Diversity and Inclusion Progression Framework
2017 Benchmarking Report
The 2017 Diversity and Inclusion Progression Framework was developed in a collaboration between the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) and the Science Council with the aim of helping professional bodies track and plan progress on diversity and inclusion.The Framework asks professional bodies about their progress on diversity and inclusion in eight areas of their work, by setting out four levels of good practice on each.
| The eight areas are: | The four levels of good practice are: |
| 1. Governance and leadership | Level 1: Initiating |
| 2. Membership and professional registration | Level 2: Developing |
| 3. Meetings, conferences and events | Level 3: Engaging |
| 4. Education and training, accreditation and examinations | Level 4: Evolving |
| 5. Prizes, awards and grants | |
| 6. Communications, marketing, outreach and engagement | |
| 7. Employment | |
| 8. Monitoring and measuring |
In completing the Framework for the 2017 Progression Framework benchmarking exercise, participants were asked to self-assess their progress in each of the eight categories above, by allocating a score on a simple Excel spreadsheet as follows: score 1 where progress is self-assessed to be at Level 1, score 2 where progress is self-assessed to be at Level 2 etc. Participants were invited to score 0 if they were unable to record any activity at Levels 1 to 4. They were also asked to respond to a number of qualitative and measurement questions regarding progress on diversity and inclusion in their organisations.
The feedback on BINDT’s self-assessment in the 2017 Diversity and Inclusion Progression Framework benchmarking exercise, is as follows:
Key findings
Strengths:
- BINDT has clear senior level engagement on diversity and inclusion, with a Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Group that has a reporting line direct into BINDT Council, a Strategic Plan which contains explicit aims and deliverables on diversity and inclusion and visibly engaged Board members and trustees, including the BINDT President.
- Training on unconscious bias is being rolled out across the whole governance, leadership and management structure.
- Diversity and inclusion is being integrated into core functions and services, such as communications, the BINDT leadership and management model and the new propositions on Membership, and Awards and Recognition.
Areas for development:
- Women and minority ethnic people are under-represented on the Board of BINDT when compared with the Boards of other PEIs participating in this benchmarking exercise.
- Continuing to secure real leadership change on diversity and inclusion; the challenge of ‘making a lot of very small changes in the behaviour and mind-set of people in the governance, leadership and management structure’.
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‘Greater diversity and inclusion is explicitly embedded in BINDT's vision and strategic plan for the first time’ and there is a lot of work under development, but an overall action plan needs to be put in place that translates the vision into actions.
