ScreenSkills has set out best practice principles in guidelines outlining appropriate diversity targets and language and recommending the next steps towards a more inclusive industry.
The skills body has teamed up with the University of Glasgow to publish its diversity and inclusion playbook, which consolidates research conducted last year for its diversity and inclusion target review.
The playbook aims to bring uniformity and clarity to an area that has not been built up naturally within the industry, said Doris Ruth Eikhof, a professor at the university who led the review.
She described it as “an invitation to pause and reflect, refine and have a conversation about what should happen next”.
ScreenSkills chief executive Seetha Kumar said the playbook is the latest part of an ongoing effort to establish ways for the screen industries to “provide a unified approach, common language, consistent measurement and defined accountability that will help to attract and retain the very best, most promising talent”.
The body already offers an online course on Diversity, equity and inclusion for the screen industries. More details here
The Playbook on:
Setting D&I targets
Most commonly sex and gender; race and ethnicity; disability; and sexual orientation; in senior leadership roles, the focus tends to be on sex and gender and race and ethnicity.
Socio-economic diversity: there are no diversity targets relating to protected characteristics: pregnancy and maternity, marriage and civil partnership, gender reassignment or religion.
Disability is the only characteristic that has a cross-industry D&I targets
ScreenSkills has set explicit diversity targets for training programmes including the location of the participants.
Inclusion targets relating to pay gap; on-screen portrayal; investment targets and interventions for specific groups.
Definitions and common language for D&I targets
The Playbook outlines a recommended common consensus of terms for D&I and how they relate to one another.
Using comparative baseline and reference data to identify and set targets, the Playbook recommends that the targets should be aspirational, achievable, action-based, explicit and accountable; and should be reviewed periodically.
Recommendation and next steps
Transorganisational targets: more transparent sharing wider information and insight could enable more ambitious targets to be set
Diversifying targets: These could be both further nuanced - for example, developing specific targets based on age, socio-economic background, caring responsibilities or refugee status; or developing inclusion targets in areas such as pay gap or investment;
Setting meaningful targets
Clarity of targets: including on how targets are set; identifying when an under-represented characteristic has been met; clarity on both sourcing baseline and reference data and how it is used; mapping targets against broader strategies; and monitoring and reporting data
Target ranges – rather than absolute targets – are more ambitious, achievable, flexible and adaptable
Intersectionality: targets could be set that remove cross-cutting barriers that impact individuals with intersecting diversity characteristics, and participant diversity targets could be set where they belong to more than one under-represented group
