Anti-discrimination Policy

Our anti-discrimination policy explains how we prevent discrimination and protect our employees, customers and stakeholders from offensive and harmful behaviors. This policy supports our overall commitment to create a safe and happy work environment for everyone and a learning and mentoring environment for our mentors and mentees.

We explicitly prohibit offensive behaviour (e.g. derogatory comments towards colleagues of a specific gender or ethnicity.) and we abide by the Current Framework of UK Anti-Discrimination Law based on:

The Sex Discrimination Act 1975 (SDA 1975)

The Race Relations Act 1976 (RRA 1976)

The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA 1995)

Scope

This policy applies to all employees, contractors, visitors, customers, interns, volunteers and stakeholders (including mentors and mentees on our programmes).

Policy elements

Discrimination is any negative action or attitude directed toward someone because of protected characteristics, like race and gender. Other protected characteristics are:

• Age
• Religion
• Ethnicity/ nationality
• Disability/ medical history
• Marriage / civil partnership
• Pregnancy / maternity/ paternity
• Gender identity/ sexual orientation

Discrimination & Harassment

Our anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies go hand-in-hand. We will not tolerate any kind of discrimination that creates a hostile and unpleasant environment for employees, interns or volunteers.

This is not an exhaustive list, but here are some instances that we consider discrimination:

Employees who harass their colleagues will go through our disciplinary process and we may reprimand, demote or terminate them depending on the severity of their offence.

We recognize that sometimes discrimination is unintentional, as we may all have unconscious biases that could be difficult to identify and overcome. In case we conclude that an employee unconsciously discriminates, we will support them through training and counseling and implement processes that mitigate biases as we indicate in the next section. But, if this person shows unwillingness to change their behavior, we may demote or terminate them.

We will not be lenient in cases of assault, sexual harassment or workplace violence, whether physical or psychological. We will terminate employees who behave like this immediately.

Actions to prevent discrimination

To ensure that our conduct and processes are fair and lawful, we:

• Use inclusive language in job ads.
• Offer compensation and benefits according to position, seniority, qualifications and performance, not protected characteristics.
• Accommodate people with disabilities.
• Allow flexible working hours to accommodate working mothers as well as people located in different parts of the world.
• Promote cross cultural understanding and diversity by ensuring that our programmes are purposefully inclusive and diverse.
• Provide cross cultural trainings and nurture values-based thinking across all our initiatives, clearly distinguishing between values and beliefs.

What to do in cases of discrimination

If you are the victim of discriminatory behavior (or if you suspect that others are being discriminated against,) please talk to HR (or your manager) as soon as possible. HR is responsible for hearing your claim, investigating the issue and determining punishment.

Punishment for discriminatory behavior depends on the severity of the offence. For example, inadvertently offending someone might warrant a reprimand. Conversely, willfully bypassing employees for promotion because of a protected characteristic will result in termination.

If you decide to make a claim to a regulatory body, we are committed and bound by law not to retaliate against you.

How we address discrimination complaints

HR is proactive and responsive about determining whether discrimination occurs. For example, we:

• Look into similar claims about the same person or process to determine if discrimination is systemic.
• Track metrics and look into data that give us some insight on people’s behaviors (e.g. percentage of job applicants of a certain race a hiring manager disqualifies.)
• Evaluate testimonies on social media that visitors, job candidates or former employees have made.
• Conduct discreet interviews and gather information.

We will investigate all claims discreetly. We will never disclose who made a complaint to anyone or give out information that may help others identify that person (e.g. which department or role they work in.)

We should all strive to prevent and address discrimination. Be aware of your implicit biases and speak up whenever you or your colleagues are discriminated against. If you have any ideas on how we can ensure fairness and equality in our workplace, we are happy to hear them.

Further to the above, we have in place our Safeguarding Policy:

http://globalthinkersmentors.org/safeguarding-policy-gtf-gtm/