Diversity-related data gathering has always been tricky. How do you ensure compliance with data protection and employment law? How do you persuade team members to engage with the process so as to generate meaningful results? How do you preserve anonymity, especially in smaller businesses, for EDI survey responses? And how do you use the data you collect to make lasting positive changes to your organisation’s EDI profile?
With thanks to our senior leaders’ diversity think tank, who first championed the idea, help is now at hand! We’re delighted to present IP Inclusive’s brand new equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) data gathering toolkit.
This new resource has been prepared with input from CIPA, CITMA, the IP Federation, the UK Intellectual Property Office and IPReg. It includes legal guidance specially prepared for us by IP Inclusive supporters Burley Law. We’ve put it together to support our charter signatories and other IP sector employers, in particular private practices, and make data gathering a bit easier and more consistent across the profession.
The toolkit comprises four parts:
- A template standard EDI data gathering survey
- Guidance on the legal (in particular data protection and employment law) aspects of EDI data handling
- Practical tips for gathering and processing EDI data
- A collection of relevant resources (including benchmarking data) available elsewhere
You can download the full toolkit on our resources page.
It’s completely free. You can choose for yourself which bits to use and which to ignore, tailoring them to suit your own business. We do however encourage all IP sector employers to make use of the toolkit, in particular the template survey.
IP Inclusive Charter signatories are not obliged to gather or publish EDI data if they don’t feel it’s appropriate in view of the nature and size of their business. Our hope, though, is that by adopting this toolkit across the IP professions we can make the data gathering process easier, align approaches, create better benchmarks for ourselves, and reassure our clients that we are all following consistent good practices.
If you’ve any queries about, or feedback on, the toolkit, please drop us a line at [email protected].