Our Strategic Equality Plan (2020-2024) was launched during a period of heightened societal focus and growing expectations relating to all aspects of equality, diversity and inclusion. The subsequent debate, dialogue and discourse highlighted that previous work had failed to change the landscape sufficiently or move from committing to delivering change to actually achieving change.
Our commitment over the period of the Strategic Equality Plan was to listen, learn and involve those affected by these inequalities to ensure that we took the right action to bring about long term, meaningful change.
To inform our fourth Strategic Equality Plan for the period 2024-2028, we have taken the opportunity to reflect on the progress we have made and the areas of further focus.
Establishing Foundations
We know that good governance drives and influences progress. It facilitates effective scrutiny of organisational culture as well as legal and regulatory compliance. During this Strategic Equality Plan period, we established our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee as a formal sub-group of the Board. This recognised the importance of equality, diversity and inclusion across all of our activities. The Committee has played a key role in monitoring and challenging progress against our Strategic Equality Plan.
Sport Wales has also invested in an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Manager role to add expertise to and insight to our work. Our learning from this is that it has been beneficial to have in-house subject matter expertise on hand to support the development of resources, provide ad hoc advice and guidance to staff. This has supported us in moving away from routinely commissioning external advisers for short term pieces of work and to embed change in a more sustainable manner.
Engaging with staff and communities
As part of our commitment to listening and learning, Sport Wales undertook a staff survey in 2021.The objective was to better understand our working environment and to identify areas for change. The findings of this survey identified that we needed to do more to make Sport Wales an attractive place to people from diverse backgrounds. The survey also highlighted that most staff didn’t feel comfortable reporting discrimination. In response to the survey findings, Sport Wales established a Staff Engagement Group to develop and implement improvement actions.
A follow up staff survey relating to equality, diversity and inclusion was undertaken in December 2023 to aid our understanding of progress and to inform the development of our Strategic Equality Plan. This survey highlighted significant progress in ensuring that Sport Wales is an inclusive place to work. It also identified that staff were much more likely to report acts of discrimination and felt empowered to challenge other colleagues or contractors in the event of inappropriate comments or behaviour. The survey did signpost that more work is required to adopt an inclusive approach to staff social events, to enhance diversity in leadership positions, to respond to staff needs such as the provision of a faith room and to create a supportive and safe environment where people can learn.
In 2022, we undertook the School Sport Survey, one of the world’s biggest surveys of young people, giving us rich insight into participation levels, behaviours and attitudes.The timing of the survey also ensured that we captured insight around the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on young people’s activity habits. Over 116,000 pupils took part in the survey which highlighted disparities in participation across a range of protected characteristics, geographies and demographics. The data from this survey has directly influenced our allocation of resources.
We have worked with the Centre for Digital Public Services to engage with communities and organisations who did not routinely engage with Sport Wales or apply for funding. This engagement identified a series of improvements to support organisations in applying for funding, building relationships with applicants, simplifying and expediting application processes. These recommendations were accepted and implemented on a phased basis alongside a new grant management system.
Increasing Workforce Diversity and Inclusion
Our Strategic Equality Plan 2020-2024 incorporated an objective to diversify our workforce. We have adapted some of our recruitment practices to attract applications from a more diverse range of candidates. The range of different practices adopted include establishing a digital apprenticeship scheme, advertising roles more widely, including via diversity networks, guaranteeing interviews for candidates from diverse backgrounds who meet the essential criteria and holding informal online drop-in sessions to aid understanding of roles.
We have made some progress in diversifying our workforce. In particular, our workforce data reported at 31 March 2023 identified that the proportion of ethnic minority and LGBTQ+ employees was higher than the national population average. We know, however, that there is more to do to enhance diversity at a leadership level within Sport Wales and to ensure that people with a disability are better represented within our workforce.
We also have an eye on the future workforce. We have worked with local schools to talk to pupils about careers in sport, held pilot open days at the Sport Wales National Centre. Pupils have had the opportunity to experience strength and conditioning sessions, nutritional offerings and operational roles. Our work with schools has particularly focused on those in areas of socio-economic deprivation and has also included working in partnership with Careers Wales. Our aim is to build a pipeline of talent, inspiring young people to explore career opportunities in sport.
A key part of diversifying our workforce is ensuring that Sport Wales provides an inclusive environment where everyone feels a sense of belonging. With this in mind, we have focused on enhancing the knowledge and skills of our staff through a monthly Equality, Diversity and Inclusion forum with a range of content, including sessions facilitated by external speakers such as Disability Sport Wales. The sessions have also included supporting staff with tools outlining how to challenge and respond to discrimination and how to use inclusive language. Our 2023 staff survey identified that 97% of staff felt that there had been some or lots of opportunities to learn and discuss more about equality, diversity and inclusion in the workplace.
We have established a monthly ‘Reflect and Connect’ café where staff are invited to engage in debate and discourse on relevant social justice matters. This has helped to foster a culture of open dialogue, debate, empathy and understanding.
Ensuring service delivery reflects (individual) needs
Our Strategic Equality Plan 2020-2024 included a commitment to implementing a new investment model that aligned funding to our priority groups, notably ethnic minority people, women and girls, socio-economic deprivation and people with a disability. This model is informed by the School Sport Survey, providing insight into the needs of young people. We know that the impact of this new model will not be felt in the immediate short term but are committed to reviewing this throughout the period of the Strategic Equality Plan to ensure that the model is fit for purpose and maximising the opportunities that funding provides.
Sport Wales has also sought to prioritise some capital investment into areas of socio-economic deprivation. Following a successful pilot, a Crowdfunder programme was launched enabling clubs and community organisations to apply for funding for ‘off field’ improvements. Sport Wales pledges to match funds that the community raises with a higher proportion of match funding for projects that support under-represented demographics in sport, and greater funding again for areas with the highest levels of deprivation. The approach has ensured that funding is directed to projects with significant local buy in, reflecting the needs of that community.
Sport Wales works with a range of national partners to support the delivery of the Vision for Sport in Wales. During the period of the Strategic Equality Plan, we have built relationships and funded new partnerships such as the Outdoor Partnership and the Black Swimming Association. These relationships have provided new insight and supported our aim of taking a more person-centred approach, extending our reach and impact.
Embedding equality into procurement and commissioning
Sport Wales is firmly established as a fair play employer, paying all staff the Real Living Wage and requiring our contractors to do the same, ensuring fair pay for all.
During the period, we undertook a competitive tender exercise to appoint a commissioned partner to operate Plas Menai. The procurement factored in the emerging provisions of the Social Partnership and Procurement (Wales) Bill in advance of the enactment of the legislation. The procurement included a focus upon social objectives and tackling inequalities, growing participation and using local supply chains.
Our procurement templates support our staff to build equality expectations into our procurement processes, prompting questions around actions taken by the bidders, Equality Policies, reported pay gaps etc. There is more that we can do to embed this approach into our procurement processes and this is reflected in our objectives for the period 2024-2028.
