Equality, diversity & inclusion

Ategi has a long standing reputation for being a friendly and fair support provider and employer.

We welcome people from different backgrounds into the team and we don’t discriminate. We work hard to ensure that everyone we employ, every shared lives carer we assist and every person we support has access to the same opportunities. However, we also recognise that people from minority groups may benefit from additional measures to be and to feel better included.

We monitor our culture to ensure we are as accessible as we can be for all groups and communities; that we are equitable in our practices and that we break down barriers where we can.

Ategi has a comprehensive Equality and Diversity Policy that is further supported by our Anti-Harassment Policy and Code of Conduct. Together these documents alongside the training we provide to staff formalise our approach to ensuring a positive and inclusive working environment. However, recognising the need continuous improvement alongside research on people’s experiences in the charitable sector, we want to do more. Therefore we have commenced an internal review, identified objectives to further advance our service and have signed up to the Eight principles to address the diversity deficit in charity leadership – ACEVO.

Throughout the year we will be reviewing and developing our systems further to enable greater data collection on the diversity of people we support and shared lives carers. In the first instance, we have analysed, and shared below, the equality and diversity position of our workforce.

Workforce EDI Position as of January 2025

The gender split of our workforce has improved with more men now working in the organisation at 26% (previously 21%).
For the first time we have also been able to assess the numbers of our staff who have told us they have a disability.
Although disappointingly, there has been a reduction in the age diversity of our staff with both the younger employee group under 25 (previously 20%) and older employees over 65 (previously 4%)
Historically we have been very limited on the availability of data around ethnicity however, we have considerably improved our data collection processes. Whilst the majority of our workforce is still white British at 72%, we are pleased to share that 28% of our team have a wide range of diverse origins, a 5% increase since 2022. This is a hugely positive position and clear demonstration that our efforts to be a diverse employer is working given the ONS data for White British residents in the main areas where we work is: Cardiff 79.2%, RCT 96.7%, South Gloucestershire 91.2% and Buckinghamshire 79.9%.
Furthermore, we also now collect data on the religious affiliations of our staff that will help us better understand and support the needs of our workforce.

EDI Objectives April 2023 – 2026

February 2025 Update, Kate Allen, CEO

The Ategi team is committed to ensuring that everyone is treated with dignity and respect. We set ourselves some strong objectives in 2023 when, for the first time, we conducted an analysis on our position.

I have provided an update on our progress against each objective:

The charity’s existing Equal Opportunities Policy will be reviewed and extended to support the movement for improved diversity and inclusion.
It has been reviewed.
We will further develop our systems and procedures for capturing employee data to enable greater analysis that will inform our position and progress as an employer. In particular we will assess the disability diversity within our workforce.
We capture data at the recruitment and onboarding stage and record it on our HR Information System introduced in 2023. This includes data on the declared disability of our staff.
We will introduce systems to record EDI for shared lives carers and people we support.
We have improved the data we hold, but we are doing more work on our systems development.
We will work transparently and share our EDI statistics on our website
We publish our position on the website.
We will assess the data available to us on a department by department basis to ensure diversity across all levels of the organisation.
We are now in a position to introduce that in 2025
We will identify and remove any barriers that might prevent the progression of employees from minority groups.
We are mindful of unconscious (and conscious) bias in our promotion, training opportunities & career development programmes. Our culture is an anti-discriminatory one.
We will conduct an EDI audit of the Board of Trustees.
We do this annually.
We will continue to encourage applications from minority groups for all roles (paid & volunteer, including Trustees) across the organisation.
We have standardised and improved our recruitment resources to attract a more diverse workforce.
We will explore a targeted recruitment approach to address identified gaps in diversity.
We consistently explore how we can do this according to the different locations in which we work.
We will monitor referrals received to assess how we might improve the accessibility of our services.
We discuss and consider this with our referrals, learning from other sector leaders.
We will collate diversity data for the geographical areas in which we work to identify practical targets on reaching people we support, employees and shared lives carers.
We are proactive in getting to know the areas in which we are providing services.
We will introduce more events and activities to enable greater participation and inclusion from employees, shared lives carers and people we support in our services.
We have introduced a wider range of informal events and activities to appeal to more people.