SoPA EDI Open Forum

Thursday 7 Sept 2023, 10:00 → 11:00 Europe/London

6206 (JCMB)

Video capture of the forum is available at:

https://media.ed.ac.uk/media/SoPA+EDI+Open+Forum+7th+September+2023/1_ctarcwtq

Below are links to all the slides presented in the Forum.

On the last item click "Minutes" to see a summary of the Q&A session.

1 EDI committee & EDI Action Plan

Speaker: Victoria Martin (University of Edinburgh)

EDI-Open-Forum-7Sep23.pdf

2 School Statistics

Speaker: Susanna Richmond

EDI forum - Juno stats slides (2).pptx

3 SoPA workplace culture survey 2022 results

Speakers: Laura Keating (Institute for Astronomy), Michael Petersen

StaffSurvey.pdf

4 Committee Q&A

In the Q&A we discussed:

Pre-submitted Q: What is the School doing to address the gender pay gap?  A: need to discuss with School management.

 

Q: Should we look beyond gender? 

A: Yes, the EDI committee is to some extent.  We will try to produce some statistics on race - made harder as students generally do not declare their race anymore.  Some of the focus on gender has come due to IOP Juno and Athena SWAN focus on gender.  These awards are changing to new models with a broader focus beyond gender.

 

Q: School has grown and post-Covid there's many new people and we don't all know who everyone is. 

• How about a monthly email with a short paragraph and optional photo introducing new people?   
• Could we have an in-person School induction for new-staff, e.g. quaterly.

A: EDI committee will work with School HR team to try to produce something similar.

 

Q: Other data requested:

• Culture Survey results broken down by Institute
• Staff data on fixed-term vs open-ended contracts split by gender?

A: OK - we will produce these

 

Other comments from attendees 

Too many resources to find out information about the School and procedures (including EDI); updated staff handbook and everyone knowing about the handbook would be very helpful.

Many staff didn't agree with the statement "my workload is manageable".  Without fixing this, it might not be possible to also address issues around mental health support.