campaign aims to send a clear zero-tolerance message to staff, students and visitors. Its key
message is that everyone is responsible for ending bullying, harassment, sexual harassment
and discrimination. The objectives of the campaign have been to get people to think, talk,
report and get support.
Joint working
As part of this work, the students’ union women’s officer was keen to ensure students could
easily report an incident anonymously and/or get the right support. At the same time the
university’s Diversity and Inclusion Team was in the process of identifying how to improve
access to the support available, including the existing Harassment Support Advisor Network.
It was an ideal opportunity for both organisations to come together again and identify how
best to ensure the right mechanism was available to both students and staff. As with the ‘We
Get It’ campaign, people from both organisations contributed time, expertise and resources.
Funding for the design and build of the report and support platform and the Harassment
Support Advisors came from the university.
Once the university knew that it wanted an online form where both staff and students could
report something and confirm if they wanted to get support, it needed to identify a process
that would assist this.
The process
The reporting tool is the responsibility of the university’s Diversity and Inclusion Team.
Once a report is submitted, an email alerting the team to the report is sent; a member of the
team accesses the system and the report is screened to identify the appropriate next stage. If
the report is anonymous and requires no immediate action it is filed for future analysis. If it
is considered an urgent priority, a member of the team will seek to find out more and take
the necessary action. If an advisor is requested, the team will decide if it should be dealt with
by one of the diversity and inclusion advisors or if one of the volunteer harassment support
advisors could follow up. In all cases, advisors will attempt to make contact within two
working days. Both diversity and inclusion advisors and harassment support advisors are
fully trained and are aware of the different policy options and support available. Harassment
support advisors receive continual professional development and support from the Diversity
and Inclusion Team.
Confidentiality
A limited number of staff within the Diversity and Inclusion Team have access to the system
and strict data protection rules are followed. It is made clear that all enquiries and advice is
given in confidence, however it is also made clear that in limited cases the team may have to
disclose information if it identifies a risk to any individual. In these cases, it is the
responsibility of the diversity and inclusion advisors to identify the appropriate course of
action.
Anonymous reports
The preference is that both students and staff feel able to come forward and report
something and get support. However, the university acknowledges that some people do not
feel able to do this. Anonymous reporting increases the university’s ability to obtain a true
picture of what is happening and to pro-actively identify action.
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