Writing reports

 

Why do you need to write reports?

Reporting is an opportunity to bring together the whole process you undertook. It means you can:

• share your statement of intention
• present what data you decided to collect
• explain how you collected this data
• show what you found
• acknowledge gaps
• commit to improvements
• explain what you will do next

It’s also one way of tracking your progress and being able to make comparisons in future. It will also keep your staff engaged and help build trust.

Reporting for different audiences

It’s common to write more than one report. The size of your organisation will impact what you can share widely. Some statistics might be reserved for senior leadership to maintain the anonymity of your staff, for example. This is especially important if you have a small workforce.

At Scope, if a team is under 8 people, we don’t report specific numbers. And if the number of people with a marginalised identity is under 8 people, we also don’t share the exact number. This helps with anonymity.

Internal report for all staff

The report you publish for all staff is extremely important. It’s your chance to:

• give the organisation an understanding of the overall situation
• develop your employees’ trust that you are taking action
• explain your future plans in detail
• be accountable

Staff anonymity is a priority. But you can still highlight certain underrepresented groups. You can share meaningful data without giving specific numbers. This means staff can still:

• realise there are other people with the same characteristics in the organisation
• feel validated and less alone
• feel able to take action internally
• set up discussions in staff networks

So instead of giving a specific number, you could say: “People who were LGBTQ+ and disabled found the reasonable adjustments process more complicated. The sample of people with both characteristics was small. But we want to consult with colleagues to find out more about their experience.”

Of course, if the sample is big enough, you can share specific numbers. It’s important for businesses to recognise the diversity of disabled people. Those who have several marginalised identities may have a different experience. This is an opportunity to look at staff’s experiences from several angles.

Internal report for specific groups

There will be other internal reports for specific purposes. One way to think about it is that the report for all staff will have all the major findings. It needs to provide an overview. Additional reports are there to go into more detail about certain aspects.

The content and audience for these reports will depend on:

• your action plan
• how you are working on your action plan
• what data is relevant to particular actions

For example, one focus might be improving the quality of reasonable adjustments. The team working on this would need to see the complete data analysis of this part of the survey. This way they have detailed information to work from.

Internal report to replicate the survey

You should make sure there is a detailed report explaining the whole process. You need to be able to replicate the survey to make comparisons. And you can’t rely on people’s memory to remember why you made a particular design choice. And of course, you can’t rely on people staying on as members of staff.

Keep a copy of the final version of the questions securely. There are often issues with version control or last-minute changes.

External report

Publishing a report on your website is an excellent opportunity to be transparent. But an external report doesn’t need the same amount of detail as an internal report.

What you provide on your website is aimed at people who are not currently part of your organisation. So, there are aspects that will not be relevant to them. Or that would need too much explanation to make sense to them. You should also be careful about how long your report is.

You need to decide what you want to achieve with that external report. This should be linked to your overall goals and your improvement plans. Having a public report on your website can:

• be an opportunity to tell prospective recruits and customers how well you support disabled employees
• help show you are proactive so you can be more attractive to possible employees
• demonstrate your commitment to inclusivity to stakeholders
• make you stand out as a positive example

We would like to encourage more organisations to make disability monitoring information available. This keeps organisations accountable. It also means we have more data to know what support organisations need to be more inclusive.