Sexual Orientation Elearning Podcast
30th July 2015
Four years ago, Marshall E-Learning’s principal consultants Ann Allcock and Vernal Scott recorded a podcast called ‘Monitoring Sexual Orientation, Religion and Beliefs’. In the podcast, they discussed the issues surrounding the monitoring of the characteristics such as sexual orientation and religion or belief – issues that still pose a challenge for a wide range of organisations today.
Here’s an extract from the podcast, to give you a flavour of what was discussed and how the issues are still relevant today:
‘Organisations seem to be a little unsure on how to proceed around monitoring, particularly around sexual orientation, religion and belief, and transgender issues. This does form part of the public sector equality duty, which organisations will need to collect data relating to those particular profiles.
I understand why people are reluctant to ask questions about it as people may feel like they’re prying into people’s private lives and perhaps what goes on behind closed doors. But, if you look back historically, people used to be sensitive about asking questions about race and disability.
As we’re keen to be good employers, we need to find out who it is we employ and who we are serving, so we need to put the questions we’re asking about sexual orientation and religion or beliefs around this context. The purpose is that we want to improve our services for everyone and specifically for you.’
It seems as though things haven’t changed that much since the podcast was recorded and these issues are still of vital importance to our clients and other organisations.
For example, the discussion echoes this recent article about how robust equality data collection is intrinsic to effective management, where we argued that data collection and analysis should be integral to any medium to large organisation involving people as current or potential employees, service users and customers your people.
Looking back at the issues discussed in the podcast, Vernal Scott – who took part in the podcast – gave us his view on how things have changed since the podcast was recorded:
‘Issues concerning sexuality and religion, respectively, should remain visible and active components within workplace inclusion and diversity initiatives. The purpose for doing so remains unchanged; employers want to attract and retain the best talent from all sections of society, and we also want to ensure that all service users feel genuinely appreciated and valued, regardless of any personal equality or identity characteristic.’
You can listen to the full podcast on the Marshall E-Learning Soundcloud channel, or click play on the podcast below.
How do you feel these issues have changed over recent years? Got an idea for a future Marshall E-Learning podcast that you’d like to listen to? Let us know in the comments below.
