How to make sure you're following the Equality Act 2010 with DE&I surveys

If you’re an HR professional coordinating a DE&I strategy, following the Equality Act 2010 is essential. This article will clarify what the Equality Act 2010 is, what protected characteristics are and what DE&I is. We’ll also explain which types of DE&I surveys will help you to collect this kind of employee data. 

You’ll find out how to use them to build a narrative for a DE&I report, which you can then publish on behalf of your company. Finally, we’ll look at how you can use SurveyMonkey template surveys to gather employee data and identify strengths and weaknesses in your DE&I strategy.

The Equality Act 2010 outlines the 9 different protected characteristics in the UK, and how employers are required by law to protect employees against discriminatory harassment, bullying, and preferential treatment.

The Equality Act 2010 comprises what are known as the 9 protected characteristics. The UK government explains that these characteristics are:

These characteristics are protected, which means you’re protected from discrimination in the workplace if you have one or more. There are different types of discrimination as shown below:

What does discrimination look like? Let’s look at some examples  of the actions above.

Direct discrimination could be refusing to offer a woman a pay rise because her manager thinks she is likely to get pregnant soon. 

Indirect discrimination could look like an employer who is strict about getting to work on time, even for disabled employees or parents who have childcare responsibilities.

Harassment could be making derogatory jokes or comments about other employees behind their back, or about customers.

Victimisation could be refusing to pay someone because they’ve raised a complaint about racial discrimination in the workplace.

As an HR team, you’ll be making sure that businesses stay compliant with the Equality Act 2010. That’s because the Act legally protects employees from discrimination, harassment and bullying. 

Because of this, employees are entitled to make a complaint about their employer if they think they’re not following the Act. This could result in a tribunal – if an employee wins, then their employer will usually have to pay them some compensation and take steps to reduce discrimination against them.

There are plenty of ways to help your business stay compliant with the Equality Act 2010. In these next sections, we’ll look at some ways HR teams can closely monitor their company’s DE&I strategy, actions and targets.

HR professionals are typically responsible for DE&I when it comes to:

As you can see, HR teams are responsible for a broad range of diversity and inclusion projects. One of the best ways to ensure you’re following DE&I targets is to collect data on diversity in the workplace from your company’s employees. By doing so, you can learn a lot about what your company is doing well, as well as some of its weak points.

There are a few different ways to collect data on diversity in the workplace. You’ll probably be looking to gather quantitative data to make sure that your company is meeting diversity and inclusion recruitment quotas. By looking at how diverse your company’s talent pool is, you can identify whether you are hiring a broad range of candidates with protected characteristics. 

You can usually start by asking employees to fill out a checkbox survey to see how many protected characteristics they identify with. You could also use a Likert scale survey to find out how much they agree or disagree with statements – on a scale of 1 to 10 – regarding your company’s approach to diversity and inclusion. 

HR teams also may see benefits in gathering qualitative data. Here, this involves finding out the thoughts and feelings of employees when it comes to diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Ask open-ended questions which allow them to reveal their own opinions. 

Another way to collect diversity data can be to find out more about employee socioeconomic status. While socioeconomic background isn’t a protected characteristic, employees from disadvantaged economic backgrounds can also benefit from DE&I initiatives such as coaching and skills training.

Before you collect information on protected characteristics, employees have to provide their consent to you. If they give their permission, you’ll need to be able to store it safely so it can’t be leaked.

If you want to collect this data, it can be a great idea to provide good reasons for using it. This could be improving access to company training, flexible working opportunities and the right accommodations. 

Diversity data can also be used to identify strengths and weaknesses in your business’s DE&I strategy. By looking at how positively employees feel about your DE&I strategy, you can identify areas for improvement. You can also identify what is working well. 

You might be able to compare your company’s diversity data with that of the local area you’re based in. By seeing how the data compares, you can see whether your talent pools are reflective of those in the local area. If they aren’t, then your business might be under-representing certain groups local to them.

You can also use the data to look at diversity trends in the business. This could be whether your business is making improvements to diversity and inclusion over time, as well as whether there are some areas which consistently need improvement.     

You can use data to see whether you’re meeting your DE&I targets. But it can be useful to make sure your targets are helping first.

Consider asking your employees about whether you think your DE&I targets are working. Asking a wide range of employees with protected characteristics could help you to get a good overall picture here. 

You could also put together diversity and inclusion employee resource groups to help advise you and provide a knowledge-base on workplace accommodations and inclusive corporate messaging. That way, your targets are carefully informed by the people who have in-depth knowledge and life experience of shared protected characteristics. 

Use a goal-setting framework such as SMART goals. These goals help you set specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound targets. This can be useful in the case of DE&I target. The SMART framework can help you make long-term, systemic improvements throughout your organisation. You can use diversity data to help measure how effectively you’re meeting your goals. 

At SurveyMonkey, we have plenty of surveys which can help you meet your DE&I targets. Let’s look at a few of the best options:

Let’s start with our inclusion survey template. This survey helps you to look beyond inclusivity demographics and provides you with the tools to uncover what makes a truly diverse culture. 

Our survey is based on the Stanford University’s three key aspects of inclusion: growth mindset, belonging and objectivity. Using this survey, we can help you find out what drives inclusion and whether you’re fostering a culture based on these criteria.

Our gender in the workplace survey can help you find out how well your organisation is doing when it comes to gender diversity. While businesses say that they are prioritising the advancement of women in the workplace, we found that there’s more work to be done to support women at every level. 

This template helps you discover your employee’s opinions on:

When it comes to gender inclusivity, it can also be a great idea to analyse your company’s wage gap. A wage gap can happen when some people aren’t compensated at the same level as their colleagues, based on characteristics like their gender or race. 

With this survey template, you can find out whether employees think they’re being paid fairly. You can also find out about promotional opportunities and demography.

A ‘culture of genius’ is a workplace culture which fosters the idea that some people just innately have more skills than others. This is contrasted with a ‘growth mindset’ workplace, which instils the idea that people can grow in their skills and mindset. A growth mindset workplace is inclusive in that it can help you tap into hidden employee potential. Our culture of genius survey asks employees and candidates:

You can use the survey yourself as an employer, or use the template to send out to employees.

For businesses looking to create an inclusive and diverse workplace culture, following the Equality Act 2010 is key. Not only does it provide you with guidelines to making workplaces inclusive, it’s also a law you have to stay compliant with. With SurveyMonkey’s range of DE&I survey tools, you can make sure you’re hitting your targets while also learning about your employees along the way. Reach your DE&I targets today with our surveys.