Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Statement
The overarching research ethos at the CRUK Scotland Institute is about excellence, honesty, openness, accountability, and integrity. The diversity of our staff and students is also what makes the Institute such a vibrant place to work and advance discoveries in cancer research. Family friendly policies, our collaborative ethos, a focus on good mental health and well-being and opportunities for all, help to create an enjoyable and inclusive workplace where everyone's voice matters.
We introduced our Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Strategy in 2020, which details our plans and actions for EDI, including gender equality. This is reviewed annually by our Board of Directors to ensure that we are on track to achieve our aims, which include the following:
• Transparency, Evidence, and Improvement
• EDI Awareness and Training
• Career Support and Development
• Equitable Recruitment Practices and Processes
• Scientific Engagement
In addition, we introduced EDI Advocates in 2021 and ran an EDI Staff Survey to gather the thoughts of our staff and students on this topic.
Each year, we publish our Gender Pay Gap data on our website and on the UK Government's website, and produce a narrative report for our Board of Directors to scrutinise and comment on. We review salaries each year for all staff and particularly focus on our gender pay differentials according to grade and make any necessary amendments.
We produce diversity data annually on gender, age, disability, and ethnic origin for CRUK, our main funder, and benchmark against other CRUK Institutes and Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) diversity data (https://www.hesa.ac.uk/). We collate these data internally from our staff and students via our HR system; 87% of whom have provided their personal data.
We also benchmark our EDI activities with members of our Pay Club - which includes other CRUK Institutes, The Francis Crick Institute, and the Babraham Institute - and the Wellcome Trust and share best practice with them. For example, we have shared the EDI survey we developed with other institutes.
In addition, we work in close collaboration with colleagues from the University of Glasgow's Athena SWAN committee – known as the VOICE (Visibility, Opportunity, Inclusion, Career development, Equality) committee – to ensure that our early career researchers and faculty can share best practice as well as input into the wider EDI agenda.
Our EDI activities are led by the Head of HR, who represents EDI on the Senior Management Team. She is supported by the EDI Advocates who are a representative group of staff and students in relation to both grade and diversity.
Transparency, Evidence, and Improvement
Our aim is to monitor, analyse and publish diversity data to develop an evidence base to learn and drive change and improvement. We have achieved an 87% response rate from staff to our request for their personal data and we participate in a CRUK data collection exercise each year. We also compare our data to HESA (https://www.hesa.ac.uk/). This allows us to identify areas for improvement, for example in relation to gender equity at senior levels, and to take the appropriate actions.
EDI Awareness and Training
Our aim is to ensure that all staff and students understand their responsibilities with respect to EDI and are appropriately trained and engaged. This includes access to e-learning modules which include unconscious bias, bullying and harassment and EDI. We also run training courses for managers in unconscious bias.
Recently, we conducted an EDI survey across the Institute. The results of the survey were very positive, with a 66% response rate and 78% of staff agreeing they are treated with respect and dignity and 70% having a sense of belonging to the Institute. There were some areas identified as requiring action, including equal opportunities to develop; staff feeling supported in speaking up; and staff wellbeing. We are now planning focus groups to take a deep dive into the feedback we have received and will develop an action plan from this.
Career Support and Development
Our aim is to enable all researchers and support staff to reach their potential regardless or their gender, age, disability, ethnicity, sexual orientation or other protected characteristics.
Annually, we hold personal development reviews for all staff. This presents everyone with an opportunity to discuss their personal and career development with their manager. A training needs analysis (TNA) is then conducted by HR to review training requirements. During this process we also check that access to personal development is representative of our staff diversity data.
Equitable Recruitment Practices and Opportunities
We aim to ensure that all recruitment practices promote EDI not just in words but in actions.
Our recent actions include:
• Training all staff in unconscious bias
• Ensuring that recruitment advertising is not biased
• Advertising our policies on maternity pay, shared parental leave, visa applications, flexible and hybrid working
• Implementing a search committee for senior roles and aiming for a 50/50 gender split of applicants for senior research positions at the shortlist stage
• Ensuring gender balanced interview panels
Scientific Engagement
We recognise that making changes in career opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) starts at an early stage, and we are committed to engaging with other educational establishments, for example schools, to promote women and minorities towards a career in scientific research. We hold an annual event for school students and visit schools to meet with those from under-privileged backgrounds and under-represented groups to discuss access to scientific careers. We also aim to have a diverse range of speakers and hold lunches for speakers from under-represented groups that early career researchers and students can attend.
Our Policies
EDI is built into our policies:
• We offer enhanced maternity and adoption pay leave of 26 weeks full pay for qualifying employees
• We offer shared parental leave and 6 weeks pay for qualifying employees who are partners of someone taking maternity leave (whether they are employed by us or another employer)
• Employees have the right to apply for flexible working, for any reason
• We allow employees to apply for hybrid working on a formal basis, but we also allow more flexible informal working arrangements from time to time
• We offer postdocs going on maternity leave the option to backfill their position during their maternity leave to maintain momentum with their research project during their leave period
Gender Pay Gap
We have reported our gender pay data since 2017 on our website and post this to the UK Government website as well. This is reviewed by our Board of Directors on an annual basis. We take a deep dive into our grades to review female salaries compared to that of males and make any necessary adjustments via our pay review system.
Signed and endorsed by our senior management team:
Owen Sansom (Director), Martin Bushell, Jim Norman, Vicky Cowling, Gareth Inman,
Jacqueline Beesley, Scott Kelso, Gary Niven and Angela Stuart
