The Race Equality Code and its accountability framework is designed to provide organisations across all sectors and sizes, with the opportunity to address race inequality in the boardroom and senior leadership team.
Active Essex became early adopters of The Race Equality Code in January 2021 and worked with The Governance Forum through a supported process against the Code’s requirements. This included a diagnostic document review, board and senior leadership team survey and a facilitated self-assessment.
We subsequently received our Race Equality Code Action Plan in April 2021 and our Race Equality Code Quality Mark in May 2021.
Some of the early impact of this work has included working with the PFA on their ‘On the Board’ programme, which resulted in the extremely valued appointment of Anton Ferdinand to the Active Essex Board. All staff have also completed Unconscious Bias Training and we adopted a Race Equality Commitment which is included in our new Active Essex Implementation Plan, which you can read here.
We have also embedded this work into the organisation’s ongoing improvement journey. The aim is for this to become a golden thread through the organisation, creating sustainable and lasting improvements to achieve a truly diverse board and organisational senior leadership team
We will hold the Race Equality Code Quality Mark for 3 years, after 18 months there will be an interim assessment followed by a full review at the end of the 3 years.
The Race Equality Code is important for organisations as the robust and supportive process provides a framework to proactively tackle the racial inequalities that exist. We encourage our Essex partners and organisations to join us in adopting the Race Equality Code.
The Race Equality Code is officially launching on the 1st December, we encourage our partners to join the launch event to find out more via the link here.
We welcome any partner to get in contact to discuss the process we have undertaken and the benefits of this. Please contact Hayley Chapman at Hayley.Chapman@activeessex.org. Or you will find other members of the team here.
