CMI 506 Assignment Example
Effective management of equality and diversity benefits both staff and stakeholders and can also positively impact an organisation’s success.
Table of Contents
Basis of response: An organisation known to the author, as the assessment brief permits in place of the supplied scenario. Thornlow Retail Group Limited operates 240 grocery stores and three distribution centres across the United Kingdom, employing 28,000 people, of whom roughly 82 per cent are hourly paid store colleagues. The author is Regional People Partner for the North West, supporting 34 stores and around 3,900 colleagues. Organisational detail is illustrative and anonymised.
Task 1a: Written account on legal and organisational approaches to equality, diversity and inclusion
AC 1.1 Examine the impact of legislative requirements on public and private organisations with respect to equality, diversity and inclusion
The Equality Act 2010. The Act protects nine characteristics and prohibits direct discrimination, indirect discrimination, harassment, victimisation, discrimination arising from disability, and failure to comply with the duty to make reasonable adjustments. Examining its impact on a private retailer, it operates on two fronts simultaneously that a purely office-based employer does not face.
As an employer, Thornlow must ensure that recruitment, scheduling, promotion and disciplinary decisions are objectively justifiable. Indirect discrimination is the provision most frequently engaged in retail: a requirement to work full weekend availability is applied to everyone, and it disadvantages colleagues with caring responsibilities and those with religious observance obligations, so it must be shown to be a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. Examining the practical effect, this makes scheduling policy a discrimination question, which is not how most store managers understand it.
As a service provider, Thornlow owes duties under Part 3 of the Act to customers, including an anticipatory reasonable adjustment duty. Anticipatory means the organisation must consider in advance what disabled customers will need rather than waiting for a request. Examining the impact, this reaches store layout, aisle width, checkout provision, signage, website accessibility and staff awareness, and the duty is continuing rather than discharged by a single audit.
Public sector comparison. Bodies in the public sector shoulder something private employers do not. Section 149 obliges them to pay due regard, in everything they decide, to three aims: getting rid of discrimination, opening up equality of opportunity, and building good relations between groups. Specific duties sit beneath this, requiring publication of equality information and of objectives the body has set itself. Examining the difference in practice, the public duty is procedural and evidential, requiring documented consideration before decisions, which is why equality impact assessment is embedded in public bodies and largely voluntary in private ones. Thornlow encounters the duty indirectly through public sector customers and landlords, and increasingly through commercial tender requirements that import equivalent expectations.
Reporting requirements. Any employer at or above 250 staff already files gender pay gap figures each year. What the Employment Rights Act 2025 adds is an obligation to set out, alongside those figures, an equality action plan, so the exercise no longer stops at publishing a number. Further expansion is close behind. The government’s consultation response of 25 March 2026, issued with draft legislation, settled the shape of ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting at the same 250 threshold, working on a disabled against non-disabled comparison and requiring at least ten people in a group before any figure must be given. Examining the impact for Thornlow, the duty is not yet in force and reporting is unlikely to be required before 2027, but declaration rates cannot be built quickly, so the practical impact begins now.
Must Read: