Harvest are committed to treating everyone fairly and equally when offering our homes, services, employment and contracts. We will ensure that no one is treated less favourably for any reason.
We do not discriminate unlawfully against groups or individuals.
We will challenge stereotyping and provide equality and diversity by:
• being aware of the range of cultures in our communities and the benefits gained from achieving equality and diversity in all areas
• researching and meeting the needs of existing and potential customers and staff from different groups and backgrounds
• recognising that we play a key role in bringing a community together and understanding how and why people stay in their groups or mix
•making clear our commitment to our equality and diversity policy to all staff, members, customers and everyone we work with
• checking, assessing and reviewing our policy and actions regularly
•making our policy a part of all our activities
• keeping up to date with all relevant codes of practice and legislation on equality and diversity and putting them into practice as best we can.
Harvest has an E&D Strategy, Policy and Action Plan. This ensures compliance with the regulatory code and recent legislation and places the organisation in a strong position with the proposed implementation of the Single Equality Duty.
The Audit Commission’s Inspection Report for M&D acknowledges that great progress has been made in the last 12 months and the Group has a focus and commitment to this area of work.
The Group Action Plan demonstrates the commitment to ensuring Equality & Diversity is embedded across the whole organisation. Local Action Plans have been established for each Stock Owning Subsidiary, and these are reported to the D&S, Frontis, M&D and Moorlands Boards regularly.
Progress on the Group E&D Plan in the last year has been significant and includes:
Customer Profiling – To enable improved service delivery to customers, information about customer’s needs linked to the 7 strands of diversity is collected on an ongoing basis.
This data can now be accessed by staff as required. We have developed a bespoke IT solution to enable communications to be generated automatically in the customer’s preferred format.
Equality Impact Assessments (EIA) – EIAs are carried out on all Policies and Procedures, as well as Board Reports with Resolutions.
To date, outcomes of the EIAs have included the development of an Access Pack for all staff to use whilst visiting customers at home. The pack includes overshoes; Braille card; magnifying glass enabling large print; sign language guide; coloured paper and markers for easy reading, and portable hearing loops which are available from local offices.
Promotion / Publicity – The law places a requirement on organisations to promote accessibility and to demonstrate a non-discriminatory approach to services as a landlord and as an employer.
The Group’s Celebrating Diversity Newsletter is published bi annually, highlighting work in our neighbourhoods promoting our inclusive approach. In addition, regular articles are now circulated to staff with information on events and festival dates raising awareness for staff who may wish to participate or support such activities. The Harvest website has also been improved to include translations, varying text sizes and ‘browse aloud’ features.
Training sessions are carried out regularly for staff, contractors and customers.
Harvest is a Member of the Housing Diversity Network, an organisation representing the sector, enabling sharing of best practice, networks, and updates on legislative changes.