ARI
Attraction, Recruitment and Induction
Inclusive recruitment and induction practices advance equality by promoting fair access to opportunities and ensuring that all staff and students feel welcomed, valued and supported to achieve their potential.
For staff, this strand focuses on strengthening inclusive recruitment and induction through a co-developed recruitment strategy, enhanced guidance and resources for recruiters, diverse recruitment panels, removal of barriers within recruitment materials, and refined induction processes.
For prospective students, this strand focuses on ensuring diverse and authentic representation across marketing, outreach, widening participation and recruitment activities, helping individuals to see Lancaster as a place where they can belong, succeed and thrive
CE
Community Engagement
Existing initiatives, such as the 2025 Athena Swan Good Practice Sharing Event, have demonstrated the value of structured knowledge exchange in enabling learning, addressing shared challenges, and fostering a collaborative EDI culture.
This strand focuses on strengthening mechanisms for sharing and embedding inclusive practice within and beyond the University, maximising the impact of successful approaches, supporting continuous learning, and identifying opportunities to share effective inclusive practices with local community and external partners.
CI
Culture and Inclusion
This strand focuses on strengthening a supportive and inclusive workplace culture by addressing factors that influence staff wellbeing, belonging and equality of opportunity.
Actions include fostering a stronger sense of belonging, embedding a values-led approach across people policies and practices, developing a clear and accessible digital hub for HR policies and guidance, and enhancing resources and guidance for colleagues and managers to promote consistency. The strand also seeks to strengthen dignity and respect at work through improved approaches to preventing and addressing bullying and harassment, alongside enhanced support at life stages such as menopause.
Recognising caring responsibilities as a key equality issue, actions focus on improving support for carers through the introduction of a Carers Passport, reviewing opportunities to strengthen family-friendly policies and provisions, promoting greater equity across different forms of caring responsibility, and improving the consistency and effectiveness of flexible working arrangements.
DPP
Development, Progression, and Promotion
Removing barriers to career development, progression and promotion, and ensuring equitable access to opportunities across all roles, career stages and working patterns, remains a key priority in achieving equality of opportunity.
This strand seeks to strengthen career development and progression across academic, professional services, and technical roles by improving the visibility of career pathways, enhancing development and promotion support, and identifying factors that may influence progression outcomes for different staff groups.
For academic staff, actions include exploring disparities in promotion application and success rates, increasing the transparency and accessibility of promotion processes, and strengthening recognition of different forms of academic contribution, including teaching and scholarship.
For professional services and technical staff, actions focus on strengthening career progression frameworks, increasing the visibility of career development pathways, and evaluating the accessibility and impact of development provision.
IIE
Improving Intersectional Evaluation
Improving intersectional evaluation will enable the University to adopt a more mature and holistic approach to EDI data, providing a richer understanding of where inequalities exist and supporting evidence-based action where it is needed most.
This strand focuses on strengthening the University's approach to EDI data and evaluation through increased disclosure of protected characteristics, enhanced reporting and dashboard functionality, and the development of an institutional EDI data framework. It will support deeper intersectional analysis of staff and student experiences and outcomes, enabling the University to identify and better understand disparities, develop more targeted interventions, improve monitoring of progress against institutional EDI priorities and strengthen the evaluation of impact.
