Working with you to build a skilled and diverse workforce
For the orginal videos please see the FAQ page.
Under the Communications Act of 2003 there is a requirement for broadcasters to report to Ofcom on their training & skills provision and on their equal opportunities provision. This Ofcom did for a number of years but it was clear that it was not a very effective process. Data was being gathered but there was definitely within the industry of broadcasters and particularly in Ofcom a kind of “so what” attitude to all of this “we have the data but it is not doing anything substantive”. Ofcom took the bold move of suggesting that an alternative mechanism might produce more effective results - that mechanism being Co-Regulation.
Well I think Co-Regulation is really about approaching this work much more from a partnership perspective.
The broadcasters in partnership with Ofcom and in its inception Skillset as well, got together to discuss how we could be more effective as an industry in recording and reporting the Training & Skills work and of course more recently the same story for Equality of Opportunities. What emerged from that was a new organisation – Broadcast Training Skills Regulator – and the remit was to take reports from the broadcaster in the first instance quantitative data and use that as a vehicle to report to the industry and make recommendations on how broadcasters could do better.
So it is about us working in partnership with the broadcasters, not only to collect data and information but really to work with them to help improve performance equality and diversity.
So we split it into two elements. One was the quantitative data which has already been gathered but some more being asked for in the future, but the qualitative side of it was a self evaluation programme which enabled the broadcasters to look at their own capabilities, look at where they are and more importantly think about what they can do more effectively in the future.
And to really help broadcasters see how they can draw advantage from equality and diversity for their own organisations.
topWell there is a requirement under the Communications Act for broadcasters to report on the progress they are making in promoting the equality of opportunity in employment for race, gender and disability.
If you are a broadcaster with more than 20 staff and transmit more than 30 days a year you do have to fulfil the requirement of reporting to the BETR on your Equal Opportunities framework.
But of course there is wider employment legislation which also refers to the need for employers to promote and to achieve Equal Opportunities in employment and to avoid policies and practices that discriminate or create disadvantage. So that exists beyond the Communications Act and of course that legislation also goes beyond race, gender and disability. So there are other identity characteristics that fall under wider employment legislation. There are a number of different reasons why organisations invest in equality and diversity. It has helped many different organisations better understand their customers, their service users, so for the broadcasters of course this is their audiences. To better understand their audiences and respond more quickly to the changing needs, preferences and interests of their audiences. So it is helping organisations to be more innovative, very often more creative. So these are all business benefits which are in addition to the legal requirements that exist around this agenda.
topThe process for gathering data this year will be substantially online. So what we need from the broadcasters - we will be sending them a letter, those who represent or have the task of fulfilling the function on Equal Opportunities or Diversity Officer, it may be in a smaller company someone who is actually doing the Training and Skills Report so that means they already know us pretty well. But whoever it is will have to go online, will have to fill in the two element of the qualitative and quantitative return.
You need to tell us what you are doing in practical terms in terms of policies, procedures, actions you are taking to promote equality in employment for race, gender and disability. We then ask you to also tell us about your workforce. Who are you employing, where are they employed, at what level and what part of your business and again in terms of race, gender and disability.
We would like to think that filling in the return for Equal Opportunities is a straightforward and simple as we can possibly make it. We will be running workshops and opportunities for any individual who has that task to phone us, talk to us, we will take them through the process if need be, will be sending them out a Powerpoint presentation if they have not seen it already about what the whole model is about and we will be keeping people informed of how to fill in the system but more importantly we are there to give them any help they need.
The broadcasters can pick up the phone, email and we are here to answer questions and give advice and help in terms of helping broadcasters to position themselves in a way that accurately reflects their own performance.
topOfcom collected quantitative data for the last three years and reported that in their Annual Report. In fact last year the BETR took the Ofcom data and provided a 2008 Report.
With the previous Ofcom model we were able to look at workforce data in terms of race, gender and disability.
I think we all recognised that the data we were getting was not substantial enough to help us either understand how people are being employed in their roles either part time, freelance, permanent staff and also where in the organisation they sat in terms of their broad role.
But with the new approach we have developed in partnership with the broadcasters, they have told us that actually they’re quite interested in understanding the inter-relationships between those identity groups.
Part of the approach we have taken is to be much clearer, we hope, on the definitions. So in the first instance the definitions of what is a permanent contract and freelancer, the terms of employment, and secondly to take the broad sweep under roles in terms of being in production, being in broadcast or shared services, mostly back office stuff IT, finance, HR, training. The sub-text underneath that is how far have they got through the organisation by being, as we have defined it, a general member of staff, a manager, a senior manager or member of the board. So that is how we discover or hope we will discover how far an individual has got through the system. We have defined those terms and validated them with our Planning Group made up of broadcasters and we have the view that they are comfortable and happy with that and that is a definition that all can work with. Because we are trying to be a lot more rigorous in the collection but more supportive in the definitions, we believe we are enabling broadcasters to give us their data but in a much clearer and easily digestible format. At time a broadcaster has to take a view where they’re allocating a particular individual or set of individuals into that data set. But we hope that collectively we have got a much better process this year for ensuring that those areas of ambiguity are much reduced.
We will be able to look at not only where men and women are employed but also where ethnic minority men and women are employed within the broadcasters and also people with disabilities will be able to understand where they are in terms of also their gender and their race. So we can begin to build a picture to understand, for example in terms of hierarchy, who are in the most senior decision making positions, who are in the leadership roles and who are represented there. And so we can begin to ask questions of why might certain people not be able to progress their careers, perhaps at the same pace or so effectively, is anything happening to block that, that we might need to address. The quantitative framework is a really useful mechanism to build up a really good picture, a really good understanding of who is employed in the workforce within broadcasting and how that is changing year on year.
topThere is an important and obviously a very strong relationship between quantitative and qualitative so the quantitative – the numbers, who have you got in your workforce, where are they – is not the only measure of progress but obviously a very important measure of progress. But in some respects the numbers are perhaps an outcome, an important outcome, but numbers alone do not tell you how to achieve progress.
What we have done over the least year and a half working with the broadcasters and Ofcom is develop a qualitative framework which enables broadcasters to look at their current performance, look at what they could be doing and supporting them in terms of an online guidebook and other tools that we will develop to ensure that they are improving their approach in terms of the qualitative dimensions.
And the model itself, the framework itself is research based so it is drawn from an analysis of how various different organisations from various different sectors have been successful are being successful in their work on equality and diversity. So that qualitative framework is very much designed to be a tool.
Made up of three headlines which is about motivating, acting and evaluating, under each one of those are three strands making nine strands in all.
The motivate aspect of this work is important. Creating commitment within an organisation to diversity, having leadership in place around this issue is critical but also having the right policies and resources in place to underpin this work is important. So this is where we talk about the motivate strand.
We also know there are actions that need to be taken in order to improve performance and here we are talking about employment so we are talking about the employment relationship from recruitment and selection, through development through to also retaining talent, because what we have seen is that some organisations can be really successful at recruiting in different talent that is under-represented talent, but they have also got to be the kind of organisation that that talent wants to stay with and that they really want to develop their careers with.
And then the last part of the model is evaluate. Time and time again we see that organisations might be good at taking actions but very often they are not so good at evaluating whether those actions have been effective or not. And that is a really important part of the process, so the third part of our model is helping organisations, helping broadcasters see how they can evaluate the impact of the actions they have taken, understand what is working but also to understand what is not working so well, where blocks may be continuing and therefore what other action they may need to take.
So the framework enables companies to look at what they are doing now, look at, measure themselves or evaluate themselves against that by saying are they base, medium or high and looking at what is meant to be done at each level and getting a good sense of well if we are going to move beyond base this is what we need to do get to medium and our guidebook helps give them some sense of what that looks like.
topThe fundamental purpose behind pulling all this data in, quantitative and qualitative data, is to be able to examine the landscape of equality of opportunity within our industry. How are we doing. What are the challenges. We will write a report to Ofcom but to be shared with the industry to set out some of the things we see emerging from that data and to make recommendations to the industry.
Our real hope is that the broadcasters will use this information for themselves as well. I think this process of co-regulation will work most effectively if the broadcasters not only complete the information but use the information they have completed as a way of assessing themselves and seeing where they are doing well but also seeing where they need to focus.
The report we produced last year based on Ofcom’s data has been seen as a kind of very effective toolkit for broadcasters to use even now and we hope we can build on that.
We are able to look across broadcasters and see what is going well, where we are seeing good levels of diversity and promoting equal opportunities and where broadcasters seem to be successful in recruiting in diverse people and making sure they can reach their potential within their organisations.
We may see certain trends and certain deficiencies emerging in certain areas and our task in the BETR will be to look at that and say what should we collectively be doing – is a conference the way to go, is targeted workshops something to do, we could be running some very tailored events because we are seen as an industry we could do better in certain areas.
The BETR can play a pivotal role in being able to work in partnership with broadcasters, but also take a more strategic and industry wide view on this issue so it means we are no longer collecting information, but we are being much more proactive with it. So going forward we will be able to see where progress is being made, where are the successes, how can we emulate these successes, but also where are the blocks, where are the barriers, where are the stumbling blocks that we keep coming across time and time again and what can we do that will make the most difference in overcoming these blocks.
topThe data provided by any individual broadcaster is securely stored online and only seen in its entirety by our database manager, our systems designer, myself and the operations manager. That is it. Nobody else sees that data. All the other data that comes out of that is collated and that is the shared data so no individual company is identified from that because it shows just trends and changes, just as we did for training and skills and just in the same way Ofcom did in their previous reports on Equal Opportunities. When it comes to the validation process, should we be doing that in the next year or two on Equal Opportunities, we will get in touch with the company we want to validate, explain to them what the process is, clarify that two more members of our team will probably see it which is the validation team and they will be privy to the core data from an individual company and they are the only two extra people who will see the data.
topIt is not because companies are doing a wonderful job when they are not and it is not because they could be doing better and they have put themselves at medium when really they should have been at base. It’s because we have an oversight. We are seeing the returns from nearly 90 companies so we are getting a sense across the industry of those who have to report to us of what base, medium and high should look like. So we are level setting – so it is not about good or bad, it is about setting a baseline by which we can all be measured in our industry.
Validation is a very important way of showing that the data is valid and is robust. But also the validation process is a way of us getting closer to broadcasters, another way of our getting closer to broadcasters and working with them again to understand what they are doing well. To also understand perhaps if they have been a little hard on themselves and in some cases they might actually have positioned themselves more highly and also to help them understand what they can be doing next, where they could best be using their resources in order to improve their performance in equality and diversity in a way which will help achieve their objectives.
It is an opportunity for members of my team, independents as well as members within the BETR, to work with the broadcaster and look at what they are reporting. So the idea there is where they are struggling we can help, where they are doing well we can capture it as case study. It is not an inspection like Ofsted in the adult learning spectrum. It is an opportunity to look at what is going on and more importantly in my view it is an opportunity to share some ideas.
We have already begun using some of the data we collected last year to start creating case studies, so we are looking all the time for those success stories about what organisations or broadcasters have done to achieve their successes around equality and diversity. And these are really helpful because we are not suggesting that any one broadcaster can copy exactly what another does, it never happens like that, but they are really helpful in inspiring ideas of what might work here, for me, that will help us move from where we are now to solving a problem or just improving performance.
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