Are 'equal opportunity' forms really effective?

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Staff reply 19 Jul 07 16:11, by zw!tch The idea of equal opportunity forms is to monitor the people who are, say, applying for jobs or voluntary work. All equal opps forms are pretty similar but as far as I know there is no standardisation for them - organisations just design them so that they can be aware of the range of people that they are attracting - and so they can know if they are failing to receive applications from people with disabilites, for example, and then think about how they could improve on their accessibility.

As to whether they work - again I think it depends on the organisation! If the forms are just shoved in a folder and never seen again then no! But if they are analysed and used to decide on new policies which enable the organisation to attrach a wider range of people then I'm sure the forms are effective!
20 Oct 07 15:25, by MICHELE Your right this is an area that really interests me at the moment, i work in the public sector and my answer for the place i am currently working in is they just want to see who is coming for interviews and to tick the boxes, we comply with the legislation and have very low targets to get staff, we do not get applicants which represent the community it serves e.g. disabled BME etc and they could use the information they have to improve this problem but they choose not to the policies are great but its the practise that matters. As a result of my experience as a BME employee i am now trying to set up a mentoring scheme for graduates on how to deal with the softer aspects of discrimination that 'side step the legislation'- see my idea