Understanding EDI Data

Understanding EDI data is our first step to understanding potential bias or barriers to inclusion, to identifying actions to remove any bias or barriers and to creating a fairer and more inclusive University. Here you will find information on staff and student EDI data, how we use data as part of our chartermark work and beyond and links to useful data sources.

Why EDI data matters?

To understand the impact our plans, decisions and activities will have or have had on different groups of people, we need to analyse data by equality groups to see how different groups are represented. This helps us understand potential or actual bias and barriers facing our staff, students, visitors and our wider University community, so that we can create a fairer and more inclusive University.

The information on these pages is focused on quantitative data. For information on qualitative data available, please visit our EDI Engagement page.

Useful resources:

Useful Data Sources (*Section in Development)

The latest trends in our University staff population, relating to gender, disability, age, nationality and BAME status (UK only), is published in our latest EDI Annual Report 2021-22 and is available here: EDI Annual Report 2021-2022.

Live data on the diversity of our workforce is available in the Lancaster University Workforce Profile Tool, under the ‘Diversity of workforce’ tab (internal and restricted access only).

Useful data sources:

Data source

LU Workforce Profile – ’Diversity of workforce’ tab

Data available

Appointment type; grade

Diversity groups

Gender, ethnicity, disability, nationality group, age

Restricted/open

Restricted

For further information on data and queries about access permissions, please contact hr.mi@lancaster.ac.uk

The latest trends in our University student population, relating to gender, disability and BAME status (UK only), is published in our latest EDI Annual Report 2021-22 and is available here: EDI Annual Report 2021-2022.

Live data on the diversity of our student population is available here (internal and restricted access only).

Data source

Student Numbers and Demographics

Data available

Student Registrations grouped by Equality and Diversity characteristic

Diversity groups

Gender, Ethnicity, BME status, Disability, Socio-economic group,

Restricted/open

Restricted

For further information on data and queries about access permissions, please contact data-analytics@lancaster.ac.uk

Our latest gender pay gap figures are:

  • Mean* Hourly Pay Gap: 22.00% in 2022, down from 23.21% in 2021
  • Median* Hourly Pay Gap: 19.02% in 2022, down from 21.59 in 2021

We are fully committed to decreasing our gender pay gap and have a series of actions within our Athena Swan Institutional action plan to target this. These actions focus on a broad range of areas including recruitment, professional services staff progression, EDI culture, and flexibility at work. In addition, we recognise the impact of Covid -19 throughout is likely to have been disproportionately felt by female staff, and we continue to mitigate against this through our promotion and probation processes. Further details on our gender pay gap and what are doing to reduce it are available in our Gender Pay Gap Report 2022 and on our EDI Strategy page.

To reduce the gender pay gap for the University or at faculty, departmental, or directorate level, we need to look beyond the gender pay gap figure to understand the specific causes and to identify necessary actions. The following questions.

  • Are people getting 'stuck' at certain levels?
  • How diverse are your promotions? (Academics only)
  • How diverse is your recruitment – from application, through to shortlist and on to appointment?
  • Are different groups of people leaving at different rates?
  • Do particular aspects of pay, e.g. starting salaries, accelerated increments, differ by gender?
  • Does everyone have the same access to opportunities to prove themselves and develop?
  • Are you supporting part-time employees to progress?
  • Are you supporting both men and women to take on caring responsibilities?

Data to help answer these questions is available below.

Data source

LU Workforce Profile – ’Diversity of workforce’

Data available

Appointment type; grade

Diversity groups

gender, ethnicity, disability, nationality group, age

Restricted/open

Restricted

Useful resources

Eight ways to understand your organisation's gender pay gap (Governmental Equalities Office)

*For clarification, the "Mean" in this case means to have added all the wages together and then divided by the number of people. This was done for male and females individually. The Median however is the middle value within the range.

Athena Swan Data Dashboards

The following dashboards have been created to support Lancaster University departmental/Faculty Athena Swan Leads to access the data they require for their Athena Swan applications:

Lancaster University Athena Swan Student Dashboard:

1. Athena Swan Student Dashboard

Lancaster university Athena Swan Staff dashboards:

1. Workforce Data Dashboard

2. Starters Data Dashboard

3. Leavers Data Dashboard

4. Recruitment Data Dashboard

5. Promotions Data Dashboard

All Lancaster University departmental/Faculty Athena Swan Leads and their Heads of Department’s have access to the above staff dashboards.

If you are a member of Lancaster University Staff, you should contact your department or Faculty Athena Swan Lead with any questions about the departmental data/Athena Swan application.

If you are a Lancaster University Athena Swan Lead at Lancaster University and are struggling to access the staff dashboards above, please contact hr.mi@lancaster.ac.uk .

Benchmarking

Benchmarking our EDI data against other universities and colleges allows us to see how we compare to the sector or to another relevant group. This can help us identify areas of underrepresentation or disadvantage and plan actions. It can drive our aspirations, measure our progress and provide a target for our actions.

The Equality in Higher Education reports from Advance HE are a useful tool for benchmarking, providing annual staff and student equality data. As part of the Equality in Higher Education reports, there is a statistical report, infographics and downloadable data tables, available here:

The latest reports are available in September each year.

Further information on benchmarking is available on Advance HE’s Benchmarking webpages.

For further details of how to contact us directly click here to go to our contact page.

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