Our guiding principles

We want to ensure that we recognise each person’s unique perspectives when we work together, and treat each other with kindness. We aim to be a place where everyone feels able to bring their whole selves to work, and everyone’s expertise is appreciated.

Our values

Our work is guided by the values of the Trust: kind, collaborative, aspirational, expert.

Public Sector Equality Duty

As a public body, we are governed by the Equality Act 2010. The Act contains nine protected characteristics, which cannot be used as a reason to treat someone unfairly:

• Age
• Disability
• Gender reassignment (whether or not someone is transgender)
• Marriage or civil partnership (including same-gender marriage)
• Pregnancy and maternity/paternity
• Race or ethnicity
• Religion or belief
• Sex or gender
• Sexual orientation

The Act also defines what is called the public sector equality duty, which asks us to think about how we can accommodate and support people who are disadvantaged or suffer inequality when we do our work. The EDI team work to ensure that the Trust is abiding by the Equality Act and looking towards a diverse and inclusive workforce where everyone is able to reach their full potential, with clear representation in our leadership. It’s also part of the public sector equality duty that we report on how we’ve complied with the duty; you can find out more about this in Our Commitments section or by looking at our past reports.

EQIA

Equality impact assessments, or EQIAs, are a way of looking at our policies to ensure we are not discriminating against anyone on the basis of their protected characteristics. If the assessment shows that there may be an adverse effect on a particular group, it’s important to consider how this effect could be reduced or eliminated. All policies must go through an EQIA, and we work closely with our staff networks and the Partnership Committee to get the benefit of a range of experiences.

What we’ve committed to

We’re committed to monitoring and improving diversity within the Trust by launching a divisional and directorate-level diversity dashboard to guide areas for improvement. We are also looking to redesign our people management processes, practice and policy to create a fairer and more inclusive place to work. We also produce an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) report on an annual basis that covers our commitment to reporting on the Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES), Workforce Disability Equality Standard (WDES), our Gender Pay Gap report and our scores against the Equality Delivery System 2 (EDS2).

Reporting on EDI

Please see our Publications page for our past annual EDI Reports.