Keep score and help to ensure fair play

The patient experience and improving outcomes are central to the strategy, says associate director of nursing Liz Taylor

Having a robust approach to equality and diversity is a good thing – but how do you know if your policy is making a difference?

In 2012, Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust launched a ‘workforce diversity scorecard’. Part of the trust’s new equality standard, the scorecard uses data to track the effects of key employment issues – such as recruitment and selection, bullying and harassment, and disciplinary procedures – across the nine protected characteristics of the workforce, including ethnicity.

‘Detailed analysis of the data means we can identify any groups that are over or under-represented,’ explains trust equality and diversity lead Ricky Somal. ‘It is important to be able to measure the programme and demonstrate its effect.’

With a staff of around 7,000, the trust is one