Diversify our staff and student community

Our Race Equality Charter process has highlighted that we currently do not monitor recruitment data by ethnicity.

The prominance of "All White" interview panels due to limited number of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic staff overall and especially at senior levels.

Good practice shows that essential criteria only is more conducive to attracting diverse candidates. Discussions in our Task and Finish Group highlighted that desirable criteria often gives impression that recruitment manager already has a candidate in mind therefore acting as a barrier.

1. Scope the development of cross-institutional diverse recruitment panels (building on the success of our GW4 Elevate programme) and not relying only on small number of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic staff internally.
2. Scrutinise the end-to-end recruitment process through an EDI lens, sampling 10% of shortlisted applicants and comparing with the application pool to discuss with the shortlisting/recruitment panels.
3. Introduce only essential criteria across all of our job profiles and evaluate impact of this action.
4. Create a recruitment dashboard, which covers ethnicity representation from applications, shortlists and panels.

1. Recruitment panels are more ethnically diverse without overburdening small number of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic staff at our University.
2. End-to-end scrutiny outcome shared with Faculty executive groups along with recommendations to improve the process.
3. Job description templates only include essential criteria with monitoring and evaluation by Jan 2024.
4. Dashboards at Faculty and directorate levels created and shared on a 6 monthly basis.

Black Asian and Minority Ethnic academics constituted almost half of total applications in 2019/2020, yet they only constituted around one-quarter of those shortlisted and appointments for the same year.

Professional staff application and appointment ratio is lower, indicating a low number of applications and appointments overall.

1. Decide on the investigation design (methodology, sample).
2. Appoint a project manager and conduct the investigation.
3. Evaluate the investigation.
4. Disseminate findings of the investigation.
5. Implement actions that are the result of the findings.

Investigation conducted and evaluated, so that we have a better understanding of the discrepancies between application, shortlisting and appointment ratios.

Actions designed to address the issues are based on the evidence produced by the investigation.

Findings shared within HR, Faculty executive groups and directorates.

Number of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic applicants for Professional Services staff roles remain low. Overall our current Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic PS representation has remained consistent across all three years, but is much lower than the Russell Group average.

There is variation between directorates as outlined in section 4 of our Race Equality Charter application.

1. We will develop recruitment KPIs for directors to improve representation of PS staff in their directorates.
2. Raise awareness about our efforts to be a proactive anti-racist university in recruitment campaigns to attract Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic applicants, especially locally within Devon and Cornwall.
3. Target Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic focused publications and websites with vacancies
4. Involve grass-root organisations in our recruitment campaigns.
5. Work with large regional employers on joint advertising and recruitment (this has worked well in partnership with our local NHS, with successful appointments made in each organisation).  

Increased number of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic applicants for Professional Services roles by 2026.

Increase in Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic representation in our PS staff from by 2026.

Professional staff application ratio indicates a low number of applications and appointments overall. 

1. Develop an intersectional dashboard on gender and ethnicity for all data sets included in Race Equality Charter.
2. Develop joint actions with our Athena Swan work to ensure this intersectional approach is embedded.

1. Dashboards produced annually.
2. Race Equality Charter and Athena Swan actions on representation are aligned for the upcoming Athena Swan Institutional Application 2024, and the Race Equality Charter renewal application 2026.

Some of the issues raised by Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic staff include:

• A perception of a disconnect between institutional statements about wanting to be more diverse and the lack of tangible actions to achieve this aspiration.

Our Task and Finish Group findings have highlighted an inconsistency in recruitment practices between Faculty.

1. Develop Inclusive Recruitment Guidance (IRG) and embed into recruitment process.
2. Disseminate guidance amongst Faculties and senior boards through communications campaign.
3. Evaluate impact of IRG.

100% HR staff and Faculty executives have received the guidance and have been reminded of the importance of fair recruitment practices.

In our Race Equality Charter 2025 survey, an improvement in the views of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic staff on the recruitment process with 85% of those surveyed agreeing the University undertakes recruitment and selection fairly and transparently.

Preliminary review (through the Task and Finish Group) of existing recruitment training shows that whilst it contains a section on equality, it does not take into account Race Equality Charter findings.

1. Undertake a gap analysis on current recruitment through the lens of Race Equality.
2. Develop new recruitment training incorporating Race Equality Charter findings

1. Gap analysis completed and findings shared with Learning and Development team to form the basis of new training.
2. 100% of recruiting managers receive new training.

Discussions in our SAT suggests that there may be a lack of clarity around our recruitment processes especially for our international applicants (For academics, 42% of our applicants are None UK Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic). 

1. Develop guidance for prospective applicants on the application process on our website.
2. Develop resources and case studies for prospective applicants.

1. Guidance developed and evaluated for impact.
2. Resources developed and evaluated for impact.

Black academics only represent a small percentage of our academic community.

Two of our Faculties are jointly funding BBSTEM aiming to improve representation of Black academics in the sciences. We want to scope opportunties for replicating this across other disciplines.

1. Target Black focused publications and websites with our vacancies.
2. Evaluate the impact of incorporating positive action initiatives such as working with BBSTEM to improve representation of Black academics in the sciences.
3. Scope opportunities for working with other Black focused academic recruitment organisations across diverse disciplines.
4. Grow our own Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic prospective staff through improving representation in our Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic student pipeline in Aim 16 and Aim 17.

Increase in representation of Black Academics by 2026. 

Our data shows that in 2019-2020 42% of all applications received for academic posts were from None UK Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic applicants, compared to 5% UK Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic applicants.

Our geographic locations can to some extent limit our ability to recruit from our local community with 5.1% of Devon population in the 2011 Census reported as Black, Asian, Mixed Heritage, Gypsy/Traveller, ‘White Other’ or another diverse ethnicity other than White British), and 1.8% of Cornwall’s population are Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic.

In addition to efforts to raise our profile locally highlighted in AP8, we will embed learning from the pandemic to offer/ keep remote contracts to recruit from wider geographical areas.

Ethnicity recruitment data dashboard shows an increase in academic UK Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic applications to 15% by 2026. 

Through our Fair Employment For All work across the University, we have been moving staff consistently from fixed term to open-ended contracts. However, one of the main reasons for both Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic academics and Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Professional Services staff leaving the University was the the non-renewal of a fixed term contract.
The number of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic academics employed on fixed-term contracts rose from 2017/2019 to 2019/2020. Conversely, the number of White academics employed on fixed-term contracts decreased in the same time period. The majority of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic staff employed on fixed-term contracts are non-UK academics.

1. Monitor staff retention (through exit data ethnicity dashboards) across Facultys, Departments and Divisions, with scrutiny of staffing plans by Vice-Chancellor Executive Group every 6 months.
2. Investigate the root causes for the disproportionate number of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic staff on fixed-term contracts through designing investigation, evaluating, and disseminating findings.
3. Implement actions that are the result of the findings.

Staff retention data is scrutinised by VCEG to identify any trends.

Investigation conducted and evaluated, so that we have a better understanding of the root cause of disproportionate Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic staff on fixed term contract.

Actions designed to address the issues are based on the evidence produced by the investigation.

Findings shared within HR, Faculty executive groups and directorates.

We will improve representation of Undergraduate Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic UK students in our University, through increasing numbers of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic students whilst not losing sight of continuation numbers.

Our Access and Participation Plan identifies our Race Equality Charter as one of the sources for contextualising our understanding of our student experience.
Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic students were more likely than their White counterparts to consider the
ethnic/racial diversity of the University before applying.
Initiatives and scholarships aimed at Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic UGs varies from Faculty to Faculty. Our Business school has created a new Dean’s Scholarship programme to encourage applications
from the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic community (especially from Black British applicants).
Continuation rates are generally high (over 90%) however there is variation across Faculties.

1. Strengthen the race equality elements of the admissions practice through sharing Race Equality Charter findings.
2. Offer scholarships aimed at Black Asian and Minority Ethnic undergraduates consistently across our Faculties through a strategic plan.
3. Use our social media outlets to highlight our anti-racism efforts in AP4.
4. Monitor continuation trends by ethnicity.

• Increase in representation of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic UK undergraduate students to 15% by 2026. Increase year on year to be reviewed annually.
• Monitor participation in existing and new scholarships offered.
• Continuation data by ethnicity identifying any trends shared annually with Faculties and departments.

We will offer scholarships aimed at Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic UK postgraduates consistently across our Faculties. We recognise that improving our representation of PG Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic students will assist us in improving our Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic staff pipelines as well.

Whilst several of our postgraduate scholarships are open to both UK and non-UK PG students, our data shows a low number of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic UK students especially Black UK PG students represented in our data.
Build on the existing appetite of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic students interested in studying a postgraduate degree.
Our widening participation data shows that UK Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic students are more likely to come from lower socio-economic backgrounds, and we know these differences can persist and affect progress to postgraduate studies.

1. Establish a benchmark for scholarships aimed at Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic students across our Faculties.
2. Develop a University-wide strategic plan to increase scholarship support for PG students from under represented ethnic groups (especially Black students).
3. Promote PG degrees among current Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic undergraduate students.
4. Work through our Student as Change Agents process to run a series of workshops across Faculties for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic UGs interested in postgraduate degrees.

• Monitor participation levels of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic PGs in uptake of scholarships.
• Each Faculty to organise and deliver at least one workshop annually.

We will evaluate support provided to International students through the lens of Race Equality Charter findings. 

Discussions as part of our Race Equality Charter journey highlighted that being an International student can sometimes mean it is difficult to feel a sense of belonging due to the under representation of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic students within our University.

• Share Race Equality Charter findings with our newly developed International Student Experience Group and our existing International Student Support Team.
• Conduct an evaluation of current provision for International Students and develop a plan to address any gaps.

• Evaluation report (Output) to be shared and as a result actions built into the International Students Experience Group activities to address any gaps.
• Improvements to be monitored through pulse check surveys and our 2025 Race Equality Charter survey.