Making equality and diversity a reality
To serve society better, we must reflect it more. That’s why equality and diversity lie at the forefront of our agenda here at the Audit Commission. In fact we’ve developed all of our employee communications under the brand ‘Everybody Counts’ to sum up our feelings: each and every person here at the Commission is vital to our work in improving public services for the whole community. From our advertising, to our website, to our internal conference and publications, we make sure this message comes across loud and clear.
Though we still have work to do to achieve our aim of truly representing the society we serve, we’re actively encouraging people from every background to consider a career with us, demystifying just what it is we do, and showing the humanity behind the numbers involved in our audit work.
Over the following pages we’ll explain our position on a number of equality and diversity issues, and how we’re working to make our organisation - and the UK as a whole - a place where difference is celebrated and everyone’s contribution is valued.
First of all, we’d like to define exactly what we mean by ‘equality’ and ‘diversity’. Many people are familiar with these terms, but to clarify, by ‘equality’ we mean treating people fairly, and by ‘diversity’ we mean valuing people’s differences.
Though comprehensive laws exist to stop inequalities occurring because of race, gender or disability, less wide-ranging legislation covers age, sexuality and religion/belief. We believe it’s essential to eliminate discrimination across all areas if we’re to achieve our aims, and do more than simply comply with legislation. We want to be pioneering and offer a role model for other organisations.
We’ve already made substantial progress in putting equality and diversity at the heart of our own organisation and in making positive changes through the work we do with public organisations.
However, we still have much to do, whether we’re setting internal standards or inspiring others to create more productive, inclusive workplaces.
These pages explain how we’re acting positively to embrace diversity and promote equality in all we do, explaining what we’ve done so far, how well our plans have worked and how we hope to improve in the future.
Download a copy of our Diversity Scheme 2006-9 (PDF document, 2Mb)