Advancing our Race Equality Charter Action Plan

Since receiving our Bronze Race Equality Charter Award in December 2023, we have been making progress in advancing our Institutional Race Equality Charter Action Plan. We recognise the importance of keeping the momentum and addressing issues to improve race equity and this remains an institutional priority at Essex.

As the Director of Inclusion and Chair of the Race Equality Charter Self-Assessment Team (RECSAT), I am pleased to report the progress made and some examples are provided below.

• To ensure momentum is maintained, the RECSAT have continued to meet to monitor progress and updates. In addition to this, updates as well as any challenges are reported to the People Culture and Inclusion Advisory Group chaired by the Deputy Vice-Chancellor.
• We have refreshed and relaunched our Performance and Development Review (PDR) scheme to ensure effective PDR conversations are taking place and made training available to managers and staff about the scheme. So far 434 people have undertaken the training and we encourage all managers and their teams to ensure they take this valuable training. Guidance and information about PDRs are also on our staff directory pages and a question about the PDRs experience was also included in the employee voice survey. The RECSAT we will be considering the survey responses once they are made available.
• An important part of the feedback from the self-assessment process was not knowing whether a PDR had taken place or not and it was important for us to provide the ability to capture this data. This was enabled on i-Trent where managers and their team members can record the dates that PDRs took place, however the number of people completing this stage was low, and it is important as part of our Race Equality and Athena Swan Charters that we have a record and are able to demonstrate that PDRs are taking place. We therefore urge you to co-operate with this process and will continue to work on this area.
• In order to increase ethnicity disclosure rates, we have added additional ethnicity categories to HR Organiser, to include additional Latin American and Jewish categories. This was done following a consultation process last academic year. We also ramped up our Your Profile Counts campaigns which included messages on our digital screens, payslips and an email campaign. As a result ethnicity disclosures have increased by 2%.
• We now have an institutional Positive Action statement encouraging underrepresented groups to apply including Black Asian and Minority ethnic applicants and this is on our recruitment web page and linked to job packs. Recruiting managers can continue to include a Positive Action statement in their individual adverts if appropriate.
• A Race element was included as part of this training and sessions were delivered last academic year.
• The grade for Future Leaders was reduced to grade UEG7 and we will see whether this will increase the participation of Black Asian and Minority Ethnic staff (where representation was found to be low). We encourage applications to this leadership programme from our Black Asian and Minority Ethnic staff who meet the criteria.
• The last academic workshop took place on 29 April 2024 and workshops will continue to be available as part of our training offer focussing on promotion to senior Lecturer, Reader and Professor.
• Race Equity and Allyship Train the Trainer training was delivered to some Inclusivity Leads and some staff from People and Culture, however resource challenges mean that the rolling out of this training more widely has been paused and we will be looking at how this can be delivered moving forward. We are also designing a race equity webinar that will be piloted before being made available more widely to staff and students.
• The Transitions and Transformations project is in its third year and has become a key part of the University’s activities and processes, with continuous input from students shaping its development. The programme’s Black Researcher’s Hub (BRH) integrated into the Chart My Path student portal, provides resources for skill development, events, testimonials, and a co-developed pedagogic framework. Two new features the Grow your Skills tool and Sponsorship space, offer self-assessment and personalised mentoring opportunities, further enhancing support for students at all study levels. A more detailed update on this project will be in our 2023-24 EDI annual report which will be going to Council for approval in March.
• We are fully committed to the success of our students and want every student to achieve their full potential. We continue to look at different ways to address the awarding gap particularly for our Black Students and as such we have refreshed our Access and Participation Plan (APP) which was approved by the Office for Students in November 2024. The APP focusses on Access, Continuation and Completion and Progression. These four areas have a dedicated set of activities designed to address the gap and to provide an opportunity for analysis and to contribute to the national evidence base in most cases. Our APP working group which includes student representatives, is responsible for supporting effective delivery of the Plan as well as its monitoring and evaluation. Impact on this will be measured over the next three/four years and will be reported into Education Committee and form part of our REC Action Plan updates.
• Student engagement is very important to us it is important that the student voice is represented on our RECSAT. As well as the Student Black Officer, we now have a permanent SU member of staff being part of both our REC and Athena Swan SATs and we are delighted to have them on the SAT.

I will continue to provide updates on progress at least twice a year.