EDI CASE STUDIES

Background:

We’re the largest provider of housing and community services in our region. We have one promise: everything we do is put back into local communities.

These are mainly based in North Lincolnshire, although we also have an increasing number in neighbouring areas too, such as Lincolnshire and South Yorkshire.

Along with homes to rent, we also provide shared ownership, rent to buy and outright sale options, along with retirement living and support services to help our tenants live successfully and independently within their home.

We are a not-for-profit organisation, which means any income we receive, which is mainly rent, is reinvested back into providing services such as employment support, helping hundreds of people each year into work.

We also have community hubs and initiatives to support tenants with finances, their neighbourhood and creating truly vibrant communities

The Aims:

• Identify our areas of weakness in respect of FREDIE (Fairness, Respect, Equality, Diversity, Inclusion and Engagement) and focus on those areas of improvement by putting in place objectives and targets to ensure we continue to improve
• To have a better understanding of our customer base and our culture internally to ensure we are representative of the communities in which we serve
• To create a more inclusive culture at all levels within the organisation (staff, leadership and Board)
  
  

What commitment have they shown?

We have published a new Board Commitment Statement and Objectives Roadmap, which is updated regularly to show improvement and achievement.

We are required to publish a Gender Pay Gap report annually, which we do but we have gone beyond that and now have our Race Pay Gap report for 2021 and will soon have our new Disability Pay Gap report too.

More information on these can be found here – www.ongo.co.uk/edi

Business Impact

Going through this process has brought the importance of FREDIE to the forefront of everybody’s minds (right throughout the organisation with involvement from Board, Leadership Team, Colleagues, Customers and Partners), reinforcing the importance of work that has already been done, and work still left to do to make further improvements.

People are much more confident and comfortable in speaking up when it comes to important topics such as race, disability, sexual orientation, female safety and more, where previously may have been considered as ‘taboo’. Conversations are now routine, being considered as safe, valuable and making a difference.

We have recently had huge success with a Disability Forum, which provided an opportunity for people to learn more about different types of disability and for those  affected by a disability to talk about how it impacts them at work, and what changes can be made. Outcomes include a commissioned review of disability in the workplace.

We now publish race and disability pay gap information as well as gender pay gap.

Bullying and harassment survey to be going out mid-March as a result of feedback from the LiD survey to help us understand what themes there are and what we can implement to address issues.