Equality Impact Assessments Guide

What is an Equality Impact Assessment?

An Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) is an evidence-based, systematic tool designed to support fairness and equality throughout key aspects of organisational activity. The central purpose of an EIA is to avoid discrimination – against staff, clients, customers, and other stakeholders. This makes them a vital tool to deploy during any form of policy creation, project design, or workplace activity.  

Equality Impact Assessments were first introduced to help organisations meet their public sector equality duties, as outlined in the Equality Act 2010. Under this act, all public sector organisations must show due regard to the following: 

• Eliminate unlawful discrimination
• Advance equality of opportunity
• Foster good relations 

Deploying a proper EIA process involved the creation of a bespoke template, suitable for every organisation. Using EIAs helps to protect public, private, and third-sector organisations from inadvertent discrimination against protected groups such as those with long-term disabilities or neurodivergence.  

EIAs are not legal requirements but they do offer an effective preventative tool to help organisations meet their legal obligations. They support best practices in diversity and inclusion and reduce the risk of discrimination. Recent data suggests disability discrimination claims have increased by 30% and EIAs can help to reduce this by focusing on the protected characteristics: 

1. Age
2. Disability, including neurodivergence 
3. Gender reassignment
4. Marriage and civil partnership
5. Pregnancy and maternity
6. Race, including colour, nationality, or ethnicity
7. Religion or belief systems
8. Sex and gender
9. Sexual orientation 

Why Are Equality Impact Assessments Important?

Equality Impact Assessments are important for many reasons. In essence, they exist to protect an organisation from potential discrimination claims. But they can also help in several other ways: 

• Promote equality: The Equality Act 2010 exists to ensure people receive fair treatment and don’t experience discrimination. Equality Impact Assessments offer a critical way to adhere to moral standards and give due regard to individual differences.    
• Plan for inclusion: Inclusion is a powerful driver for organisational success. Evidence supports this with data showing how inclusive teams make better decisions and are over a third more productive than non-inclusive teams. EIAs can help leaders account for better inclusion at every level of their organisation.  
• Identify negative impacts: Equality Impact Assessments highlight where organisations may have inadvertently or unintentionally discriminated against or excluded people. Doing so can be very damaging to an organisation’s reputation and may lead to legal issues.  
• Support staff: DEI and HR leaders shouldn’t have to do all the work to boost inclusion. Implementing EIAs as a standard part of due diligence in all project planning can support everyone in making more considered decisions on policy formation, project planning, and the potential impact on customers, clients, and the public. 
• Make better decisions: Around 1 in 14 people is neurodivergent. Most organisations will have staff with ASD, dyslexia, ADHD, dyspraxia, or dyscalculia and EIA’s could be a helpful way to support the process of making reasonable adjustments for them. 

Equality Impact Assessment Guidance

How exactly can you deploy an Equality Impact Assessment in your specific organisational context? It’s vital to ensure fairness and equality for all protected characteristics. And this may or may not be an easy thing to do, depending on the context. To help you, we’ve created a list of the key issues to consider: 

Start Early

Kick off the EIA process as soon as possible and before any new policy formation, event, or funding activity. Making it a key pillar in your due diligence processes can help to normalise the process. Plus, an early assessment may assist with better decision-making and avoid costly mistakes, omissions, or unwanted problems.

Build Evidence

Building an evidence base is a vital part of the EIA process. You may want to involve relevant protected groups in a consultative process. This is much easier when you have in-house Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), for instance. ERGs or similar types of groups can offer first-hand insights and may lead to better organisational outcomes by as much as 8X.

Other data points to consider collecting include interviews and feedback forms, statistical analysis, complaints, or other qualitative research and feedback from within or outside of your sector. 

Make a Reliable Judgement

In the absence of relevant, suitable, or sufficient research you may need to make a values-based decision instead. Judging the impact of your organisation’s actions on protected characteristics can be tricky, particularly in instances of new policies or management decisions that have no comparable examples. 

If proper evidence is unavailable, it’s advised to make a judgement based on consensus and company values. Any judgement made should avoid apparent or obvious prejudice, assumptions, or potential risks to the health and wellbeing of protected groups. 

Make an Evaluation

Protected characteristics can overlap or interconnect. For instance, groups of neurodivergent women may also need further analysis on the potential for pregnancy or maternity considerations. Evaluating the impact may be complex. But, in general, any evaluation should come down to choosing one from a list of options: 

• No changes to make: There is little to no impact so activity can proceed. 
• Adapt or change the activity: Make adjustments to the activity to eliminate bias.
• Proceed with caution: The impact on protected characteristics may be minimal.
• Stop the activity completely: Impact on protected characteristics may be too significant to continue. 

Retain all EIAs and record the decisions made. Also, where there will be a significant impact on protected groups, be ready to adjust or renegotiate activities that still need to go ahead.  

Equality Impact Assessment Template

The aim for all organisations should be to create their own Equality Impact Assessment template. Each one will be different and adapted to each organisation’s needs. But there are some common themes and structures that apply. 

A downloadable Equality Impact Assessment template from the mental health charity MIND offers an effective structure for capturing key information and making an accurate assessment. Your organisation will have different considerations to make. You may find the process is different depending on the type of activity you’re planning. For further inspiration for adapted EIAs, take a look at the Equality Impact Assessment templates from Nottinghamshire County Council.