Our ED&I newsletter round-up

Every month our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (ED&I) group put together a round-up of info in a newsletter that we send out to all staff. Below we’ve put together some of the stories from each month.

April 2024 update

QED achievements

We are very proud to have been the first housing association in Wales to achieve the Quality in Equality & Diversity Award from Tai Pawb, Wales’ housing equality charity, back in 2018. The QED Award is an accreditation and framework for reviewing and improving the equality and diversity impact of our organisation across governance, services, access, involvement and culture.

In 2022 we embarked on the QED Leaders Award process, which we are currently on. QED Leaders Award is for organisations who have successfully achieved their QED Award for three years and wish to take their equality, diversity and inclusion commitment to the next level. By working collaboratively across Melin and listening to the feedback of our residents we have made some great progress towards this next level of accreditation.

Take a look at what we’ve achieved with your help so far:

• We’ve been awarded the Disability Confident Level 3 accreditation.
• An accessibility working group has been set up.
• All job adverts have been reviewed for accessibility and language.
• There has been a review of reasonable adjustments made for disabled applicants.
• We now have better informed policies around disability following our work with the Welsh government disability champion.
• We have made better contacts with disability and race organisations who are willing to advertise Melin vacancies within their organisations.
• We have made our website and recruitment materials more representative.
• We have started working collaboratively with other housing associations who have programmes centred on encouraging ethnic minorities into roles in the housing sector.
• We have started working with universities in Wales and providing internship opportunities for international students and potential employment with Melin.
• We have undertaken unconscious bias in recruitment training for all the protected characteristics for personnel sitting on interview panels.
• We are actively collecting residents EDI data to help us understand trends and make better decisions. These data will be continually feedback into our teams to ensure we provide excellent services.
• Our resident engagement team are constantly employing innovative ways to engage our tenants especially our need to reach groups and promoting the sector to encourage underrepresented people.
• Working with Leadership and embedding the Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) into our processes. Basically, thinking about how any changes to our policies may affect people with protected characteristics.
• We are presenting EDI information to our Board and producing quarterly reports and updates.
• We will be updating our website with our EDI strategy and action plans.
• We’ve added EDI and wellbeing to our 121 conversations and team meeting agendas.
• We’ve added more EDI content and training to Adobe Learning Manager and are planning more throughout the year.
• We’ve reviewed our complaints form and satisfaction surveys to help us collect EDI data, which will help us improve our services for residents.
• We’re reviewing our Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) to make sure the include EDI, this will be published on our website soon.

All of these changes and the ongoing work we are doing will help us achieve the QED Leaders Award, and more importantly help us build a more inclusive and diverse environment for staff and residents.

Let us know if there are any areas on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion you would like to see further changes. Don’t forget we have an EDI group, and everyone is welcome to join.