Force Change Programme

Equality Impact Assessment:

Application in Force Change Programme

The aim of the Force Change Programme is to conduct an organisation-wide review of the Constabulary to identify changes which will deliver the Chief Constable’s vision of being a top performing force whilst remaining low cost.  The proposed changes have had, and will continue to have, a significant impact on police staff and officers at all levels within the organisation.  Equality Impact Assessments (EIA) have been used within the Force Change Programme to anticipate and mitigate both direct and indirect impacts upon staff, customers and external partners in regards to equality.

In September 2010 an overarching EIA was conducted for the Force Change Programme to highlight the potential impact that a large scale restructuring process would have upon the workforce and the need to ensure equality and a fair application of the change process across all groups of staff. The EIA anticipated factors of change that may have a disproportionate effect upon the protected characteristic groups of age, gender and disability. Other protected characteristics were considered but were not felt to be influenced by the proposed change. The factors at risk of impacting protected groups were identified as redundancy, redeployment, relocation and changes to working hours.

The Programme was segmented into 8 key Business Areas and each of these was then segmented into a number of Reviews.  The programme set a requirement for each Review to complete their own bespoke EIA based upon the nature of their proposal for change and the demographic of the workforce in their particular area.  Whilst HR records can provide information on the gender and age demographic of the workforce, each Review needed to undertake its own scoping to identify and mitigate disability from within its remit.  Where an adverse impact on a protected characteristic group was identified as a risk via the EIA, suitable mitigation was instigated and factored into the change proposal to negate the disparity.  Consultation of the Review changes could only begin once their EIA had been reviewed and signed off as satisfactory by the Force Change Team. UNISON was given the opportunity to contribute towards the document throughout the change process. The EIA is a live document so therefore has set review dates through out the change process where the relevance of the information can be assessed and updated.

The nature of the Force Change Programme meant that the most significant risk to all staff was that of redundancy. Where redundancy or site relocation was a factor in a proposal, the EIA relied upon Force Policy or Force Change Guidance to put in place systems that would counter a risk of disadvantage to staff.

Workforce information indicated that there was a significant number of staff in a higher age group. In discussion with staff and staff associations it was felt that staff in this higher age group may not have recent experience of interview selection and would potentially be disadvantaged by an interview based redundancy process. In response to this risk, the Constabulary designed a matrix based selection strategy that removed the need for assessment by interview which could be used where appropriate as a selection and assessment method.

Similarly the disability scoping that occurred in each Review allowed for previously undeclared cases of disability amongst staff to be recorded and responded to on a case by case basis. This practise allowed for reasonable adjustments to be made to the selection process where necessary.

Copies of the Force Change Programme EIA and the Finance, Business & Facilities Review EIA are attached as examples of the two levels of EIA.  

An Example of a Review Level EIA and Mitigating Action

The scoping conducted as part of the Finance, Business & Facilities Review found that staff in one particular selection process group were of a greater age than the mean standard for the workforce. Collective consultation with staff from this group also found that there was a high proportion of individuals with welfare concerns such as disability and caring concerns.

Staff numbers had reduced through natural reduction so there was greater flexibility to enable the creation of a preference/welfare based posting process that could be used to equitably distribute staff across the roles available. This was done on the basis of staff preference and declared welfare issues. The process involved granting a welfare score to an individual based upon set criteria that awarded a score to their unique welfare situation in the following manner:

5: Severe Mobility Disability

4:Disability that while not effecting mobility could be evidenced to require a certain geographical location.

3: Being a primary carer for a disabled individual

2: Being a primary carer for a vulnerable individual.

1: Other low welfare concern

Unison was engaged with in the creation of the process. On the basis of this method, staff were relocated to new locations taking into account individual "needs" as highlighted in the Review process.

The following attachment is the Equality Impact Assessment document relating to the Finance, Business and Facilities Review.  255kb

The following attachment is the Equality Impact Assessment document relating to the Force Change primary.  230kb