• Consult and engage staff and key stakeholders
• Collect data on your organisation
• Assess your workplace against the Standards to determine priorities 
• Develop or revise a long-term strategy and immediate action plan

Equality and Respect in Sport Standards

Gender equality indicators

Self-assessment tool

Effective consultation with staff, players and key stakeholders of your organisation will help you to increase readiness for change, build support for action and manage resistance. Consultation is essential to provide feedback on experiences, identify ways gender influences and shapes their working lives, and to provide feedback on their experience of the equality and respect change process.  

Consultation is key and reaching out to everyone across the organisation, actively asking for their input is important. To understand what needs to change, and why, staff should be asked questions about the current situation as well as how they see the future. Providing a variety of ways in which staff can give feedback and provide input is necessary. Some ways to consult include:  

• confidential surveys 
• informal conversations
• focus groups
• brainstorming in meetings
• raising gender issues as discussion points at planning days 

The consultation process is also an opportunity to raise awareness, increase understanding of violence against women and positively influence organisational culture. While these conversations about gender equality and violence are necessary and useful, they can be uncomfortable and bring up sensitive issues. It’s important, therefore, that you ensure confidentiality where needed and provide safe and supportive opportunities for people to speak openly.

Different types of information need to be collected for you to prioritise and plan your strategies for change. The Gender Equality Indicators tell you what information to collect, give advice on how to collect this information and provide links to useful resources to support you. A key part of the data collection and consultation process involves collecting information using the Staff Survey, which asks staff about organisational culture and practices. The Staff Survey is a useful way to measure the final two Gender equality indicators. Once you’ve consulted with staff, and collected other data, you can use the information gathered to help complete the Self-assessment tool and to select which actions to prioritise.  

To complete the Self-assessment tool, you’ll need to pull together a team from your workplace with a broad range of experiences and perspectives, who can realistically assess your progress towards meeting the five Standards. This might be the same team who is leading the equality and respect initiatives, or it may involve other staff members. The self-assessment tool will help you to reflect on your experience, practice, culture and processes, and identify key areas on which to focus your violence prevention efforts.   

It’s important that your choice of actions is deliberate and appropriate for your organisation. Mapping out how one action or achievement leads to the next will show if you’re on track to meet your long-term goals. Consider which actions might support other actions; for example, making sure that changes to one policy are reflected in other relevant polices.   

Once a long-term strategy is developed, your immediate priority areas will be clearer and you will be ready to develop an immediate action plan. This plan will need to be reviewed and updated annually. If multiple areas need to be addressed, consider what resources you have, and identify smaller steps you can take to move closer to achieving your long-term goals. Sometimes small steps can make a big cultural change which will help to build engagement and momentum across the organisation.  

Practical examples of how the above steps can look in your sporting organisation can be found in the Embedding Diversity and Inclusion in Sport and Part 2 of the Implementation guide.