Equality, Diversity & Inclusion in Employment

Everyone deserves an equal opportunity to succeed, regardless of their background or identity. The Careers team at Edge Hill University is here to support every student to develop the skills and experience that they need to achieve their career goals.

Rights in UK workplaces

Under The Equality Act 2010, employers have a legal responsibility to ensure that every candidate and employee is treated equally. The Equality Act lists protected characteristics and prevents unlawful discrimination against a person because of a protected characteristic. These are age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation.

Equality forms that are filled in during a job application are used for diversity monitoring purposes and will have no bearing on the success of your application. 

Positive Action

The Equality Act makes allowances for ‘Positive Action’ which allows employers to address under-representation of minority groups within their organization.

Some organisations address this by developing specific schemes or mentoring programmes for students who identify with certain characteristics.

Other positive action steps that employers may take include positive action statements in recruitment adverts, targeting their advertising of jobs or offering pre-application training. Positive action measures are designed to encourage applicants from the under-represented group to apply and enable them to perform to the best of their ability.

How can the Careers Team help?

The Careers team are here to help you to develop your employability by offering opportunities to learn, develop your graduate attributes, and acquire relevant work experience. We encourage all students to use our services from your first year onwards so that we can help you to get the most out of your experiences whilst at university and prepare you for graduate employment. We offer a range of appointments and events throughout the year.

Appointments

In addition to our standard appointment types, students who identify with one or more of the below Widening Participation characteristics can have exclusive access to ‘Get Ahead’ appointments.

In these ‘Get Ahead’ appointments we can discuss additional career topics that may concern you so that you can get the support that you need to reach your goals. This also includes the offer of more intensive 1-to-1 support for things like writing your CV, disclosing disabilities during the application process and Student Opportunity Fund applications.

‘Get Ahead’ appointments are 30 minutes long and will be with your dedicated Employment Adviser within the Careers team who will also support you in accessing additional support from a Careers Adviser when needed.

If you feel that you should be able to book one of these appointments but can’t, please submit an ‘Ask a Question’.

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Developing skills and experience

Ongoing support