Our goal is to be a diverse, inclusive organisation where our people thrive and meet our customers’ needs with fairness and empathy.
Inclusion is one of our values, guiding how we act every day.
Our work to embed an inclusive environment for our customers and colleagues is based on an understanding that treating everyone fairly is not about treating everyone the same. It’s about appreciating that each person is an individual and understanding their needs. It's about continually learning, listening to diverse voices, and working in a way that ensures everyone feels respected, valued, included and heard.
We know that having an inclusive culture makes for a happier, more engaged, more productive workforce, better decision making, more innovation, improved risk management, and improved customer service. It’s good for our staff and good for our customers.
The things that matter to us are:
Our diversity and inclusion strategy
We have a diversity and inclusion strategy, Inclusion for All, which sets out how we plan to achieve those goals, and how we’ll track our progress.
Our second Inclusion for All strategy runs from 2024-2026 and aims to broaden the scope of our diversity and inclusion work, with a greater focus on our customers, being data informed, and ensuring that we’re delivering equity in our workplaces and the communities we serve.
We worked closely with our colleagues and our customers to develop the strategy, listening to their diverse voices to understand how we can design and deliver services that truly meet their needs.
Our strategy has four objectives:
- Know our customers – we want to be a trusted partner to our customers, recognising their diversity and putting them at the heart of all we do.
- Attract, retain and develop diverse talent – we’ll seek to enhance the diversity of our workforce at all levels, ensuring we reflect and understand the communities that we work in.
- Provide accessible and inclusive workplaces and services - remove barriers and create environments that achieve equitable outcomes for both colleagues and customers.
- Embed an inclusive culture - create a culture where differences are valued and everyone can thrive and reach their full potential.
Read a simplified version of our Inclusion for All Strategy 2024 – 2026 (PDF 1.3MB).
Diversity and inclusion governance
Delivery of our strategy is through the partnership working of four main groups. These are held accountable through regular reports to our Group Board.
- Executive Committee
- Inclusion for All activity leads
- Diversity and Inclusion leads
- Staff Networks
Progress in achieving the strategic objectives is monitored quarterly and all plans are renewed annually. We report on progress to Sanctuary’s Board every six months.
Equality monitoring
At its simplest, monitoring is a process of collecting, storing and analysing demographic data and using this data to improve our services. We monitor the following protected characteristics as defined by the Equality Act 2010:
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age
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disability
- gender reassignment
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marriage and civil partnership
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pregnancy and maternity
- race
- religion and belief
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sex
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sexual orientation
On the basis of information gathered, we are able to make improvements based on which groups may or may not be using our services.
Disability Confident Employer
Sanctuary is a Disability Confident Employer, registered with the Government as an organisation which recognises that many disabled people have the skills, talents and experience that we are looking for.
This voluntary scheme aims to help employers value the work of disabled people and those with long-term health conditions and ensure they have opportunities to fulfil their potential.
As part of our commitment, we conduct self-assessments to ensure that we are meeting our responsibilities in recruiting and retaining disabled people, and that we are also:
- actively looking to attract and recruit disabled people
- providing a fully inclusive and accessible recruitment process
- flexible when assessing people so that disabled applicants can demonstrate that they can do the job
- making reasonable adjustments (such as adaptations to premises or equipment) as required
- supporting staff to manage their disabilities or health conditions
- encouraging suppliers to be Disability Confident
We are also members of the Business Disability Forum. We meet regularly and seek to make good use of their advice and services to improve our performance and deepen our capability as a disability confident employer.