Workforce & equality

Overview

Shropshire Community Health NHS Trust is an equal opportunities employer and as such promises efficient, effective, fair and consistent recruitment and selection practices for all staff. It is our Policy to recruit the best person for each vacancy regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, marriage and civil partnership.

The Trust is committed to eliminating all forms of discrimination and to the equal treatment of all employees and job applicants, and requires all staff to abide by this principle. It is the duty of all employees to accept their personal responsibility for the practical application of the policy, but the Trust acknowledges that specific responsibilities fall upon management, supervisors and individuals involved in recruitment.

The Trust believes that people should be valued as individuals and is committed to all employees being able to achieve their full potential in an environment characterised by dignity and mutual respect and where individual differences and contributions of staff are recognised and valued.

The Trust is committed to the promotion of equal opportunities and building equality and diversity into its policies, procedures and practices. It will keep under review its policies, procedures and practices to ensure that people are not disadvantaged.

The Trust recognises that equality in the workplace cannot be achieved through an Equal Opportunities Policy alone. The policy forms the core statement of the Trust’s philosophy and underpins commitments to achieve equality and fairness at work and other relevant policies are in place to support this policy.

Workforce profile

The workforce composition provides an overview of staff employed by Shropshire Community Health NHS Trust.

This information has been extracted from the Trust Electronic Staff Record System.

The information found here is likely to change over time, so please be mindful that this is a living document and the data is only correct at the time of publication.

Workforce Race Equality Standard

The NHS Equality and Diversity Council has announced a series of measures, which commenced in April 2015, to be taken across the NHS to ensure employees from black and ethnic minority (BME) backgrounds have equal access to career opportunities and receive fair treatment in the workplace. This follows recent reports which have highlighted disparities in the number of BME people in senior leadership positions across the NHS, as well as lower levels of wellbeing amongst the BME population.

The Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES) is one of these measures. It requires Trusts to demonstrate progress against a number of indicators of workforce equality, including a specific indicator to address the low levels of Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) Board representation. The standard will highlight any differences between the experience and treatment of White staff and BME staff in the NHS with a view to closing those metrics.

Our metrics for this reporting year can be seen in the ‘Related documents’.

Workforce Disability Equality Standard

What is the Workforce Disability Equality Standard?

The Workforce Disability Equality Standard (WDES) is a set of ten specific measures (Metrics) that will enable us to compare the experiences of Disabled and non-disabled staff. We have used the Metrics data and local data to develop a local action plan.

The WDES has been commissioned by the Equality and Diversity Council (EDC) and developed through a pilot and extensive engagement with NHS Trusts and key stakeholders. It is mandated through the NHS Standard Contract and is restricted to NHS Trusts and Foundation Trusts for the first two years of implementation.

Our metrics for this reporting year can be seen in the ‘useful downloads’ above, as well as at the end of this section.

Making a difference for disabled staff

The WDES is important, because research shows that a motivated, included and valued workforce helps to deliver high quality patient care, increased patient satisfaction and improved patient safety.

The implementation of the WDES will enable us to better understand the experiences of our Disabled staff. It will support positive change for existing employees and enable a more inclusive environment for Disabled people working in the NHS.

Disability Confident Scheme

Shropshire Community Health NHS Trust holds the Disability Confident Employer level which recognises the Trust’s commitment to good practice in employing and developing disabled people. The Department for Work and Pensions is responsible for the scheme, and it is similar to the old 'two ticks' symbol. The new scheme has been developed by employers and disabled people’s representatives to make sure it is rigorous but easily accessible.

There are 3 levels designed to support employers on their Disability Confident journey:

• Disability Confident Committed
  
• Disability Confident Employer
  
• Disability Confident Leader
  

By achieving the Disability Confident Employer level we have demonstrated that we are committed to and undertaking the following:

Theme 1 – Getting the right people for our business

• Actively looking to attract and recruit disabled people
  
• Providing a fully inclusive and accessible recruitment process
  
• Offering an interview to disabled people who meet the minimum criteria for the job
  
• Flexible when assessing people so disabled job applicants have the best opportunity to demonstrate that they can do the job.
  
• Making reasonable adjustments as required
  
• Ensuring employees have sufficient disability equality awareness
  

Theme 2 – Keeping and developing your people

• Promoting a culture of being Disability Confident
  
• Supporting employees to manage their disabilities or health conditions
  
• Ensuring there are no barriers to the development and progression of disabled staff
  
• Ensuring managers are aware of how they can support staff who are sick or absent from work
  
• Valuing and listening to feedback from disabled staff
  
• Reviewing this Disability Confident Employer self-assessment
  

If you would like further information in relation to the above please contact the HR Team on Telephone number 01743 277651.

Gender Pay Reporting

The Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties and Public Authorities) Regulations 2017 set out a public authority’s gender pay gap reporting duties, which form part of its public sector equality duty under the Equality Act.

These duties mean that we are obliged to publish information about the gender split of our workforce, the differences in mean and median hourly pay rates between genders, the gender profile of the organization split into quartiles, and the differences in bonus pay between genders. The data has to be published, for this year, by 30 March 2023 and is at a snapshot date of 31 March 2022.

We are required to publish the information on the Gov.uk website – which only enables us to publish the statistical information. We are also required to publish the information on our own webpages, and here we can add a narrative to describe the statistical information. Our Gender Pay reporting statistics and narrative can be seen in the ‘useful downloads’ above.

What is the difference between equal pay and the gender pay gap?

The gender pay gap differs from equal pay.

Equal pay deals with the pay differences between men and women who carry out the same jobs, similar jobs or work of equal value. It looks at individuals. It is unlawful to pay people unequally because they are a man or a woman. Because the NHS uses structured national pay frameworks, it is unlikely that we will identify any equal pay issues.

The gender pay gap shows the differences in the average pay between men and women. If a workplace has a particularly high gender pay gap, this can indicate there may be a number of issues to deal with, and the individual calculations may help to identify what those issues are. It may be that there is an uneven distribution of genders at different levels of the organisation.