EIA Guidance

An Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) provides a structured way to consider how different groups of people may be affected by our work and identify and mitigate potential disadvantages.

This webpage provides guidance on how to complete an EIA and on the main EIA webpage you’ll find additional resources and answers to some common queries. If you have any other questions about EIAs, email us at socialinclusionpa@warwick.ac.uk.

Get started with the guidance below...

Background - Start with what you know

Begin with an overview of the work and who is affected. Use this to inform what you need to do next e.g., who do you need to speak to, what aspects of the work need to be considered.

Also, use anything you already know about the impact of the work in the assessment e.g., if you are updating existing work, use data/feedback about the current impact, or, if people involved in the work have training/skills/knowledge related to equality, explain how this is being utilised.

Impact - Look for what you don't know

When completing an EIA, look for implications of the work for different groups which might be:

Discrimination – The Equality Act prohibits discrimination. Direct discrimination is when someone is treated less favourably because of a characteristic. Indirect discrimination is when a policy/practice is the same for everyone but has a worse effect on some.
Inaccessibility – We take an ‘inclusive by design’ approach, meaning our services, environment, and processes should create dignified, equal, and intuitive use for all. Inaccessibility occurs when everyone’s needs aren’t considered, meaning a policy/practice/service is not right for or can’t be accessed by some people.
Positive impact – Don’t forget to consider any ways in which the work contributes to the aims of the Social Inclusion Strategy and helps advance equality, diversity, and inclusion.

Trying to simply think of equality impacts is difficult and limited by your own knowledge (and no one knows everything). Instead see this as a process of trying to uncover any impacts. You can:

Examine relevant data to check for differences between groups. Look at diversity – including the characteristics protected in the Equality Act – and employment/study factors e.g., grade, full/part-time (these can indicate indirect discrimination).
Learn from others’ expertise e.g., search for relevant guidance/research, ask in professional networks (such as Advance HE’s Connect platform), contact owners of similar work for any learning, ask specialist organisations.
Test the work by creating user profiles and then thinking about how those individuals would experience engaging with the work. Use Microsoft software to test accessibility, get readability statistics, and check for inclusive language.
Consult with people affected by the work e.g., through focus groups or an online survey. Make use of any existing feedback e.g., from earlier consultation or complaints.

Don't be afraid to find negative impact. The purpose of an EIA is to check for and deal with any negative impact. As such, finding negative impact is not bad. If the work is launched, then found to have negative impact that could have been foreseen, this is much more of a problem than finding it when completing an EIA. Finding negative impact will not mean the work can’t go ahead, so long as changes or mitigations are made.

A good EIA should demonstrate steps taken to assess the equality impact of the work, and any found.

The EIA should be clear on how a thorough effort has been made to uncover potential equality impacts through, for example, data analysis, research, testing the work (e.g., getting users to test the work or making use of staff/student profiles to do this), consultation with impacted communities.

Is the EIA fully completed?
Is reference made to evidence used to support the analysis?

Mitigation - Make any changes/mitigations to remove negative impact

If you identify that there may be negative implications for some groups, you should seek to make changes to the work or put in place mitigations to remove negative impact.

If you identify negative impact but believe there is a valid reason why the work can't be changed, you will need to justify not making changes/mitigations to remove negative impact by explaining:

Why the aim(s) of the work are legitimate (i.e., genuine and non-discriminatory).
Why the proposed approach is proportionate (i.e., appropriate and necessary).
The reason(s) that changes can’t be made (e.g., have you explored other options and identified why they wouldn’t work).

A good EIA should respond to negative impact by identifying changes or mitigations (where needed).

If negative impact is found, a genuine effort should be made to change or mitigate for this.

Are both positive and negative impacts considered?
Are there clear actions to mitigate negative impacts and enhance positive ones?

Review - Check what happens in practice

It is important to build in review of your EIA as the work develops and is delivered, to find and deal with any issues that come up which weren’t anticipated. It is also a good check of whether any changes or mitigations for negative impact are working. When writing your EIA, be sure to plan when/how often it should be reviewed (this will depend on the nature of the work).

Whether the potential impact of the work is known or unknown, you should build in a review and monitoring process to explore the impact the work has once it is in progress.

A good EIA should build in review to identify unforeseen impacts and assess if mitigations are working.

Ongoing review of equality impact is important to any work, especially if the potential impacts are not yet clear. All EIAs should include information on how and when they will review.

Is there a plan for monitoring and reviewing the EIA?
Are there mechanisms in place for updating the EIA as needed?

Save a copy of the completed EIA

The owner of the EIA should keep a copy in order to continue to update it as the work is carried out and reviewed and in anyone requests to see it at any point in the work.

Read the Social Inclusion Annual Report for more about the action we're taking.

The Social Inclusion Annual Report highlights the work that has been taking place across the University over the last year, and how it is helping us to meet our Social Inclusion Strategy objectives to increase the diversity of our staff and student communities, develop an inclusive culture, and become an internationally recognised leader in inclusion.