Equal opportunities

The University of London was established to provide education on the basis of merit alone and without regard to race, creed or political belief, and was the first University in the United Kingdom to admit women to its degrees. Birkbeck College, as part of the University of London, continues this tradition into the field of employment and the College will not tolerate unfair discrimination. Birkbeck is an equal opportunities employer and promotes equality and diversity best practice.

The College and the trade unions represented in the College are committed to the development of positive policies to promote diversity and equality of opportunity in employment. Therefore, the equal opportunities and diversity policy of the College is that the only consideration in recruitment of employees must be how the requirements of the job are met or likely to be met by you, the applicant.

These requirements being met, no regard should be taken (except where the law allows) of your race, creed, colour, nationality, ethnic origin, disability, religion, religious belief, language, political or other opinion affiliation, connections with a national minority, property, birth or other status, gender, gender reassignment, sexual orientation, marital status, family connections, or membership or non membership of a trade union.

The College does not discriminate on the basis of age, and applications from people over 50 years of age are welcome.

Equality monitoring

Birkbeck requests that you provide information about yourself to assist the College in monitoring the effectiveness of its equal opportunities policies and procedures. We currently only ask that you indicate your gender, ethnicity, age range and if you have a disability. Birkbeck applies the definition of disability as ‘a mental or physical impairment which has a substantial and long term effect upon your ability to carry out normal day to day activities'.

This information is treated as confidential and seen only by the recruiter in Human Resources. It is not disclosed to individuals that will be making selection decisions in regards to your application. Any management information produced using this information will not be linked to your name or other information that could be used to identify you.

Disability and reasonable adjustments

The College positively supports the recruitment and employment of persons with a disability/special needs and takes the view that it is ability that counts. If you have indicated that you have a disability when completing our equal opportunity monitoring we ask that you use the space provided to inform us of:

details of your disability relevant to you undertaking the job for which you are applying
any reasonable adjustments that you would wish Birkbeck to consider in relation to your ability to fully perform the job

Reasonable adjustments that you have specified, and any others that Birkbeck has identified, will be given full consideration and implemented wherever possible to assist you in fulfilling the job. It may be necessary for a pre-employment medical to be arranged to help explore any such necessary adjustments.

Birkbeck's equality initiatives

Stonewall Diversity Champions

Birkbeck has been a member of the Stonewall Diversity Champions programme since July 2008. The Diversity Champions programme is a good practice forum in which employers work with Stonewall and each other to promote lesbian, gay and bisexual equality in the workplace. For the past two years the College has participated in the Stonewall Workplace Equality Index (WEI), a useful benchmark mapping exercise. The issues raised from the WEI are used in the strategic development of sexual orientation good practice at the College.

Athena SWAN

Birkbeck became a member of the Athena SWAN charter scheme in April 2010. The charter is a scheme for women that recognises and celebrates excellence in science, engineering and technology (SET) employment for women in higher education and research. The SWAN charter has three levels of award, Bronze, Silver and Gold. Human Resources and the School of Science are working closely together to make a submission in 2011 for the Bronze award.

Mindful Employer

We are members of the ‘Mindful Employer’s Charter’ scheme. The scheme is aimed at increasing awareness of mental health at work and the provision of ongoing support for employers in the recruitment and retention of staff. The four key principles about being a Mindful Employer are:

increasing awareness of mental health;
developing good practices that are sensible, achievable and realistic at the same time applying the core principles of ‘Mindful Employer’;
integrating and adapting ‘Mindful Employer’ principles into the College’s policies, structure and culture for the longer term benefit of staff;
developing a supportive environment that will encourage disclosure of mental ill health without fear of rejection or prejudice or stigma.