When thinking about recruitment, it is important to consider the way in which you collect personal information, where it is stored, and how you are using it to encourage those who are otherwise not involved in the sector to become included. CEMVO Scotland have created a Diversity Data Collection Analysis Toolkit that answers these questions and provides further insights into aspects of recruitment that you may not have thought of.

We recommend that you watch WWF Scotland & CEMVO Scotland’s workshop on inclusive recruitment as part of the EDI Fortnight 2023 and read the Inclusive Working Culture section below before you post advertisements for roles (both work and volunteering) to gain insight into barriers in joining the environmental sector. The recording and slides can be found under EDI Fortnight 2023 materials.

A great resource to aid this is the New to Nature Inclusive Recruitment Guide that provides guidance on how to attract young people (aged 18-25) from ethnically diverse backgrounds, disabled, and/or economically disadvantaged backgrounds into working or volunteering at your organisation.

Another great resource is the Racial Equity in Nature Toolkit that focuses on inclusive and equitable approaches to the recruitment and retention of early career talent, with a particular focus on young people aged 18-25 from ethnically diverse communities.

Gov.UK has also developed a practical guide for managers recruiting, managing and developing disabled people via the Disability Confident Scheme.

When advertising your roles, you can consider joining Black Professionals Scotland to post via their website, posting on GoodMoves, and through the Ethnic Minority Environmental Network- if you have joined the Race Equality Environmental Programme.

The Scottish Refugee Council also provided talks on recruiting, the recruitment process, rights to work, and rights to volunteer for asylum seekers and refugees as part of the EDI Fortnight 2024. You can find the information under EDI Fortnight 2024 materials. Within this session, they note the importance of understanding cultural differences. For example, some countries will have different practices and certain things that are common knowledge to a person that has lived in the UK a long time, may need to be explained further to those who have not (e.g., maternity leave, bereavement leave etc). 

To be an organisation that is truly inclusive, your organisation must have its cultural values stated on its website, advertising, and any other forms of media. Below are some excellent examples from our member organisations!

National Trust for Scotland – Love What You Do

The Ramblers – Values

Soil Association – Culture and Beliefs

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion strategy by WWF

CIEEM – Breaking Down Barriers to Inclusion

The Wildlife Trust – Our Commitment to Equality, Diversity & Inclusion

Froglife – Our Values

ERCS – Our Values

Green Jobs for Nature – EDI

As you can see from the above, some have more detailed information and others have inclusion or value statements. Big or small, as long as you are stating that you are inclusive and holding yourself accountable to those values, you are doing great!

You may also have noticed that some of the above organisations have pledged to certain things to show that they are implementing an inclusive working culture at their workplace for their current staff and prospective staff. There are multiple pledges and schemes such as:

• Disability Confident
• Living Wage Employer
• CEMVO Scotland’s Diversity Data Collection Analysis Toolkit
• Submitting data to the RACE report
• Diversity Employment Pledge
• Stonewall’s Equality Index
• Gender Pay Gap
• Force of Nature

Some of the schemes are completely free of cost (for example, Disability Confident, CEMVO Scotland, RACE report, Gender Pay Gap), whereas others will vary in cost.

We also highly recommend that organisations monitor their EDI journey by collecting EDI data (e.g., from staff, volunteers, and membership etc) and then compare it year by year- this is known as benchmarking your data. This could be by monitoring the equal opportunities statistics from new and current staff, or by sending out an annual survey to staff, members, and beneficiaries of your organisation. By doing so, you will see where your strengths are and where there are gaps that need to be examined further.

If you are lacking in a demographic or understanding of why certain groups of people are not engaging in your work/organisation/mission, we also highly recommend contacting those communities to gain insight. The Scottish Wildlife Trust have a brilliant example of this through their Oceans of Value project.  

To be an organisation that is truly inclusive, your organisation must have its cultural values stated on its website, advertising, and any other forms of media. Below are some excellent examples from our member organisations!

The Wildlife Trust – Our Commitment to Equality, Diversity & Inclusion

Green Jobs for Nature – EDI

You may also have noticed that some of the above organisations have pledged to certain things to show that they are implementing an inclusive working culture at their workplace for their current staff and prospective staff. There are multiple pledges and schemes such as:

• Disability Confident
• Living Wage Employer
• Diversity Employment Pledge

We highly recommend that you read Volunteer Scotland and Make Your Mark resources that specifically focus on volunteer engagement and inclusivity- particularly on the importance of budgeting for volunteers.

• Make Your Mark – Inclusive Volunteering Toolkit
• Make Your Mark – Budgeting for Inclusion
• Volunteer Scotland – Guidance and Resources
• Make Your Mark – Resources
• Make Your Mark – Volunteer Inclusion
• Investing in Volunteers – 6 Quality Areas
• Volunteer Wiki – Equality and Diversity in Volunteering

If you are lacking in a demographic or understanding of why certain groups of people are not engaging in your work/organisation/mission, we also highly recommend contacting those communities to gain insight. The Scottish Wildlife Trust have a brilliant example of this through their Oceans of Value project.

Another way to demonstrate inclusion and inclusive practices for volunteers is setting up groups for underrepresented groups. For example, the Marine Conservation Society have a Youth Ocean Network, and CIEEM have STEM- Inspiring the Next Generation.

If you are interested in recruiting asylum seekers or refugees to volunteer at your organisation, you can post advertisements in the Scottish Refugee Council newsletter. For further information on this, see EDI Fortnight 2024 materials.

EDI is for everyone to discuss, address, and implement within your staff or volunteer team, from junior members of staff to senior members of staff (inclusive of CO’s) and board members. We encourage those from all levels within your organisation to attend an EDI group that you are creating to learn and engage in EDI to make strategic change.

When creating your EDI group, consider the following questions:

1. Who are going to lead the group (i.e., arrange meetings, take notes, pass information along to appropriate persons)?
2. What are you trying to accomplish through the EDI group? Is it specific aspects (e.g., anti-racism and race equality, disability, adjustments and interviewing processes) to be discussed and changes made, raise issues to management, or is it overall structural organisational change that encapsulates all aspects of EDI?
3. How often are you going to hold these meetings?
4. Are you going to attach EDI as part of your team meetings and strategic planning meetings (top down), or have a separate EDI group that reports to senior management to take to the board (bottom up), or both? If you are using a bottom-up approach, be mindful of that you may have to take your proposals for change to a decision-making group (e.g., senior management, CO, board etc) before implementation can be made.

Some members have EDI as a topic of discussion within strategic planning meetings, or within their staff team meetings. Having EDI as a topic of discussion in these types of meetings that are already being held enables time to discuss more formally and strategically on the process of change within an organisation (it also doesn’t take extra time out of people’s schedules to hold a separate group meeting!). However, in this instance, we still recommend that staff/volunteers come prepared to these meetings with what needs to be discussed under EDI- the same as any other type of meeting where you discuss a topic under an agenda point.

In all cases, your EDI group should be linked to your organisational strategic goals so that they can be embedded and implemented easily, and so it has buy-in from senior leadership and board.

Making a record of what was discussed and actions, the same as minutes, or in the form of a Diversity Action Plan, is also recommended so that you can see if progress has been made.

Support, training, and resourcing

In terms of support for your staff on topics that come under EDI, the Nature for All project offers 1:1 support for your organisation, and free training for all LINK members staff/volunteers, to attend. We recommend that all staff that are involved in EDI attend training. There are also multiple recommended schemes and support groups, including how to support safe and inclusive workspaces, mentioned throughout the Nature for All Resource Hub for you to have guidance and join. If you would like more information on 1:1 support, or further guidance, please see the Contact Us page.

If the Nature for All project is not offering the training you would like, consider resourcing and finding external providers. If you would like help with this, we have recommended EDI organisations under the Case studies and resources page, or you can contact the lead of the Nature for All project via the Contact Us page to arrange a chat for recommendations.

We are new to EDI as an organisation, how do we start?

If you are new to setting up an EDI group or wanting to discuss EDI within your strategic planning meetings/staff team meetings, we recommend an anonymous survey (e.g., Microsoft Forms) to be sent out to your staff/volunteer team, CO, and board members to understand their perspectives on EDI and what they believe are important to discuss. After you have received your results, you can analyse those and see which topics need to be raised and how you would like to create your group. Please see Role of your EDI group and Support, training, and resourcing above for further guidance.

Important note

An important note is to remember that some people may be more knowledgeable on EDI than others, whereas others may be new to the topic. This means that to keep the meeting fair, things should be explained as new to all, unless otherwise stated. Respectful intellectual curiosity around certain topics should also be welcomed and not belittled, too. We are all learning, and it is fine to get things wrong or not understand things fully, so long as we are actively learning and making changes to be more inclusive and diverse!

We are in the process of setting up a support/networking EDI pilot project called Scottish Environment EDI Network (SEEN).  The aim is to have a Scottish environment sector-wide dialogue around equality, diversity and inclusion.  We hope in sharing information, events, and areas of good practice this will support us all on our EDI journey.  The project will run for 12 months with bi-monthly meetings and be directed by your needs and aspirations wherever possible.  Please contact Leigh if you are interested in joining leigh@scotlink.org.