International Women’s Day

Sheffield Hallam University and Hallam Students’ Union are hosting a series of awareness sessions for

National Hate Crime Awareness Week 13-20 October 2018

Hate crimes and incidents are underreported; however, they can have a number of negative and lasting effects on their victims.

The aims of these sessions are to raise the awareness of hate crime, the impacts it can have and to encourage people to report any hate crime or incident no matter how small.

At each session you will hear from the Sheffield Hate Crime Coordinator, Student Wellbeing talking about the new hate crime reporting tool, a volunteer for Stop Hate UK, the Student Union talking about the #DontStandBy campaign, police officers to give real life stories plus a Q&A to finish. Each session will focus on a different theme.

These FREE sessions are open to ALL Sheffield Hallam staff and students but you will need to follow the links below to book your place.

This session will focus on racial hate crime https://tinyurl.com/ybz7klwe

This session will focus on sexual orientation hate crime https://tinyurl.com/y8axwq96

This session will focus on faith hate crime https://tinyurl.com/y75oslt9

This session will focus on disability hate crime https://tinyurl.com/ydgkwn2h

This session will focus on gender identity hate crime https://tinyurl.com/y7h9295a

If you have any questions please email diversity@shu.ac.uk

Sheffield Hallam University/Sheffield Institute of Arts and SIGNAL, Sheffield Hallam’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans + staff network are delighted to be hosting Tom Dingley’s OUTCOME exhibition for the first two weeks of May in the run up to IDAHOBIT.

The exhibition opens on 3 May in the Cantor Building Atrium with an official launch and we finish up with a studio day on the 12 May, when Tom will take photos of people who want to join the portfolio of fabulous LGBT+ people already featured in the project, and be part of the exhibition on its next outing.

If you want to book a slot for a portrait contact Tom  @OutcomeLGBT or tom_dingley@hotmail.co.uk

We’re proud to announce the third of our film nights in our Equality in Motion series to support Sheffield Hallam’s commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion.

On Wednesday 26 October we’ll be hosting a special screening of the film Concussion as part of our Black History Month celebrations. Starring Will Smith, the film is based on the true story of pathologist Dr Bennet Omalu who uncovers the truth about brain damage in American football players and his battle with the National Football League to make it known to the world. Taking place at the Curzon Cinema, the event will start at 6pm.

You can find out more and view a trailer of the film here

Tickets are free to all Sheffield Hallam University staff and you can bring a plus one. If you’d like to come along to Equality in Motion on 26 October, please send an expression of interest to Trish Elwis at diversity@shu.ac.uk by 4 pm on 19 October.

Because there are a limited number of seats available, we’ll let you know if you’ve got a ticket by the end of Thursday 20 October. If we are over-subscribed we will run a waiting list.

[Opinions are my own and not associated with the university].

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Last week a Sheffield Hallam University study has found that obese men and women are less likely to be employed because of their weight.

“Each of the employers who took part in the study were given identical, hypothetical CVs with accompanying photographs depicting fat and thin people. Each of the applicants met all the criteria stated within the job descriptions and person specifications and they were each given a suitability score out of 42.

Men of a normal weight received an average overall score of 39.14 while the obese male applicants scored 25.38.

The average suitability score for women of a normal weight was 34.65 out of a possible 42 while women who were obese scored 23.31.

The study also concluded that those CVs without an accompanying photograph scored higher than the applicants whose photos depicted an obese man (scoring 30.42) and an obese woman who scored 28.27.”

Read the full article on: http://www.poandpo.com/business-as-usual/obese-men-women-less-likely-to-be-employed-10-5-2016/

This got me thinking more about the unconscious biases we face everyday. Recruiters are expected to be fair throughout the recruitment process, judging candidates purely for their suitability against the person specification and criteria, but unfortunately this is not always the case. As we can see from the above article, even the addition of a photo sways recruiters to use their inherent personal preferences to make a judgement. Do companies do enough to counteract this?

To answer this we need to firstly explore what unconscious bias really is. The Equality Challenge Unit says, “implicit or unconscious bias happens by our brains making incredibly quick judgments and assessments of people and situations without us realising. Our biases are influenced by our background, cultural environment and personal experiences. We may not even be aware of these views and opinions, or be aware of their full impact and implications.”

It is often said that we find ourselves preferring ‘people like us’. So if a White British man is on the recruitment panel then he is likely to unconsciously prefer the candidate that looks like him; or the basketball player on the panel prefers the candidate who also plays basketball; or the new mum favours the person who has just returned from parental leave. We are naturally drawn to people that we have commonalities with, we find comfort in what we know, regardless of whether we believe this to be the right choice. This can manifest itself in a bias recruitment process, such as the above example of weight and gender bias.

So what can we do? Many organisations deliver equality and diversity training, informing their staff population of the policies and procedures that they must abide by. This is a fantastic opportunity to inform staff of the requirements of the Equality Act 2010, aiming to prevent direct and indirect discrimination and provide an overall inclusive workplace. But this is a conscious act – a decision to take on board the information presented and it offers only a brief opportunity for staff to focus on equality and diversity.

Other organisations, including ours, also complement this with unconscious bias training. They widen the equality and diversity training emphasis to incorporate awareness of the natural, implicit biases that we all have. This is set in the context of our workplace, offering examples and scenarios that staff are likely to relate to. Should we be expecting all companies to deliver similar training? You could argue that the smaller organisations cannot afford to invest in such training, but perhaps these are the companies that are also more likely to allow implicit bias into their recruitment processes?

For example, I was recently talking to someone about the company they work for: a medium-sized company in the automotive industry. They don’t have any female employees in their company. None.

He argued that the working hours are not manageable if you have children: a statement that can be contended from many perspectives, notably the assumption that a) all women have children  and b) no man is involved with the care of their child. But what I find very hard to believe is that no women apply to work there. They’re a medium-sized company, and they offer a sizeable amount of jobs, so why wouldn’t at least the occasional female apply? Perhaps unconscious bias has a part in this.

Are there companies out there, like ours, that see unconscious bias training as an integral part of their equality and diversity training to ensure they offer an inclusive environment to all employees whilst there are companies, like the above, that see no problem with the way they work and have no awareness of unconscious biases? Perhaps it is time for the government to make unconscious bias training (or awareness) a legal requirement. Remove the choice to train on unconscious bias and perhaps this will improve the diversity of staff nationwide in a fair way.

If you want to check your unconscious biases try taking the Harvard Implicit Association test: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/uk/

If you’re a member of Sheffield Hallam staff then you can undertake our unconscious bias training at: https://portal.shu.ac.uk/departments/HRD/equality/Pages/online%20modules.aspx

“The numbers tell the story. Entry level roles in public relations in the UK are dominated by women. In management roles the situation is reversed.

Women account for 70 per cent of the workforce in public relations according to the Holmes Report and yet account for only 30 per cent of the top jobs.

The salary gap between the sexes has consistently been around £10,000 for the four years that the CIPR has tracked data.

It’s nonsense. The Equal Pay Act outlawed any differences in salary between the sexes in 1970.

The CIPR has addressed the issue with advice and guidelines. It’s a start and it helps characterise the issue but there’s limited evidence to suggest that it’s making a difference.”

Full article on The Drum: http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2016/05/10/public-relations-has-problem-gender