The importance of annual policy reviews

Each year, Core Team, the senior strategy group at Jamescape, conducts a full review of every one of our 30+ company policies. This covers everything from Adverse Weather & Travel Disruption Policy to our Health & Safety Policy to our Whistleblowing Policy. Essentially, this is the dull part of working in senior leadership, but each and every policy is incredibly important to how we operate in a sustainable and fair manner to our staff.

Reviewing policies annually is more than just a corporate procedure to us, it’s a crucial process to ensure that our procedures are up-to-date and following best practice on fair and inclusive employment from an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) perspective. As a Disability Confident Leader organisation, we are committed to going above and beyond in this regard.

How we embed inclusivity in policies

With 2/3 of Jamescape’s current Core Team identifying as disabled, it was easy to identify aspects of company procedure that unintentionally introduced barriers for disabled staff. Due to how traditional business practices were not designed to be accessible, these barriers are everywhere.

Companies are required to offer reasonable adjustments to disabled staff under the Equality Act 2010, but by explicitly acknowledging these barriers and including reasonable adjustments in writing throughout company policy, it demonstrates a deep understanding and a true commitment to supporting disabled staff to thrive in the workplace. It sends a strong message to our team that Jamescape is truly inclusive as we’re taking the effort to embed good EDI values throughout all procedures. Despite Jamescape being a small team, by addressing this now we ensure that we get things right as soon as possible, allowing us to grow sustainably.

Some examples of cases where we have introduced inclusive practices in policies are:

• Giving disabled staff extra consideration where a disability has impacted their ability to travel to work.
• Giving staff the right for a companion to attend a disciplinary meeting to support them overcoming a barrier resulting from a disability, or if they have difficulty understanding English.
• Offering information in a different format if it is inaccessible due to a disability.

We are also working to produce information pages internally that explain policy procedure in an easier-to-digest way. These pages are not designed to be legally binding, so they can be written more informally, meaning that they can demystify company procedures, making them more accessible for everyone but particularly disabled staff.

Writing new policies

During each annual review, we identify gaps in our policy set and we address these by writing new ones. Some examples from our most recent policy review include:

• To prepare for our aim to enhance gender diversity within our team, we wrote a Maternity Policy, alongside a Paternity Policy, Adoption Policy, and Shared Parental Leave Policy (birth and adoption).
• Long Service Sabbatical Policy to reward staff who have made a long-term contribution to the company with a six-month paid sabbatical leave after 20 years of service.
• Safeguarding Policy to support our work experience offer for KS5 students at our partner company.

Want to introduce this in your own organisation?

If you’re interested in finding out how you can embed EDI into your organisational policies and procedures, drop us a line and we’ll have a chat.