Tag: athena swan

Athena Swan win -assessment and feedback

I am delighted that my team in LTW at University of Edinburgh have gained a Bronze Athena Swan Award. I bet we are the first learning technology department in a UK university to do so. We are certainly the first professional services department  at Edinburgh to achieve it.  We got great feedback from the assessment panel.

The panel is satisfied that the application adequately addresses the award criteria and is pleased to confer a Bronze Athena Swan award.

The panel commends the leadership and senior buy-in which is evident in several ways, including:

·       the strong letter of endorsement from the Director which communicates a solid organisational commitment to Athena Swan and demonstrates a clear understanding of the importance of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) in improving service delivery and experience for all – the inclusion of Directorate initiatives in Institutional Athena Swan applications underscores the value of the work being undertaken (pp.5-6);

·       the Director’s personal leadership and active development of a range of EDI-related initiatives (pp.9-12);

·       resourcing a Data and Equality Officer (DEO) post which includes responsibilities to support EDI work, for example, reporting Directorate /user demographic data to the Senior Management Team (SMT) and maintaining the EDI newsletter (p.9);

·       senior management representation on the Directorate’s Self-Assessment Team (SAT), including the Director and the Head of Operations (pp.14-15);

·       recognition and reward of EDI work through both local (e.g., digital badges) and University recognition mechanisms (e.g., vouchers, annual review process, pp.10-11).

A clear governance structure for EDI is in place with accountability lying with senior colleagues (p.9). The panel commends the purposeful design of structures and processes to embed EDI in decision-making and in the culture of the Directorate, for example, the establishment of roles which explicitly involve EDI, the Dignity and Respect Advisor is a member of the SMT and Athena Swan will be a standing item at SMT meetings (pp.9-10, p.17, p.44). The links between the Directorate’s EDI work and University EDI governance structures appear strong, for example, the Director is a member of the University EDI Committee and the DEO sits on the University Equality and Diversity Monitoring and Reporting Committee (EDMARC) (p.9); these links ensure that the Directorate’s EDI/gender equality work is aligned with institutional strategy as well as providing opportunities for broader collaboration.

Similarly, processes for policy development and evaluation, including feedback routes, appear robust (p.13). The Directorate uses Equality Impact Assessments in respect of local policy/practice and staff perceptions of being informed about University policies relating to EDI are largely positive (although there is a disparity between male/female responses, p.13).

The SAT brings diversity of perspectives, including representatives from component teams and with different lived experience of members; the recruitment process, comprising expressions of interest combined with targeted invitations to ensure that the SAT reflects the diversity of the Directorate, is commended (pp.14-15).

A transparent account of the activities of the SAT from its inception until finalisation of the application, including a timeline (table 3), is provided (pp.16-17). Multiple data sources informed the self-assessment and a range of approaches have been utilised to capture the voices of the Directorate’s community (p.16). The Directorate’s plans to monitor and implement the action plan, which will be overseen by the SAT, appear robust and are commended (p.17).

As a result of a thorough analysis of the mandatory data and a critical evaluation of culture, a wide range of gender equality issues are identified (pp.18-26). The panel commends the:

·       range of activity to develop a positive and supportive culture, including Mandatory Training Day, Friday messages, events for Ada Lovelace Day, EDI reading groups and promoting the University’s Don’t Cross the Line campaign (pp.23-26). The impact of these activities is evident in positive feedback about the culture of the Directorate (e.g., 83% of respondents to the EDI survey ‘felt the workplace was inclusive’, p.23);

·       collection and analysis of data on contribution awards and pay;

·       evidence-based and thoughtful approach to the use of a variety of benchmarks to support a nuanced analysis of the gender equality issues facing the Directorate.

The panel congratulates the Directorate on achieving a Bronze award.

 Good practice examples highlighted

The panel considers the Directorate’s approach, led by the Wikimedian in Residence, to diversify Wikipedia writers and content, to be good practice. The Resident Wikimedian hosts regular events and workshops to train staff and students to edit Wikipedia entries and write articles to increase the diversity of subject and contributors (p.25). This work has been impactful in raising the profile of the limitations of Wikipedia (particularly to students), addressing the gender bias in whose stories are disseminated online and improving around 16,000 articles.

The panel also considers the PlayFair Steps initiative, including EDI recognition badges, to be good practice (pp.10-11).

More broadly, the panel commends the thoughtful consideration with which a variety of sector, discipline and regional benchmarks are used.

athena swan insights

Front Cover Issue 9 – Image of woman with household items: iron, thread etc. Usage terms: © Estate of Roger Perry Creative Commons Non-Commercial Licence – See more at: http://www.bl.uk/spare-rib/articles/design-and-spare-rib

I am spending some time assessing Athena Swan Applications. It is making me ponder a lot of things. Guidance for giving feedback is to focus on what is included, not what is missing.

Here are some:

  • The experiences of professional staff are given very little attention and seem to be poorly understood. particularly in relation to career progression.
  • The professional staff in academic departments are mostly women. I wonder if this is because IT is so centralised.  Bringing all your professional IT and estates staff together in their own large groups makes sense of course in most universities, but it does exacerbate and perpetuate the structural inequalities and gendered assumptions about who does what kinds of work? This is what our students are seeing us modelling.
  • Athena Swan is asking applicants to consider intersectionality, but so many more words are being wrangled into a word salad around gender than are being used to describe the different experiences of diversity and intersectionality of women  in regards to age, ethnicity, race, disability, religion, class, nationality, parental status or  workplace seniority.
  • Its almost like we have only just discovered that career progression is completely different for professional and academic staff. No mention of why the responses to a culture survey might be different in these groups.
  • There is no mention of technology. Flexible working is described, but no mention of anything hybrid or how access to that might vary by job roles.
  • Plenty on maternity, almost nowt on menopause.
  • One action plan discussing the impact of COVID. None mentioning the impact of  ‘digital transformation’ or AI.
  • Interesting to see project management language coming through in the plans  for action logs and data audits, One dept using RAG status for reporting. I haven’t seen any Risk Registers yet.
  • my computer likes to correct my misspellings of maternity to ‘matter not’.
  • No attempt to evaluate the efficacy of training beyond numbers of attendees and satisfaction happy sheets.
  • Only one mention of working to remove marital status titles ‘mr, mrs, miss, ms’ from university systems.
  • Much inclusive language, but also some highly contested and confusing.
  • Almost no mention of technical staff at all ( even in bids at university level)

steps to improve recruitment

SWAN leadership can be a dangerous place. Picture taken by me in the street.

With so many staff categorized as IT, the University of Edinburgh is one of the largest tech employers in the city. We aim to diversify our workforce but we are doing that in a very competitive labour market. Other tech employers in the city are also keen to recruit women into IT roles.

The University is preparing its silver Athena SWAN application. Input is being gathered and examples of good practice corralled.  Action plans will be set.

The University has a bunch of professional support staff. Numerically far more women work in Administration than any other job segment, and outnumber men at a ratio of 4:1 in these roles. Women also predominate at a ratio of greater than 2:1 in Alumni & Development, Human Resources, Finance, Library, and Marketing &PR .

Men dominate at a ratio of greater than 2:1 in Agricultural Work, Health & Safety and IT. Agricultural work has 7 people. Health and Safety, 17. IT has more than 700!

This is a a large group of people, we should make transparent what we are doing to address the structural issues which lead to this inequality – these are STEM careers after all, and the staff who work in these STEM roles are visible role models. Strategic diversity staffing initiatives are needed. I have been reading up on the topic. This chapter in the Handbook of Diversity and Work  provides a good literature review and suggestions as to what works. I have learned how organisations can tailor their  recruitment and selections systems to identify those candidates who are best suited to help achieve strategic objectives. We have to be proactive about this. We can’t rely on the same sources any more. It is important to think about how and where we advertise, what messages we send and who is involved in the selection process.

Here are just some of the things we do to support recruitment and promotion in ISG:

We have completed our gender equality survey and we keep regularly updated  HR dashboards of gender split by grade and by Directorate. This enables us to identify groups or areas of ISG where the gender ratio is significant.

When roles come up in those areas we take care to ensure that we attract a broader range of applications  internally and externally. For senior roles we instruct our search partners to find us female candidates and 18 months this has resulted in  3 new  Grade 10 directors being appointed from outside ( welcome Janet, Jen and Gosia) along with several new and newly-promoted grade 9s.

I am not convinced that  we are well served by the university advertising  IT jobs on Jobs.ac.uk as a recruitment source  That maybe good for learning technologists, and roles which need experience of HE ( do they, really?) but it’s not a place the best developers and IT professionals are looking.

Headcount of professional staff by job segment and gender, 2016/17

In an attempt to try to attract a more diverse workforce we* have established a Company page on LinkedIn, and we use the powerful data tools, targeted adverts and social media sharing to get more reach for our recruitment and to attract passive talent. We review job descriptions from other employers to compare with our own, and we have engaged with external groups such as Equate Scotland to give us advice on writing job adverts and role descriptors. We encourage our existing staff to share the job adverts on their own networks. We have become partners with GirlGeek Scotland to raise our profile as a tech employer which welcomes women and invests in their ongoing careers. We have established ‘Women returners’ projects with Equate Scotland. Research suggests that effective diversity management is the key to unlocking the benefits. It also suggests that university campuses are a great place to find diversity. In ISG we have established dozens  of internships for university students but no graduate recruitment scheme, as yet.

When our jobs are advertised on Jobs.ac.uk we are able to use the data  (along with the data from linkedIn) to understand more about who is looking at our adverts and make decisions . We were apparently the first people in the University of Edinburgh to ask Jobs.ac.uk for data. We need to pay much more attention to the wording of our job titles and adverts and think abut the messages they send. The aim of an advert is to get people to click to find out more. It is important that the messages presented make all applicants feel welcome. We use social media ( twitter) to promote our job adverts using combinations of hashtags such as #womenintech #womeninstem #girlgeekscot to encourage retweets and sharing.

Would we, could we be so bold as to say: ‘If we can’t shortlist diverse candidates, we will review the role and how we advertise it. We won’t proceed with an all-white, all-male shortlist.’  or is that a step too far?

We try to have diverse panels involved in selection and everyone involved in recruitment has done their equality and unconscious bias training. To support internal recruitment and promotion of women into more senior roles we participate in all the university initiatives such as Aurora and Connections and we activity celebrate Ada Lovelace Day and International Women’s Day.  We also have internal workshops and seminars  to explore the various issues such as age ( ‘baby boomers’ and ‘millennials’) , gender, sexuality, disability, race, parenthood (part time-working, fathers network) which combine and intersect to  have an impact on our workplace experiences.

We ensure that all jobs are advertised internally and that secondments, flexible and part time working are available as options. We encourage staff to gain professional qualifications where appropriate and have offered support for preparing CPD portfolios for membership of those professional bodies such as CILIP and CMALT. We pay special attention to areas of technology where there are few women, such as drone pilots, and encourage colleagues to gain their qualification. On top of all this we try to  highlight and celebrate success through social media, IS News and BITS magazine.

We are aware that the external perception of us as an employer is key to attracting staff. Research suggests that the images and  and stories during recruitment convey messages to applicants and specific diversity-focused statement bring positive outcomes. Our Linkedin site showcases the innovation and range of IT and media projects that we do, the benefits of working for a university and particularly highlights stories from within our organisation which reflect diversity and equality themes.  We showcase women in STEM roles and highlight career paths. Maybe once we have a head of communications we can think about impression management.

 

*when I say we, I mean me and my trusty LTWadmin and intern side-kicks.

set in stone

Slide01Two weeks ago I presented the story of our Women in Science and Scottish History editathon at the Wikipedia Science conference in London at the Wellcome Trust*.

This week Surgeon’s Hall unveiled a plaque to commemorate the Edinburgh Seven and the Surgeon’s Hall riot. I am very pleased to be able to draw a direct line from the fun we had  on the web at our wikipedia editahon to the fixing of a permanent plaque. it’s nice when the physical and the virtual keep up with each other.

The Wikipedia Science conference was a good place to discuss the contribution of women to the telling of science stories and disseminating research. Peter Murray-Rust described Wikipedia as our greatest achievement in the 21st Century. I reminded the audience that less that 15% of the people who edit Wikipedia are women and we discussed whether or not this was a problem.  One delegate suggested that women aren’t interested in facts and another that women have ‘other’ things to do. We wondered how Wikipedia would be different, and Wikipedia science would be different, if more women contributed. We wondered what might be done to find out.

Slide02The Edinburgh Seven had a tough time when they tried to break into the male world of university medicine, but they were working within historical, established structures. Surely Wikipedia is designed from the start to be more open, more democratic, more participatory? Wikipedia is only 15 years old. It seems like it is work worth doing to try to recruit more editors and a good place to start would be amongst information professionals and women in tech.

It seems to me that the kinds of initiative we may need to get more women using wikipedia for science, are very much in the same vein as those more generally for women in STEM workplaces. We need women to want to join, and want to stay.

The presentation I gave described the research I am involved in with the Open University to identify the workplace learning outcomes for university staff and students in developing digital skills, information literacy skills and understanding of copyright in an open knowledge environment.  The research team have surveyed and interviewed.  Interviewees describe rich learning experiences, learning a range of skills and knowledge, for example:

  • technical knowledge (how to create a Wikipedia page, how to edit, how to cite other sources etc),
  • factual knowledge around the topic (names, dates, locations of historical events),
  • relational knowledge (how to interact with archivists and materials, how and where to source information, how to plan work with others),
  • socio-cultural knowledge (how to operate within a network of people with a common purpose).

Slide08Which all seem like good skills worth investing in. I am particularly interested in how editathons, if run well, can develop not just tech knowledge but also workplace cultural capital and networks. These are the things women need in STEM workplaces.

Watch this space for further research results, and for the next Edinburgh editathon.

The hashtag for the conference was #wikisci . I recommend the conference as a top value for money event. Less than 30 quid for access to the most up to date thinking in wikiscience.

 

*great venue