Measuring inclusiveness

Reporting diversity data is a must for compliance – Access Legal’s regulatory director, Brian Rogers, offers advice on how to record data on your firm’s diversity profile.

As part of the Solicitors’ Regulation Authority’s (SRA’s) approach to promoting equality, diversity and inclusion in all firms, regardless of size, are required to report and publish diversity data regarding the make-up of their workforce every two years. The SRA provide a template question set that all employees should have the opportunity to answer. In this article, we’ll provide all the details you need to know and how you can quickly and easily complete the survey with no need for printed surveys, collection boxes, or invasive technology.

Who is responsible for collecting diversity survey data?

Technically, your firm’s COLP is responsible for all everything compliance, which includes complying with the SRA diversity requirements, though it is possible to delegate or outsource the job of collecting the data.

When do I need to complete the SRA diversity survey?

The SRA have already released the question set for the 2023 diversity survey but as yet have not announced when they will be opening their portal for submissions. However, we expect the window to submit your survey responses to be open some time between July and August 2023. As such, you are welcome to begin collecting our diversity data as soon as practicable.

We’ll be releasing our own diversity data collection survey, which allows you to protect your employees anonymity on 2 May 2023.

What data do I need to collect?

The survey contains 14 questions relating to your employees’ protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010 as well as social and parental status.

You can find the question set on a Word document that you can print and distribute here, but please be aware of and comply with data protection requirements. Access Legal’s SRA Diversity Survey tool will allow you to collect data anonymously, complying with all data protection legislation.

Who needs to complete the diversity survey?

You must give everybody within your firm the opportunity to complete the survey and encourage them to do so, though you cannot compel them to do so.

This includes all full-time and part-time staff, employees on maternity or long-term sick leave, and all temporary employees, including consultants who have been contracted to the firm for longer than three months.

You shouldn’t include any third parties to whom you outsource work, other experts engaged by the firm or anyone who is usually located outside the UK.

How do I collect the SRA diversity survey data?

Should you wish, you can collect diversity data by printing the survey and distributing amongst your staff, giving them the opportunity to submit their survey responses anonymously. However, this means that you will also have to collect and collate that data manually, which can take up valuable time and can result in errors.

The Access Legal Diversity Survey allows you to simply send a link to all of your staff, which allows them to complete the survey anonymously. You then receive all of the data collated into the appropriate fields that will need to be submitted to the SRA.

Does the data have to be anonymous?

There is no mandatory requirement for data to be anonymous, but by protecting your employees’ anonymity, you also provide extra reassurance that their data is protected and they will therefore be more likely to complete the survey.

The SRA recommend that data should be linked to an individual via a confidential ID as this allows you to ‘monitor a range of employment activities over time such as promotion, pay rates, or recruitment practices’. However, you could also achieve this via the employees HR record, so we find that keeping the survey anonymous is the best approach to take.

Regardless, given the nature of the data that comprises the diversity question set, steps should always be taken to protect the personal data of anyone undertaking the survey.

How do I submit the data to the SRA?

The SRA will open their portal to submit the data some time between July and August and this will remain open for four weeks. You must submit your data within this window.

The SRA doesn’t allow any integrations with their submission portal so this must be done manually.

You will be required to submit summary data for each job role category for each question, that is, how many people in each job role have submitted each answer. Our survey solution will contain an anonymised report which will provide the aggregate responses required for each of the SRA’s questions.

Do I have to publish my firm’s diversity data on my website?

No, it’s not a requirement to publish diversity data on your website, but you do have to make it available both internally to staff and to external stakeholders. Most firms do this by publishing on their website.