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Single Assessment Framework version

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GO Online: Inspection toolkit

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Workforce equality, diversity and inclusion

Well-led services know the importance of ensuring an inclusive and fair culture applies as much to their own workforce as it does to the people they support.

The following film provides a summary of this area of inspection. It can help you and your teams learn about what will be inspected and what is important to demonstrate to deliver good or outstanding care.

Introducing Workforce equality, diversity and inclusion

Duration 01 min 44 sec

Well-led services know the importance of ensuring an inclusive and fair culture applies as much to their workforce as it does to the people they support.

A diverse workforce can help you to meet the diverse needs of the people you support. All regulated providers should recognise the value of improving the equality and equity of their workforce and continually strive to strengthen it.

Inspection focus may take a closer look at what you are doing around non-discriminatory practice and protecting people’s human rights. The CQC will also be interested in the systems and processes in place to support staff wellbeing, something they will have also touched upon in Caring inspection focus.

Expect interviews to predominantly focus on the staff team themselves, but inspectors will also talk with managers and potentially others who use and engage with your service.

Documented evidence needed might include polices and procedures related to workforce equality, diversity, and inclusion. Inspectors may want to see evidence of fair recruitment practices, reviews you have done into gender pay, how equality and diversity training is embedded across your service etc.

To learn more about how you can meet this area of CQC inspection, take a look at GO Online.

Watch the film here: https://vimeo.com/790357013

Recommendations

These recommendations act as a checklist to what the CQC will be looking for. Skills for Care has reviewed hundreds of inspection reports and identified these recommendations as recurring good practice in providers that meet CQC expectations.

The CQC is non-prescriptive, which means they don’t tell you what must be done in order to meet their Quality Statement. These recommendations are not intended to be a definitive list and some recommendations might not be relevant to your service. We hope they help you reflect on what evidence you might wish to share with the CQC.

Workforce equality, diversity and inclusion

  • Our managers and leaders are committed to ensuring there is ownership and action taken to ensure we are an equal, diverse, and inclusive organisation that is free from bias.
  • We can evidence that we have a fair and inclusive culture that promotes equality of opportunity and anti-discriminatory practice across all protected characteristics.
  • We ensure that values related to equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) is central our internal and external recruitment and development opportunities across all levels of our organisation.
  • We are committed to protecting staff from bullying and harassment, and ensuring how we support the human rights of our workforce complies with the Equality Act 2010.
  • We are committed to ensuring EDI applies to all our workers and involve them in practical ways to strengthen this further (e.g., strategy development, review of values, staff feedback, surveys etc.).
  • Our staff team reflects the diversity and diverse needs of the people we support. We value, understand and respect different cultures across our workforce.
  • Our leaders and managers make reasonable adjustments to support disabled staff to carry out their roles well.
  • We expect workforce is treated with fairness and respect from the people they support, their families and friends. We address issues where this is not the case at the earliest opportunity.
  • We can evidence how EDI enables us to provide higher levels of care to the people we support, including testimonials and documented examples.
  • Our managers and leaders are working towards implementing specific EDI objectives. We can evidence what these are and our progress towards achieving them.
  • We have clear roles and responsibilities in relation to supporting EDI. This is an important responsibility for all our workforce, but we additionally have specialist roles (e.g., EDI champion).
  • We provide specialist training (e.g., EDI awareness, cultural competency, anti-racism training etc.) to support to our managers and staff teams and help strengthen their understanding.
  • We regularly discuss and review feedback from our workforce to inform how we can further strengthen EDI at our service. This includes the use of 1-2-1 discussions, team meetings, and surveys.
  • We are actively involved in promoting EDI at a local, regional and/or national level.
  • We work in partnership with other organisations to challenge inequalities and promote better EDI in our sector.
  • We have documented evidence of our EDI related activity to support the workforce in our policy and procedures, staff development and support.

Developed in partnership with

Skills for Care Ltd, West Gate, Grace Street, Leeds, LS1 2RP. Registered company no. 3866683. Registered in England charity no. 1079836.
Group VAT no. 135 538313.

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