Our commitment 

Our Equality Outcomes help us to meet the Public Sector Equality Duty. They are an impactful way that can progress equality, tackle discrimination and harassment and promote good relationships between different groups of people. 

As a public authority we must create and publish equality outcomes report every four years. Additionally, we must publish an update report on these outcomes every two years.

We have set seven Equality Outcomes for 2023 – 2027. These outcomes represent the priorities for Orkney Island Council, Orkney Island Council Education Authority and Orkney Island Council Area Licensing Board:

• We will aim to attract more diverse talent by reviewing policies and practices to ensure that there are no barriers to entering and sustaining employment for under-represented groups.
• We will aim to reduce the gender pay gap.
• People in Orkney have increased confidence and opportunities to express their views and influenced decision making and service design.
• People in Orkney have improved accessibility to all transport services.
• Pupils have a greater sense of belonging and safety in schools
• Young people in Orkney facing barriers are supported and leave our schools with sustained positive destinations.
• People in Orkney will have improved choice and accessibility to licencing application processes.

About our workforce

We undertake our equality duty to monitor and report on employee diversity to identify trends and address inequalities. We collect, publish, and monitor diversity information to ensure we support a culture of inclusion and identify areas for improvement. While employees are encouraged to keep their diversity information up to date, this is voluntary, and not everyone chooses to disclose all information. Increasing the disclosure rates of our workforce's diversity is ongoing work.

Last year, we updated our reporting categories to match the Census 2022 revision for better benchmarking. This meant we couldn’t transfer some of the old data, but we were able to add new information like caring responsibilities and long-term health conditions.

We have a duty to monitor by:

• age
• carers
• disability
• health condition
• ethnicity
• religion or belief
• sex
• sexual orientation

Please review the Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Priorities Progress Report for our Equalities monitoring data.