Equality, Diversity & Inclusion

What Equality, Diversity and Inclusion means to us

Equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals is more than just words - it is part of who we are. Our vision is to have a workforce that fully reflects the communities we serve and a workplace culture where everyone feels valued and is treated with fairness and respect.

Our current Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Strategy identifies and communicates what our priorities for action are as a Trust. We are in the process of developing our new EDI Strategy, which will be launched in April 2025.  The new strategy has been developed in consultation with a wide range of stakeholders.

Our current EDI Strategy identifies 6 areas (our Equality Objectives) for us to focus on, which are:

Our current priorities

• Improving performance – developing a robust way to manage performance and ensuring that all areas embed EDI best practice
• Leadership and accountability – ensuring there is visible leadership of EDI, that people are leading by example and that we achieve what we say we will within the deadlines agreed
• Trust and confidence – building strong community connections and networks so that our activity is informed by conversations with local people and partners
• Behavioural and cultural change – embedding a zero tolerance approach across all areas of the organisation to any form of discrimination, bullying, harassment, and victimisation a well as bringing people together to create a social movement for change
• Employee development – building the EDI capability of every member of staff so that we are all confident to challenge when we witness language or behaviour that doesn’t fit with the Trusts’ PROUD values, using positive action to build a diverse workforce, ensuring access to opportunities for current staff, supporting our Staff Network Groups and ensuring that we support our Disabled colleagues with reasonable adjustments
• Audit and scrutiny – embedding an effective way of measuring and evaluating what we are achieving and what impact we are having across the organisation

Examples of what we have achieved so far include:

• Established a formal EDI Executive Committee which is providing effective governance
• Formed operational sub-groups, reporting into the EDI Executive Committee, including one focused on EDI Data and another on Language Interpretation and Translation
• Developed and continuing to run our in-house Reciprocal Mentoring Scheme
• Produced a calendar of key annual dates and events for the Trust to mark and celebrate
• Reviewed and refreshed our Equality Impact Analysis (EIA) process and developed guidance and a proforma to support this
• Created an EDI Dashboard which contains both patient and workforce diversity data and also maps deprivation
• A wide range of EDI-related training has been procured from external courses and has also been developed in-house, including on Understanding Microaggressions, Understanding Trans, Nonbinary and Gender Diversity and Understanding Neurodivergence
• Coaching and mentoring of individual staff in relation to EDI is made available to all across STH
• Our Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES) and Workforce Disability Equality Standard (WDES) data analysed and published annually and benchmarking against other Shelford Group Trusts undertaken
• Four Staff Network Groups established – Race Equality and Inclusion Network (REIN), Disability and Wellbeing Network (DAWN), LGBTQI+ Network and Women’s Network
• Established a network of Equality Champions cross the Trust
• Begun to establish stronger links with Voluntary Sector, specifically in relation to EDI, and are starting to work more collaboratively with external partners
• Completed 5 Equality Delivery System 2022 (EDS22) reviews into Maternity Services, Accident and Emergency Services (with a focus on Mental Health), Sexual Health Services, Blood Cancer Services (with a focus on Sickle Cell and Thalassemia), and Diabetes Services (with a focus on transition from Children’s to Adult Services)
• Strengthened risk management through our Integrated Risk and Assurance Register
• Launched the NHS Rainbow Pin Badges scheme and the See Me First badge scheme within our Trust

We have lots more to do and will be updating this page on a regular basis to show our progress.

If you have any queries relating to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion please email: sth.equalityanddiversity@nhs.net

Annual Inclusion calendar for 2024 - click here

If you have any queries relating to equality, diversity and inclusion please email: sth.equalityanddiversity@nhs.net