21 February 2011

Stonewall Index Results

The University of Sheffield is proud to be included in the latest Stonewall Workplace Equality Index – which is the definitive national benchmarking exercise for showcasing Britain’s top employers for lesbian, gay and bisexual staff.

The index challenges employers, diversity leaders and sector competitors, to ensure their workplace is inclusive for lesbian, gay and bi-sexual staff. It also provides a model of good practice for improvement, to demonstrate how efforts to support theseLGB staff have a lasting impact on their workplace. By participating in the index we are able to benchmark ourselves against nearly 400 organisations across all sectors (the largest employers’ forum in the country) to improve our workplace for our LGB colleagues.

Employers have responded to this challenge in greater numbers and to higher standards than ever before and the results have positioned us in the top 11 University employers and the top 40% overall of all employers. This is a very competitive performance for our first entry into the index.

The University of Sheffield includes Trans as part of its’ work in this area, and we have done much to strengthen our Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual and Trans (LGBT) strategy as part of our overall commitment to diversity.

• Staff can now update their equality monitoring information in myJob and we have extended the information gathered to all equality characteristics, including age, disability, ethnic origin, gender and gender reassignment, religion or belief and sexual orientation www.shef.ac.uk/hr/equality/focus/monitoring. All staff are encouraged to take a few minutes to update their myJob details: by considering our workforce profile, we are able to reflect on our services, ensure we are getting things right in our policies, identify any gaps for particular groups and develop targeted initiatives.
• The newly established Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender staff network is going strong and provides support, advice, networking and development for our LGBT staff www.shef.ac.uk/hr/equality/involved/lgbtnetwork.
• We are also part of a city-wide group of Sheffield Employers and community groups that focuses on LGBT equality and enables engagement with the wider community, and the Russell Group LGBT forum which aims to share best practice between Universities.