Monitoring

The Equality Act 2010 sets out nine protected characteristics: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation. Equality monitoring is the process of collecting, storing and analysing data about the protected characteristics of job applicants and workers.

Employers can use monitoring to:

• check how well their equality policy is working
• analyse the effect of policies and practices on different groups
• highlight possible inequalities and investigate their underlying causes
• set targets and timetables for reducing disparities
• make sure that job applicants and workers realise that the organisation takes equality and diversity issues seriously

The types of inequalities that monitoring may reveal might include, for example, that applicants from a particular ethnic group are not selected for promotion.

Equality monitoring can also help employers to:

• Provide evidence that your organisation is doing what equality law says you must do if a job applicant, worker or former worker brings a tribunal case against you
• Win contracts if your organisation tenders for work in the public and private sectors, because equality has become increasingly important in procurement

Effective monitoring is an important tool for measuring performance and progress towards equality and diversity goals, and building an inclusive working environment. Monitoring is not an end in itself and once data is collected it needs to be analysed and used to inform appropriate action.

Want to learn more? Contact our Monitoring subject lead: