Employee passport: equality impact assessment
This is an Equality Impact Assessment which was undertaken at the start of the project to develop and implement an Employee Passport for core Scottish Government staff. The passport provides a framework for discussing support needs with a direct link to support.
Stage 4: Decision making and monitoring
Identifying and establishing any required mitigating action
Have positive or negative impacts been identified for any of the equality groups?
The underlying aim of the passport is to promote inclusion. Only positive impacts have been identified.
Is the policy directly or indirectly discriminatory under the Equality Act 2010?
There is no evidence that the policy is directly or indirectly discriminatory under the Equality Act 2010.
If the policy is indirectly discriminatory, how is it justified under the relevant legislation?
N/A
If not justified, what mitigating action will be undertaken?
N/A
Describing how Equality Impact analysis has shaped the policy making process. In this section, set out a narrative that describes how the equality impact analysis has shaped and informed your policy development.
At a very early stage the EQIA helped to identify where we had tangible evidence and where there were evidence gaps. There were so many evidence gaps that the only way to plug the hole was to develop a communications and engagement strategy for developing and testing the passport as a co-production.
We set up a Quality Assurance Group made up of a number of staff networks and the unions who developed the passport. In tandem, we presented the passport to staff networks to gauge opinion, increase awareness and seek volunteers. We had 100 volunteers and their line mangers in the trial and the results were really positive.
| 1) Was using the passport a positive experience? | Yes - 82% | Yes - 80% |
|---|---|---|
| No – 4% | No – 7% | |
| 2) Did you find the passport an effective tool for discussing and recording workplace adjustments? | Yes – 94% | Yes – 80% |
| No – 0% | No – 7% | |
| 3) Would you recommend the Employee Passport to colleagues? | Yes – 93% | Yes – 79% |
| No – 0% | No – 10% |
Guidance was produced in accessible formats and included a video for the Q+A. We also produced a magazine to better engage potential users.
To ensure we had robust, useable feedback we employed the services of the CAST team.
The Storm ID report provided extremely useful evidence about the experience of recruitment, retention and progression of disabled colleagues. It set out the negative impacts experienced by some staff and the difficulties experienced as a result of a lack of clear process, roles and responsibilities between different teams in SG. There is significant evidence within this research in support of a passport. However, many characteristics are obviously not covered.
The EQIA has emphasised the importance of the Communications and Engagement Strategy and highlighted 15 areas (on page 3) which might undermine the passport . The EQIA also identified a huge source of evidence – the experience of the review of the workplace adjustments service - which fed into this EQIA and the passport design.
In summary, the EQIA has shaped the passport project in the following ways:
- The need to base every aspect of the passport on evidence.
- It highlighted the importance of the Communications and Engagement Strategy and the evidence gathered by the review of the workplace adjustments service.
- The need to build in continuous improvement
Monitoring and Review
Feedback for continuous improvement has been built into the passport by:
- Soliciting feedback from all passports and passport queries submitted via HR online on iFix.
- Ongoing engagement with passport users, and engagement with organisations such as Inclusion Scotland who have been using employee passports for some time.
- A follow-up conversation, one year later, being built into the process for anyone submitting part 2 of the passport to the workplace adjustments team
Contact
There is a problem
Thanks for your feedback