Equality & Diversity Policy

Bramley Parish Council is firmly committed to promoting equality and diversity in all areas of our work.

The overall aim of this policy is to:

Eliminate unlawful discrimination.
Ensure that we treat all individuals fairly, with dignity and respect.
Promote equality of opportunity in all aspects of an individual’s employment including their terms and conditions.
Promote positive action – including recruitment and policy.
Ensure that all potential employees can expect our recruitment processes to be free of all unreasonable barriers.
Promote an environment free of harassment and bullying on any grounds in relation to all staff.
Promote equality of access and where possible make any reasonable adjustments.
Provide a safe, supportive and welcoming environment - for staff, contractors, volunteers and visitors.
Integrate our values into our work.

Implementing the policy

We will do our best to make the policy fully effective by:

Actively promoting it.
Regularly monitoring and reviewing our job selection procedures and criteria and change them if they result in unfair discrimination.
Making sure that all employees and job applicants, contractors and volunteers know about this policy.
Taking appropriate action, using agreed procedures, if any employee breaches this policy.
Providing training and guidance, particularly for line managers, to make sure that they understand this policy and their legal responsibilities.
Monitoring recruitment and employment statistics to identify under-representation, as well as monitoring and impact assessing.

We are committed to providing equal opportunities in employment and demonstrating that we value the diversity of our workforce. To ensure that equality underpins all aspects of our employment policies, procedures and practices, we will:

Do our best not to unfairly discriminate against any job applicant or employee and, when recruiting, only to consider factors which are relevant to someone’s ability to perform the job well
Aim to create a workforce that is as diverse as the community we serve
Do our best to treat all employees and job applicants fairly in relation to all our employment policies and procedures and to meet any reasonable and appropriate additional needs they may have
Value and respect the identities and cultures of our staff, including volunteers and freelancers etc.
Do everything we can to work towards a workplace that is free from discrimination, bullying and harassment and act promptly on any complaints of discrimination, bullying, harassment or victimisation
Provide a safe working environment
Make the workplace, and information about work, as accessible as we can for all our employees
Give our employees clear information about job selection and training and encourage all employees to reach their full potential
Make sure that we work according to the relevant employment legislation and statutory codes of practice.
Apply this policy through the organisation’s recruitment and selection process, training programmes, grievance procedures and all other employment policies.
Do all we can to give employees and job applicants access to complaint procedures if they feel unfairly treated.

Responsibility and liability

Responsibility for implementing the policy:

The Parish Council has the ultimate responsibility for implementing and monitoring this policy, but all employees have a responsibility to work from it in all areas of their work, individually and collectively.

All employees must make sure they do not:

Discriminate against anyone including anyone who is associated with someone who has a protected characteristic e.g. carers.
Persuade or pressure another employee to discriminate harass, bully or abuse other employees or the public for any reason or condone harassment.

If anyone witnesses a discriminatory incident at work, they have a duty of care to others to challenge such behaviour and practice. If necessary, further action can be taken by making a report to the Clerk, any Councillor or the Chairman.

If an employee does not follow these and other requirements of the policy, we will usually deal with it under the Disciplinary Procedure.

Monitoring

Bramley Parish Council will review this policy annually, to ensure it is appropriate and responsive to relevant legislation. Amendments to the policy will be made, where appropriate, in the light of experience or changes in guidance and/or legislation.

This policy will be reviewed annually.

Attachments:
File	Description	File size	Last modified
Equality & Diversity Policy	2019	103 kB	Thu, 16 Jan 2020 16:59:41