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Race equality impact assessments

  1. What are race equality impact assessments?
  2. When to conduct a race equality impact assessment
  3. Screening employment processes
  4. Conducting a race equality impact assessment
  5. Benchmark data
  6. Benchmark data evidence analysis
  7. Racial discrimination or alternative explanation
  8. Identifying disparities
  9. Continuous disadvantage – trade union response
  10. Eliminating and reducing adverse impact
  11. Consultation and monitoring
  12. Publishing race equality impact assessments results
  13. Decide whether or not to adopt policy – negotiating point
  14. Challenging race equality impact assessment

1. What are race equality impact assessments?

A race equality impact assessment is an equality monitoring tool that is used to

  • promote equality of opportunity
  • assist employers identify policies that can result in racial disparities and unlawful race discrimination
  • monitor employment policies/ decision making processes for
  • adverse impact
  • assist trade unions and employers to provide solution with a view to eliminating unlawful racial discrimination, promoting race equality by reducing the incidence of racial disparities
  • ensure that in the development of policies implications for race equality have been thoroughly assessed. This will entail consulting all relevant stakeholders.

2. When to conduct a race equality impact assessment

Race equality impact assessments should be conducted when

  • existing policies/procedures are being reviewed or updated
  • new policies/procedures are to be introduced
  • selected policies need to be screened and assessed for the possibility of disproportionate adverse impact.

3. Screening employment processes

The screening process necessitates the listing of all employment policies that could result in differences in terms of those receiving a benefit or alternatively suffering a detriment.

As a rule of thumb, include all policies/procedures, until it can be proved that there are no differences in outcomes between racial groups.

Assessment

For each policy under scrutiny answer the following questions:

  • Do policies achieve stated objectives?
  • Do statistics indicate any disparities?

Generally, unless the answer is yes to the first question and no to the second question a race equality impact assessment should be conducted.

4. Conducting a race equality impact assessment

Assess whether the stated policy/procedure objectives are being met. Identify/ascertain

  • who is intended to benefit from policy and how?
  • whether all racial groups equally benefit from policy or decision making processes in terms of outcomes?
  • how proposed policy/procedure operates and who has overall responsibility for monitoring the outcomes of the policy
  • what criteria is used to evaluate equality of outcomes

5. Benchmark data

In order to measure progress it is important to establish with management an agreed baseline. It is therefore important to have contemporary and reliable information about the different groups the policy is likely to impact on. Data can be ascertained from

  • Employment equality data
  • Demographic data and census findings (available from Office of National Statistics)
  • Labour Force Data statistics

6. Benchmark data evidence analysis

(i) Where disparities exist it is important to identify information needed to develop an effective and positive remedial policy to address identified disparities.

(ii) Negotiators/reps need to agree with
employer:

  • When to consult disadvantaged groups
  • What quantitative and qualitative information is available from both internal and external sources, eg, staff statistics, trade unions, staff satisfaction surveys, public surveys, focus groups.
  • Whether supplementary information will be necessary [eg additional research, specially commissioned qualitative or quantitative surveys, consultation exercises]
  • Who will have responsibility for pulling together all the data and analysing and reporting on the findings.

7. Racial discrimination or alternative explanation

Where a policy results in adverse impact in certain limited circumstances factors other than race may explain the adverse impact For example, local labour market demographics may indicate a large number of Chinese people in the locality, but the employment statistics of an organisation may not proportionately reflect the local demographics. In these circumstances an investigation should be undertaken to ascertain the reasons for this deficit.

An investigation may reveal that the absence of Chinese employees is because they are new migrants. Immigration rules may mean they are not be eligible to work beyond the conditions contained in work permits. Whatever explanation is found, Chinese community should be consulted and if present the local Race Equality Council or the CRE and a report reflecting the findings should be published as part of the race equality impact assessment report.

A watching brief should be kept on the situation, as immigration rules and associated conditions contained within work permits also change. If an alternative explanation other than race is identified, it is important that the explanation can be justified in law.

Where a reasonable explanation cannot be found, then remedial work needs to take place to rectify the position [eg targeted recruitment campaigns]

Trade union reps/negotiators should then seek to negotiate positive changes with the employer.

8. Identifying disparities

Obtaining data

Under the amended Race Relations Act 1976 most public authorities are legally obliged to compile monitoring statistics covering the above areas of employment. There is a legal requirement that statistics should be recorded annually and are easily accessible.

Employment policies and practices

Below are some employment policies where an analysis of data often produces disparities The bullet points give a brief indication how to discover disparities:

Recruitment policies

  • what is the existing profile of staff by ethnicity or grade
  • do existing staff reflect the local population?

Performance assessment procedures

Appraisal box markings are supposed to objectively assess strengths and weaknesses of a post holder’s performance over a given period of time. In many instances, bonuses are attached to box marking awards.

An analysis of most government department appraisal systems will show that there are disparities in terms of outcomes in terms of box marking allocations.

A Cabinet Office/IES research study undertaken in 2003 indicated that one of the groups of people that are likely to fare worse as a result of appraisal box marking awards are those members of staff from African, Asian, Caribbean, etc, backgrounds.

These disparities indicated the existence of unlawful discrimination. Where appraisal systems are linked to pay systems or promotion systems this can compound issues of discrimination. This means that statistics pertaining to performance assessments procedures should be analysed and subjected to a race equality impact where disparities in outcomes continue.

  • Is there an equal spread across grades of box marks allocations of staff receiving top marks
  • If bonuses/recommendations for promotion are linked to appraisal outcomes is there an equal spread amongst those receiving bonuses or achieving promotability recommendations

Training Policies/procedures

  • Does an analysis of statistics reveal any disparities by race in terms of staff applying for and accessing training?
  • is access to training to open and transparent
  • are there any barriers that prevent staff for applying for training? Can barriers be legally justified?

Promotion

  • By ethnicity and grade, are there disparities in terms of how long staff remain in the same grade?
  • By ethnicity and grade, what is the racial make up of staff at the more senior levels of the organisation?

Grievance procedures

By ethnicity does an analysis of statistics reveal disparities in terms of the ethnicity of staff being involved in grievance procedures?

Disciplinary Procedures

Does an analysis of statistics reveal disparities in terms of race by staff being involved in disciplinary procedures?

Termination of employment, including redundancy

Does an analysis of statistics reveal disparities in terms of race by staff leaving employment?

What are the given reasons for leaving the organisation?

9. Continuous disadvantage – trade union response

Departments are required to update Race Equality Schemes every three years. After acquiring monitoring details from the employer it would be sensible to analyse monitoring figures obtained from race equality schemes. These statistics along with any other supplementary information will form the basis of negotiations for improvement to eliminate or reduce disparities.

When presented with report from the trade union side the very least an employer is obliged to do is to show that they have:

  • Recognised the outcome of a policy results in adverse impact
  • Explored alternative measures to eliminate or reduce the adverse impact.

10. Eliminating and reducing adverse impact

The method or solution to elimination/reduction of adverse impact will vary according to circumstances and policy/procedure under consideration. The solutions are varied and could include:

  • total revision of policy/procedure
  • introducing a flat rate under pinning minimum on wage increases
  • shortening of scales
  • redeployment
  • introduction of positive action schemes
  • breaking the link between appraisal box markings and payment of bonuses or recommendation for promotion

11. Consultation and monitoring

(i) Disadvantaged stakeholders affected policies/procedures should be consulted regularly with a view to identifying solutions and reaching agreement as to what criteria should be used to measure progress..

(ii) In terms of monitoring, agreement will have to be reached with the employer as to:

  • What monitoring data needs to be collected
  • How will success or failure be measured
  • How the data will be collected and analysed
  • How often will the data be analysed and published
  • How will consultation results be publicised
  • Who will have overall responsibility for ensuring monitoring takes place
  • How often will monitoring results be analysed within an annual period
  • How will the employer act and improve on the data analysed

12. Publishing race equality impact assessments results

The results of the race equality impact assessment should be recorded in an impact assessment report. The report should include:

  • Monitoring data
  • Research findings
  • Results of consultations
  • Explanations as to why each conclusion and or recommendation was reached
  • The implementation of a pilot study to test the revised policy/procedure
  • An explanation as to how proposed policy will be implemented and monitored – including any suggestions for re/training, redeployment, etc.

13. Decide whether or not to adopt policy – negotiating point

Under the amended Race Relations Act 1976, PCS as an independent trade union, has certain legal obligations to ensure that it does not agree to adopt policies that are known to discriminate on racial grounds – especially where:

(i) the discriminatory elements have been drawn to the employers attention

(ii) the employer has not made any positive and effective measures to eliminate or reduce discriminatory impact of policy/procedure.
(iii) To assist in the decision making process as to whether or not a policy should be adopted following factors need to be considered:

  • Aims of the policy
  • Evidence collected regarding the potential impact of the policy
  • Results of consultations, research studies, surveys, etc
  • The existence of alternative approaches – including their relative merits [ie is there an alternative method of achieving policy objectives that eliminates and/or reduces the incidence of adverse impact]
  • For the purposes of the production of a race equality impact assessment report how will the decision to adopt the policy be recorded, for example whether policy/procedure was agreed by union.

14. Challenging race equality impact assessment

Where there is evidence that policies or procedures will result in adverse impact [ie in/direct discrimination on any racial group and the employer:

  • refuses to release equality monitoring data
  • refuses to acknowledge results of race equality impact assessments
  • conducts inappropriate race equality impact assessments [eg, conducts a national REIAs and applies results to a local /regional situation]
  • refuses to conduct a race equality impact assessment
  • refuses to recognise there are alternative measures that can be adopted to eliminate or effectively reduce incidence of adverse impact

Contact the equality department for further advice.

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