Share your views in the Stonewall Workplace Equality Index
Monday, 14 October 2019
Have you completed the Stonewall Workplace Equality survey yet?
As a Stonewall Diversity Champion and a Stonewall Top 100 Employer, we are committed to ensuring that the University is an inclusive environment for lesbian gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) colleagues and students.
We are once again taking part in the Stonewall Workplace Equality Index, which helps us track progress made over the past year on promoting LGBT equality at the University and helps identify areas that can be further improved.
You are invited to complete a short online survey that can be found here as a part of the Index. Although focused on LGBT equality, all colleagues are invited to take part. The survey provides us with a ‘temperature check' of the attitudes and opinions towards LGBT inclusion at the University.
To complete the survey, you will need to enter our organisation name and access code:
Organisation: University of Reading
Access code: 1697
The survey should take approximately 5 minutes to complete and the closing date is 1 November 2019.
Why is the Index important?
The Index provides us with an opportunity to demonstrate and review the progress we have made over the past 12 months. The survey forms an important part of our performance review - we can measure our actions against feedback from colleagues and use recurring themes or trends to influence our practices in the future.
Please be assured that all responses to the survey are anonymous and confidential.
Our targets and progress to date
In February 2016, we announced that Reading aims to become a Stonewall ‘Top 50' employer by 2020. We are currently ranked 80 out of the 445 employers that applied for this scheme. We are now a Stonewall Top 100 Employer. This is a major improvement on 2016 when we were ranked 204 out of 415 employers.
Over the last 12 months, we have continued to work in partnership with RUSU and our LGBT+ staff network to progress our plans for enhancing LGBT equality and inclusion across the University. Highlights have included:
- Our third Wolfenden Lecture in May given by Jake and Hannah Graf, entitled "OUR TRANS LIVES: life, love and Lorraine".
- joint events with RUSU to mark International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia
- recruitment of visible LGBT Allies across the University, including LGBT Ally recruitment events led by the LGBT Plus staff network, RUSU, Parveen Yaqoob, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and Innovation (the University Executive Board's LGBT+ Champion) and Simon Chandler-Wilde, Dean for Diversity and Inclusion
- support for 8 places on the Stonewall LGBT Role Models programme and 2 places for the LGBT+ Leadership Programme.
- our participation in Reading Pride 2019
If you have any questions about the University's participation in the Workplace Equality Index, please contact Simon Chandler-Wilde, Dean for Diversity and Inclusion.