As part of any contract, we monitor our impact on disadvantaged and minority participants who we have deemed to have different educational experiences, language skills and different prior access to opportunity. Focussing especially on well-being and engagement, our facilitators emphasize rules of engagement during workshops, group discussions and online forums and are trained to call out bias and instances of indifference and non-inclusive behaviours especially that which could affect disadvantaged or vulnerable individuals.
Psychological safety is maintained by our facilitators throughout the sessions. In moments of vulnerability during virtual programmes, facilitators will create the allowance for the switching off of cameras online. If participants are struggling, offline discussion with participants will be used to support the additional challenges that learning courses can bring to disadvantaged and minority people.
Our policy is in deliberately providing opportunity to minority and disadvantaged associates and local suppliers e.g BAME and disabled and ensure they are paid at fair rates comparable to those offered during the bidding phase. This is to help remove the inequalities in paygaps experienced by people from different and disadvantaged backgrounds.
Throughout the contract we will look for opportunities to co-facilitate so that there will be a chance of upskilling and learning-on-the-job for associates (apprenticeship opportunities) with less experience or have been away from doing this kind of work for a long time.
From a covid perspective, all interactions before and during the contract that can be done virtually will be encouraged to control transmissibility. Working flexibility will be offered to those who have co-morbidities and multiple hidden illnesses (e.g long covid) which include any mental health challenges on account of covid isolation or if they care for a covid vulnerable person.
If any face-to-face interactions are needed, then social distancing and the wearing of masks is made mandatory. Where possible, meetings should take place in open air and use of enclosed spaces will be well-ventilated. We will ensure that all facilitators are vaccinated to the appropriate level so as not to be vectors of transmission and be encouraged to take up the vaccine booster when offered by the NHS.
With social movements of #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, Trans rights to name a few, social justice is at the forefront of working across system boundaries. Through feedback from individuals, we will monitor our impact on social improvement. Facilitator’s supervision and support mechanisms provide information about working with different social groups and helps us to measure the impact we have indirectly had on minorities and disadvantaged groups. Our facilitators will address the requirement for the needs of identity-appropriate pronouns for individuals who have a preference to be addressed in a certain way.
When running programmes our we ensure an inclusive approach to contribution and diversity of ideas and thinking (neurodiversity) adapting our facilitation style around participants where English is not their first or native language and also around disadvantaged participants who are new to experiential development programmes. Allowing for distractions during virtual delivery is an important part of facilitation of learning programmes as is the cohorts patience around the variability and dexterity with internet and virtual elements of the programme by participants. Managing this effectively as part of the rules is done by our facilitators to build engagement and accommodation especially when managing neurodiverse individuals. Throughout the programme our facilitators will look at raising the confidence and ambition of disadvantaged groups to step into higher leadership roles by exploring options through coaching conversational approaches.
Well-being checks and breaks are in-built into the design of programmes to help develop a nurturing and trusting social environment by facilitators. People learn at different paces, so in self-learning programmes, facilitation styles will be adjusted to allow for everyone to customise their own space for learning.
We make provision to recompense our coach faciliators financially for any probono coaching work undertaken by them in the course of the contract. This also includes any charity work undertaken by them outside the office upto a maximum of 2 full days.