Congratulations to the newly accredited Equally Safe at Work employers!

Our Equally Safe at Work team has been busy working with a range of employers over the last 18 months to enable them to develop improved gender-sensitive employment practice and prevent violence against women. We’re now delighted to announce that 14 new employers have received accreditation in recognition of the work they’ve delivered to create better workplaces for women workers. These employers include:

Bronze accreditation:

• Fife Council
• East Ayrshire Council
• Inverclyde Council

Development accreditation:

• West Dunbartonshire Council
• Highland Council
• Angus Council
• Glasgow City Council
• Perth and Kinross Council
• NHS Ayrshire and Arran
• Public Health Scotland
• Healthcare Improvement Scotland
• NHS Dumfries and Galloway
• Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland
• Voluntary Action North Lanarkshire

We want to congratulate all the employers who have participated in the Equally Safe at Work programme and the great work they have done to progress gender equality and better support victim-survivors in the workplace.

We are pleased to see so many employers achieve accreditation through a difficult period of budget constraints, recruitment challenges, and the ongoing cost of living crisis. Also, for the NHS boards and third-sector organisations, this was the first time we have tested out Equally Safe at Work in new sectors. The pilot with NHS boards and third sector organisations provided us with key learning, including how to roll out the programme to different sizes and types of organisations, for example, the differences in working with organisations ranging from 15,000 staff to 7 staff. Overall, the pilot with NHS boards and third sector organisations, and the rollout with councils, has been successful in enabling employers to develop gender and VAW-sensitive employment practices. The evaluation of this work shows the impacts that employers have identified in their own organisations:

“The fact that we have made the change to the gender-based violence policy, and added paid time off for seeking refuge, probably wouldn’t have thought of doing this if not part of the programme. It’s about making women more confident about raising these issues at work, so they know they’re entitled to this. It raises the profile and makes it more acceptable to take up.”

                                                                                                                   - Local government participant

“We introduced collecting data on flexible working refusals. We wouldn’t know before if this had been denied but now reasons for refusal have to go through HR and highlights where this is about safety.”

                                                                                                                   - Local government participant

“Through the programme, we’ve improved our recruitment practices, introduced special leave, made flexible working more accessible. We are doing the work and making progress on equality in our organisation.”

                                                                                                                   - Third sector participant

What's next

We have been collecting qualitative and quantitative data throughout the programme to measure whether the programme has resulted in change. We will be launching the evaluation report with our findings and key considerations for moving forward on the 28^th of November. For more details on how to attend, visit the Eventbrite link.

For more information on the Equally Safe at Work programme, you can visit our website www.EquallySafeatWork.scot