at number 62.

disability committed - edi web

Armed forces covenant - edi web

Inclusive employer 62 - edi web

investors in diversity - edi web

Networks

We are members of the following networks:

And we work with Clean Slate Solutions to promote the rehabilitation of offenders, and the First Light Trust to support veterans locally.

Pledges and declarations

As well as the frameworks and networks already mentioned, we also signed up to the Chartered Institute of Housing’s (CIH) Make a Stand pledge to tackle domestic violence.

Our actions in 2023

We committed to many actions in 2023 as part of our ongoing plan to deliver our ambitious aspirations for EDI. Here is a summary of our progress:

Regular colleague awareness campaigns, including EDI month, reminders about WhistleB, zero tolerance, policies and procedures, ally scheme, champions, how to have conversations about appropriate and inappropriate behaviour

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.

Launch internal campaigns to ‘meet your champions’ and recruit more willing volunteers to the champion and ally scheme

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

Conduct an accessibility survey of our Redcar office

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.

Consult on our dignity at work procedure and launch to colleagues

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.

Sign up for Dementia Friends and arrange awareness sessions for colleagues

We signed up for Dementia Friends in February 2023.

Incorporate EDI into our leadership and management development programme, scheduled for delivery in financial year 2023/24

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.

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 so we can direct our attentions to where they are needed most

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’.

Work towards achieving Investors in Diversity reaccreditation in October 2023, and our longer-term goal of achieving Leaders in Diversity award by 2025

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.

Case study – Apprentice recruitment

Read about how our Recruitment Co-ordinator developed and trialled a new apprentice recruitment event and ensured candidates who declared a disability were well catered for in the process.

 

Our actions for 2024

In 2024 we will build on our work in 2023 to deliver our ambitious aspirations for inclusion:

1. Continue with our regular campaigns and EDI month to ensure reminders about WhistleB, zero tolerance, policies and procedures, ally scheme, meet your champions/sign up to be a champion, and how to have conversations about appropriate and inappropriate behaviour

2. Ensure our refurbishment of our Limerick Road depot adheres to good design principles for accessibility and inclusion

3. Arrange awareness raising sessions for colleagues on being Dementia Friends

4. 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 attention to where it is needed most

5. Consult with our colleagues and our customers about how to be more inclusive

6. Work towards achieving Leaders in Diversity award by 2025 (our next Investors reaccreditation date) and deliver an action plan to achieve it.

Our data

View our data for 2023 by clicking the list below:

Gender
Gender
Percentage
Colleagues
Customers
Board
Female 45.57% 61.76% 72.73%
Male 54.30% 38.24% 27.27%
Non-Binary 0.00% 0.00% 0.00%
Transgender 0.13% 0.00% 0.00%
Unknown 0.00% 0.00% 0.00%
Ethnic origin
Ethnic Origin
Percentage
Colleagues
Customers
Board
White British 95.19% 78.19% 100.00%
BME 1.52% 2.35% 0.00%
Prefer not to say 0.00% 0.54% 0.00%
Unknown 3.29% 18.92% 0.00%
Religion
Religion
Percentage
Colleagues
Customers
Board
Other 2.41% 1.04% 0.00%
Buddhist 0.38% 0.08% 0.00%
Christian (all denominations) 38.86% 21.02% 81.82%
Hindu 0.00% 0.01% 0.00%
Jewish 0.13% 0.01% 0.00%
Muslim 0.25% 0.24% 0.00%
No religion 42.41% 21.55% 18.18%
Prefer not to say 1.01% 3.86% 0.00%
Sikh 0.38% 0.01% 0.00%
Unknown 14.18% 52.18%  0.00%
Disability
Disability
Percentage
Colleagues
Customers
Board
Yes 4.56% 29.61% 0.00%
Not declared 95.44% 70.39% 100.00%
Sexual orientation
Sexual orientation
Percentage
Colleagues
Customers
Board
Bisexual 1.27% 0.13% 0.00%
Gay/lesbian 1.52% 0.27% 0.00%
Heterosexual 86.45% 39.88% 100.00%
Other 0.00% 0.21% 0.00%
Prefer not to say 2.28% 4.24% 0.00%
Unknown 8.48% 55.27% 0.00%
Age band
Age band
Percentage
Colleagues
Customers
Board
16-24 7.34% 2.53% 0.00%
25-34 19.11% 12.36% 0.00%
35-44 24.81% 17.15% 9.09%
45-54 23.92% 16.26% 27.27%
55-64 22.03% 19.86% 36.36%
65-74 2.66% 16.89% 27.27%
75+ 0.13% 14.95% 0.00%
Data notes:
  • Data sourced – 13 December 2023
  • CEO is included in both board and colleague data given the dual role.
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