Found this on twitter

[SarahTancredi]

And thought it was interesting.

Not sure what go make of it.

If its true then thats alot of time and money wasted.
www.nottinghampost.com/news/nottingham-news/nottinghamshire-police-end-participation-stonewalls-3289244.amp?__twitter_impression=true

Notts did do misogyny hate crime first (and only?) out of all the forces so I do think they're better than most on women.

Hi. I was involved, peripherally, in Stonewall submissions when I worked for an NHS Trust. There were registration fees to be paid to Stonewall, examples of how we'd implemented Stonewall suggested guidance in our policies, impact assessments etc, staff survey responses on LGBT matters, recruitment numbers, etc etc. We had one e&d staff member working 0.5wte on this alone, plus the clinical and non clinical research, reporting, required stonewall approved pr and branding once we'd entered the top 100. It took up an absurd amount of time, from many staff members, some of whom should really have been looking after patients. It also guided much of our practice and policies. This was before the T was a big thing and before mass NHS redundancies so am sure it is much more onerous now.

snorkers

Was anyone responsible for checking that the suggestions were legal or were compatible with your set up?

All sounds a bit of a con to be honest. Paying for the privilege of spending hours of your time filling out paperwork that should theoretically be covered within any workplace bullying policies , existing equity policy and health and safety?

Sarah
It's a massive con!
As soon as they passed the tipping point of having a certain number of organisations on board, it just became a question of the remaining ones scrabbling about to catch up with the others. NHS boards, CEs particularly are very competitive and hate to be outdone on being seen to be doing good. Ours was particularly afflicted by a massive ego. The Stonewall awards give them a chance to brag and show off. It's a competition at the end of the day isn't it.
The main area Stonewall excels in is getting the ear of bigwigs. No idea how.
I'm not aware anything we were being asked to do was illegal, or against policies.

It was more insidious, reams of documentation, evidence, surveys, questionnaires, training on xyz issues (over and above legally required) for at least x no of staff, at each level, every year, all that had to meet certain Stonewall criteria and interpretation of the existing ehr laws.

We are seeing this now with Stonewall law on access to single sex spaces. They interpret it in a way that suits their agenda.

Many NHS trusts were and still are completely overwhelmed so possibly welcomed what they thought was professional guidance.

I am appalled if hundreds of public sector organisations are all paying someone for 3 months each to compile Stonewall’s monitoring paperwork. On one aspect of diversity.

Scandalous.

Siri, what’s extortion?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extortion

It's a business model
We see it in most areas of business.
Create an awards scheme, schmooze a few CEs, arbitrarily give out a few awards to those who play ball, 'ooh, we're the best in our industry at x', said company do loads of their own pr to also help promote the awards scheme too, rinse and repeat.
Loads of people have done this and get compsnies in the industry in question jumping through hoops to win awards.

When I was leafleting for Fair Play for Women in the lead up to the GRA consultation I met a young woman who told me her former student union had been pressured to make the main women’s toilets by the bar gender neutral in order to tick the last box go receive some kind of Stonewall ranking.

The female students had objected (there were additional men’s and gender neutral loos in the building, just not as conveniently located - the women realised immediately that turning their loos GN would mean they were full of pissed up young men who couldn’t be arsed to walk down the corridor a bit to their own loos).

If this anecdote is anything to go by, I’m sure Notts police realised that stonewall rankings are expensive, largely pointless and do not actually contribute much to equality/diversity when you look at all 9 protected characteristics.

So how many HAs or Trusts or Boards are there in England and Wales are there? I think there are probably about 60 counties with county police forces — or possibly fewer if some of them have merged. D councils participate in this too?

So potentially hundreds of people employed at least part-time to coordinate the training and collate the data, and potentially hundreds of thousands of public money being sent off to register the data each year. Millions of public money being wasted.

When I was leafleting for Fair Play for Women in the lead up to the GRA consultation I met a young woman who told me her former student union had been pressured to make the main women’s toilets by the bar gender neutral in order to tick the last box go receive some kind of Stonewall ranking.

That's really quite unpleasant and reminds me of the worse aspects of MLM schemes where hapless recruits are pushed into morally dubious actions chasing the next reward.