1A. Take a strategic approach to equality and human rights - Read more
Foundation
1. Strengthening Leadership
Leadership is very important in driving equality and human rights initiatives. Effective leaders can inspire and mobilise others, ensuring that equality and human rights are a priority at all levels of the organisation.
What this driver aims to achieve:
To help support leaders across the Scottish Government and wider public sector to aim to prioritise, embed, and advance equality and human rights by considering:
• Motivating, guiding and challenging others to prioritise equality and human rights into their work.
• Learning more about equality and human rights themselves, while helping others to do the same, so that equality and human rights become a basic part of making policies and delivering services.
• Taking the lead in ensuring equality and human rights are central to all policies and services, putting focus, and directing attention, resources, and effort towards protecting and advancing them.
• Regularly monitoring how well mainstreaming is progressing and working to improve equality and human rights across all areas of responsibility.
• Recognising collective leadership is not exclusive to formal roles and can include leaders across the Scottish Government, wider public sector, as well as third sector, civic and community leaders.
Why this matters:
Strong leadership is the foundation for embedding equality and human rights in organisational culture. Leaders set the tone, drive change, and ensure that these values are prioritised at every level. Without visible and committed leadership, mainstreaming efforts are unlikely to succeed or be sustained.
What good leadership could look like
Effective leadership in equality and human rights could mean leaders who:
- understand equality and human rights and apply this knowledge in practice
- apply this understanding with strong leadership skills to be able to adopt a situational approach that is flexible and adaptable, recognising that one size does not fit all
- ensure that work to advance equality and human rights is adequately resourced and protected
- engage with and reflect diverse lived experiences to better understand and to inform decisions
- set clear direction and are proactive and engaged in assessment of progress to mainstream equality and human rights throughout their area of responsibility
- take an active approach to ensuring legal obligations are met including responsibility for impact assessments that advance equality and human rights
Find more information and details under each action below
Key actions for leaders could be to
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If you need help or support you can email us at ehrmainstreamingtoolkit@gov.scot