SRA publish diversity reporting deadline dates

All Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) regulated firms have an obligation to collect, report and publish data about the diversity make-up of their workforce every two years. The next report is due on 2 August 2021. Firms can report their data to the SRA from 5 July.

What information needs to be collected?

Employee role
Age
Employee sex and the gender they identify with
Information on any health issues or disabilities
Ethnicity and religion
Sexual orientation
Education and background
Childcare responsibilities

Which employees should information be collected from?

Everyone working at your firm is covered by the firm diversity data collection, not just solicitors. You should include:

Full-time and part-time employees
Employees on maternity leave or on long term sick leave (if they are able to respond)
Temporary employees, those on a secondment contract, consultants or other contracted staff working with you for three months or longer.

How and where should firms publish their diversity data?

In addition to sending your diversity data to the SRA, firms should also publish a summary of their diversity data, as long as it complies with data protection legislation. Your diversity data should be made available to your staff and externally. Most firms will choose to publish on their website, but you can use alternative or additional publication methods such as a poster in your office reception area and/or meeting rooms or an article in your internal or external newsletter/bulletin.

How can VinciWorks help?

VinciWorks is proud to offer the entire legal sector a simple, free and secure way to anonymously collect and aggregate diversity data via our compliance management software, Omnitrack.

After you sign up, we will provide you with a unique link to send to your staff. We will send you all data collected, together with aggregated data in the format required by the SRA, in advance of the reporting deadline. Click here to preview the questionnaire.

How are you managing your GDPR compliance requirements?

GDPR added a significant compliance burden on DPOs and data processors. Data breaches must be reported to the authorities within 72 hours, each new data processing activity needs to be documented and Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIA) must be carried out for processing that is likely to result in a high risk to individuals. Penalties for breaching GDPR can reach into the tens of millions of Euros.

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