We have received notification yesterday from Advance HE that we have been granted an Institutional Bronze Athena Swan Award. This is a remarkable achievement and key milestone as we deliver our strategic objective of Inclusivity and Culture as set out in our Strategy 2030 and our People Enabling sub strategy. This award marks the university’s commitment to a broad range of criteria around gender equality across the whole institution, along with its ongoing dedication to enhance representation, progress and success for all.
Our Athena Swan award was submitted to Advance HE in March 2024 and through undertaking this extensive process, we highlighted good practice across the university and established six key priorities, which now form our five-year action plan going forward:
- Address job segregation within professional services roles.
- Enhance and embed inclusive recruitment and selection processes for academic staff.
- Increase the proportion of women in AC5 positions via academic promotions.
- Support and improve confidence to report incidences of bullying and harassment.
- Improve data quality on gender identity and gender reassignment to better understand gaps in support.
- Improve experience of staff returning from a career break (including parental leave).
We are proud of the collective commitment and effort from all colleagues across the university who participated in this process and want to say a huge thank you to:
- the Athena Swan Self-Assessment Team,
- everyone who volunteered from across the university to participate in our Focus Groups,
- Andrew Westby, Deputy-Vice Chancellor and Chair of the Athena Swan Self-Assessment and Gail Brindley, Executive Director of People and Project Sponsor
- Sian Atkins, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Officer (Athena Swan Project Manager/Application Editor) Simone Murch, Senior Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Officer (Application Editor), Alan Dudley, Research and Project Officer (Lead on Focus Group structure and analysis) and Laleh Williams, Associate Director Talent, Development and Reward (Action Plan Editor)
- Emma Williams, Senior Data and People Analytics Adviser and Mark Stoker, HR Cloud Analyst (Co-lead on Athena Swan Data Provision)
As next steps, we will be our forming an Athena Swan Working Group in term one 2024/2025 to support the delivery of our action plan and further communications will be published in due course if you would like to register your interest to be involved with this group.
The Athena Swan submission will also be available on the portal for viewing soon.
