At NHS Frimley, we are committed to and actively promote a fair and inclusive environment where everyone feels valued and respected. Our aim is to create a workplace where every individual has a sense of belonging and is empowered to reach their full potential. We recognise that diversity is our strength, and inclusion is essential to achieving our mission of providing high-quality healthcare and addressing health inequalities. We work closely with our strategic partners to promote equality of access and treatment and by addressing health inequalities, we ensure that all individuals receive the care and support they need.
Our Commitment to EDI:
Inclusive Environment: We strive to create an environment where everyone, including patients, visitors and community members feel welcomed and included.
Valuing Diversity: We celebrate the diverse backgrounds and perspectives of our people and communities
Empowerment: We aim to empower everyone to achieve their best, recognising that each person’s contribution is essential to our success.
Equality of Access: Ensuring that all members of our community have equal access to healthcare services.
Fair Treatment: Promoting fair treatment in all aspects of our work.
Addressing Health Inequalities: Actively working to reduce inequalities in health
NHS Frimley is dedicated to making EDI central to everything we do, enhancing the well-being of our community and workforce. Together, we can build a more inclusive and equitable healthcare system.
Our EDI Ambition
As an NHS organisation our ambition is to:
· Ensure staff fully understand equality and diversity issues
· Make staff feel empowered to challenge prejudice and make reasonable adjustments in their own work areas
· Include equality and diversity training for all staff
· Ensure all staff promote the cultural and behavioural changes to ensure equality and diversity is demonstrated in all aspects of NHS Frimley's work
· Provide an environment for our staff which is free from unlawful discrimination
The role of EDI is central to the behaviours, processes and values of NHS Frimley and across Frimley Health and Care Integrated Care System. We proactively work to meet our duty to eliminate discrimination, advance equality of opportunity, foster good relations and reduce health inequalities across our staff, service users, partners, stakeholders and wider community.
Our EDI Objectives
Our Equality objectives help us focus attention on the priority issues within the organisation and help us to deliver improvements in policymaking, service delivery and employment, including resource allocation. Our equality objectives are reviewed annually, and updated every four years.
Our strategic equality objectives for 2024- 2027 are:
1. Continuing to improve staff declaration of protected characteristics
Action: Increase the percentage of staff declaring their protected characteristics to 90% within the next two years.
This will be done by:
enhancing staff understanding/trust in declaration process by awareness sessions
adding to induction, work with staff networks & Equality Advocates to share Develop short toolkit
Lead: EDI Team / Co-leads: People Team, Organisational Development Team
Updates “One pager” already developed; to use as base for a toolkit / training (depending on staff engagement preferences).
Target date: January 2027
Outcome measures: By 2027 we will have 90% declaration rates of all protected characteristics.
2. Improve the representation and experiences of Global Majority staff
Action: We will build a programme of work to ensure that our leadership teams are representative of the communities we serve in the next two years and have a positive experience at work. This will be done by:
continuing to deliver and monitor the NHS workforce race equality standard (WRES) ensuring we improve on metrics year on year
delivery of a reciprocal mentoring programme
delivery of the System Anti-Racism Framework
creating an inclusive talent management strategy
Lead: EDI Team. Stakeholders: Staff network, People Team, Organisational Development Team.
Updates: System anti-racism framework being finalised by March 2025
Target date: March 2025-2028
Outcome measures: By 2028 our workforce will be representative by ethnic diversity. Our WRES scores will show positive experiences for Global Majority staff.
3. Create a positive and inclusive culture.
Action: We will continue to enhance workplace inclusivity and belonging, so all our staff feel valued and respected. This will be done by:
delivering a series of awareness sessions across the year highlighting diversity e.g. Black History Month, LGBT History Month
achieve 50% staff participation: improvement in Org. culture metrics on NHS Staff Survey at end of 2025
empowering staff to understand / actively challenge microaggressions using the microaggression toolkit
develop training conversations for Toolkit
Continue to support our equality staff networks to have a voice in decision making and raise issues with senior leaders.
Leads: EDI and Organisational Development Teams
Updates: Toolkit in place
Target date: March 2025 – 2026
Outcome measures: Delivery of 6 awareness sessions covering various diversity areas. Improved participation rate on staff survey. Improved staff survey results by protected characteristics. Delivery on an annual EDI conference Empowered, supported staff networks.
Our EDI policy statement
Our EDI Policy Statement clearly directs our commitment to becoming an organisation which is pro-diversity and anti-discriminatory, where everyone’s diversity is valued and appreciated.
Our Zero Tolerance Statement
NHS Frimley Integrated Care Board/System (ICB/ICS) is committed to a strict policy of zero tolerance.
We believe all forms of diversity contribute to a positive and enriching experience for staff and the community we serve.
Zero Tolerance means we will never ignore, tolerate or condone discrimination, bullying, harassment, abuse or victimisation of any kind in any form.
This includes, but is not limited to, a person’s age, disability, gender reassignment, marital or civil partnership status, pregnancy or maternity status, race, religion or beliefs, sex, sexual orientation, or socio-economic background.
This applies to all staff working for or on behalf of NHS Frimley ICB/ICS, including suppliers or providers, as well as our service users.
We strongly encourage and fully support anyone who has experienced or witnessed these behaviours to raise it with a Line Manager, Freedom To Speak Up Guardian, Equality Advocate, Mental Health First Aider, Staff Network or Wellbeing Champion.
EDI Annual Reports
The Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Annual Report for 2024-2025 meets our Public Sector Equality Duty to report on equality information within the Integrated Care Board and, where available, the Integrated Care System.
To read specific information from our report, please click the document titles below:
- Annual Report Part A: Public Sector Equality Duty
- What our Public Sector Equality Duty means
- How we are eliminating prohibited conduct, advancing equality of opportunity and fostering good relations
- Next steps for the Integrated Care Board and System in 2025-26
- Annual Report Part B: Equality & Human Rights Commission Monitoring Project, NHS England Priorities and EDI Improvement Plan
- Inappropriate detention of people with Learning Disabilities and Autism
- Disproportionate detention of people from ethnic minorities under the Mental Health Act
- Ethnic disparities in maternity care
- Race equality in NHS recruitment and retention
- LGBTQ+ Healthcare
- Artificial Intelligence and Digitisation
- EDI Improvement Plan High Impact Actions
- Annual Report Part C: Community and Workforce Reports
- Workforce Disability Equality Standard Report & Action Plan
- Workforce Race Equality Standard Report & Action Plan
- Pay Gap Report
Legislation underpinning our work
NHS Frimley’s commitment to reducing workplace and community health inequalities, advancing patient engagement and involving and consulting with the public is driven by the principles of the:
· Health and Social Care Act 2012
We use Equality and Health Inequalities Analyses (EHIAs) to help us to meet our legal requirements of the Public Sector Equality Duty which is set out in the Equality Act 2010. There are three strands to the Public Sector Equality Duty. These are to:
· eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment, victimisation and other conduct prohibited by the Equality Act
· advance equality of opportunity between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not
· foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not
Training & Our Equality Advocates
We believe that in order to embed equality and diversity in NHS Frimley, we need to start with good education across the organisation. We provide access to training for all new staff members including a corporate induction programme.
We also offer a bespoke in-house ‘Equality Advocates Training’ programme. This has been developed to upskill staff to understand:
The overarching legal structures of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion work such as the Equality Act 2010 and Human Rights Act 1998
How attitudes, values and beliefs influence behaviour, including emotional intelligence, stress tolerance, language used and microaggressions
Bias, discrimination and privilege in themselves and others
How to be an active bystander/ally and holding courageous conversations
Healing after an incident
Mirror Board
Frimley ICS are proud to have developed and embedded a Mirror Board to the ICB’s Board.
This Board develops a pipeline of future leaders across the health and social care organisations working within our geography, while adding lived experiences to diversify the views and perspectives of the ICB’s Board.
For more information about our Mirror Board, click here.
Public involvement
We understand that there are times where a person's health outcomes will differ on the grounds of certain characteristics. In an attempt to address this we work closely with community groups that represent particular characteristics. This close working allows us to gather patient and public experience, which in turn informs our commissioning. This is designed to complement our public engagement activity. For more information on public engagement activities, visit the Get Involved section of the Frimley Health and Care Integrated Care System website.