Online Equality Impact Assessment on-line training programme and electronic tool
Marshall ACM have been commissioned to develop an exciting new tool to help organisations implement Equality Impact Assessment procedures.
Equality Equality Impact Assessment is the detailed and systematic analysis of the potential or actual effects of a policy, which is carried out in order to establish whether the policy has a differential impact on different groups of people. The aim of Equality Impact Assessment is to eliminate discrimination and produce positive outcomes for equality.
Public sector organisations are required by law to carry out race, disability and gender equality Equality Impact Assessments, but practice is often to cover all six key equality strands.
There is a fairly well established process for Equality Impact Assessment, although the detail will vary slightly from organisation to organisation, and normally managers are given the task of carrying out assessments in relation to the policies for which they are responsible. Therefore the system can be customised for an organisation to ensure existing procedures are not bypassed.
The Marshall ACM Equality Impact Assessment system includes an on-line training programme for managers, and an electronic tool to provide a framework for staff to input information, record decisions and produce reports. As well as providing this framework for individual managers carrying out assessments, the product would also be an electronic Equality Impact Assessment management tool for the organisation.
Organisational Benefits
The training programme and electronic tool will:
- Ensure that staff are confident, competent and committed in relation to IA activity
- Ensure transparency of the IA process
- Ensure consistency of approach, process and reports across the organisation
- Allow ongoing monitoring of progress of individual IAs
- Create central electronic storage capacity for IA-related documents and work
- Facilitate the sharing of information on IA within the organisation
- Facilitate production of high quality IA reports
- Record IA activity and decisions
And most importantly ... deliver positive outcomes for equality.
Key Features
The Training Programme:
- Is based on a 'best practice' approach
- Offers a straightforward explanation of the legal background and the concept, aims and process of Equality Equality Impact Assessment
- Provides practice examples
- Highlights the benefits of comprehensive Equality Impact Assessment, and the dangers of non-compliance
- Outlines staff responsibilities in relation to carrying out IAs
The Electronic Tool:
- Provides a clear, step-by-step electronic framework for those carrying out an Equality Impact Assessment, within which to record issues and decisions, and from which to produce reports
- Covers the six key equality strands: race, gender, disability, sexuality, religion and age
- Includes prompt questions, offers examples and suggests best practice decisions at different stages of assessment
- Includes a 'safety mechanism' which blocks continuation to the next stage of assessment without a comprehensive response
- Provides links to allow completion of an action plan proforma as the assessment progresses
- Offers generation of email up-date reports to the organisation's Equality Impact Assessment Coordinator as each assessment progresses
- Allows controlled access to progress on other Equality Impact Assessments being carried out within the organisation
- Provides organisational storage capacity for equality monitoring information to allow assessors full access to relevant data
- Generates date-driven email prompts for future policy review