Championing equity and inclusion lies at the heart of everything we do here at London Metropolitan University. In addition to the information on these pages, you can find out more about our values and the action we're taking by visiting our Centre for Equity and Inclusion pages.
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We have signed up to the Charter for Employers Positive About Mental Health for employers who are positive about mental health. We have links to a range of staff support materials on our Mental Health Support web page.
Athena SWAN is an initiative which champions the advancement of gender equality.
Our Bronze Level Award Application was submitted to Advance HE at the end of May 2021 and in September 2021 we were successfully accredited.
We are a member of Stonewall’s Diversity Champions programme and have taken part in the Workplace Equality Index, to help us improve and implement LGBT+ inclusive policies and practices across the University. This has given us an action plan to work through.
Following our most recent submission, we climbed 53 places on the Stonewall Index in 2023 relative to our 2022 position, and we are 162nd in the national list. We have been awarded a bronze award.
. Further information on our pledge to support LGBT rights is also set out on our news page.
London Met stands opposed to antisemitism. In June 2020, the University adopted the working definition of antisemitism as developed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). The definition states:
- Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.
Eliminating racial and religious bias is central to the University's commitment to being an inclusive and welcoming space for all. London Met was the first UK university to adopt the working definition of Islamophobia as developed by the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on British Muslims. The APPG recommended the adoption of the following definition:
- Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.
We have a proud tradition of embracing and valuing diversity and this is reflected in our student body and staff, which we monitor and report on annually at the end of each academic year.
We welcome students from all over the world and currently have more than 120 nationalities on campus.
The data below provides ethnicity, gender, age and disability representation across our staff.
2021/22 staff by ethnicity
| Ethnicity | 2021-22 % | 2020-21 % | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Asian | 11% | 10% | 1% |
| Black | 13.4% | 13.6% | -0.2% |
| Mixed | 5.7% | 4.8% | 0.9% |
| Not known/information refused | 11.9% | 14.1% | -2.2% |
| Other | 5.6% | 5.4% | 0.2% |
| White | 52.4% | 52.1% | 0.3% |
2021/22 staff by gender
Women make up 56% of our workforce.
| Gender | 2021/22 % | 2020/21 % | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Female | 56% | 55.9% | 0.1% |
| Male | 44% | 44.1% | -0.1% |
2021/22 staff with declared disabilities
Numbers of staff with declared disabilities remain low and with little change year on year.
| Disability | 2021/22 % | 2020/21 % | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| No | 99% | 99% | 0% |
| Yes | 1% | 1% | 0% |
2021/22 age profile
There has been little change in employee age profile from last year.
| Age group | 2021/22 % | 2020/21 % | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 26 | 14.1% | 12% | 2.1% |
| 26-50 | 54% | 47% | 7% |
| 51-65 | 26.3% | 35% | -8.7% |
| Over 65 | 5.6% | 6% | -0.4% |
We value and promote diversity and dignity at work through our staff development programmes, policies and practices, as well as new staff induction.
We also value the contribution of our staff and seek to ensure that they are supported and do not face unnecessary barriers to their employment. We have set out our commitments in our Strategic Plan and in our Equality and Diversity Policy.
All job applicants are asked to submit an equality and diversity statement of no more than one page, articulating how they will contribute to making our University more inclusive and what they have previously done to advance equality.
We are proud to take part in the government's Disability Confident scheme as a Disability Confident Employer and have published information to help and support our staff and our managers.
Our mean gender pay gap for 2021/22 is 7.65%, which is 0.17% greater than it was in 2020/21.
UCEA benchmarking indicates that the HE sector median 2020/21 Gender Pay Gap is 16.2%, meaning that ours is approximately 7.4% better than our comparators. 2021/22 benchmarking data is not yet available.
2021/22 pay gap figures
(2020/21 figures are shown in brackets)
| Median | Mean | |
|---|---|---|
| Gender Pay Gap | 8.83% (13.9%) | 7.65% (7.5%) |
Proportion of women and men in each pay quartile
| Women | Men | |
|---|---|---|
| Upper quartile | 46.47% (47.5%) | 53.53% (52.5%) |
| Upper middle | 54.22% (55.2%) | 45.78% (44.8%) |
| Lower middle | 55.31% (51.9%) | 44.69% (48.1%) |
| Lower | 61.58% (64.2%) | 38.42% (35.8%) |
The main reason for our pay gap is because we have more women than men in our lower pay quartile, which is almost entirely due to the composition of our employed students.
We have a strong commitment to providing our students with the best support and this includes giving them paid work to help them financially during their studies and to equip them with workplace skills that help them with their careers after they graduate and proudly employ our students via MetTemps, our own employment agency.
Estimates are that our MetTemps programme accounts for between 2% and 3% of our Gender Pay Gap. MetTemp appointments are normally paid the London Living Wage (£11:05 p/hour in 2021/22) and make up between 9.18% (2016/17) and 18.12% (2019/20) of our overall workforce headcount. Our MetTemp population generally represents our student population, so for 2021/22 women make up 63.39% of MetTemps with men making up 36.61%. Our MetTemp workforce directly affects our Gender Pay Gap. Since 2018/19, our data shows that the proportion of our workforce who are not MetTemps directly correlates with our Gender Pay Gap.
We maintain equal pay through a range of measures:
- Embracing inclusivity as a core value. Our Strategy 2019/20 – 2024/25 sets out that we celebrate our diverse community, we see difference as a source of strength and we challenge exclusionary and discriminatory practice.
- Promoting inclusion as one of our strategic goals including by working towards achievement of the Athena SWAN, Race Equality Charter, Stonewall and Disability Confident standards to facilitate diversity in our staff community and ensure that everyone at London Met is valued and included.
- Recruiting staff who share our values and commitments. Our current recruitment and selection practice has been updated following the recommendations of the McGregor Smith review to include provisions for representative panels and a requirement that all applicants submit a statement showing how they will contribute to inclusion, equality and diversity.
- Raising awareness amongst our staff. Our senior leaders took part in inclusivity workshops and all new staff have equality and diversity training.
- We set out clear expectations and responsibilities in our Equality and Diversity policy which sets out our equality commitments in respect of all staff.
- We ensure equal pay by evaluating roles and responsibilities, not people, to determine pay grade.
- We have clear published salary scales for all staff grades.
- We have a published fair recruitment and selection policy, supported by training incorporating unconscious bias training.
- We are an accredited London Living Wage employer and ensure all our staff, and in particular our lower-paid staff, earn at least the London Living Wage.
- We enable and promote better use of flexible working policy to support employees with caring responsibilities and have increased our paid maternity provisions to be sector leading.
- Our career development initiatives encourage and support academic women through the promotions process, including better access to mentoring opportunities, more secondment opportunities and coaching sessions.
- We offer all staff access to staff development and an Employee Assistance Programme.
- We have three active trade unions and active staff networks including our Women’s Network, Staff DisAbility Network, LGBTQ+ Network, and BAME Network.
Our gender pay action plan aims to further reduce or eliminate our gender pay gap by:
- Continuing to closely monitor, analyse and report our pay gaps to raise awareness and better inform decision making.
- Keeping our pay and remuneration policies and practices under review to ensure they are fair and to eliminate any unintentional bias.
- Providing training, guidance and support to managers to underpin our policy and practices.
- Supporting our staff to enable them to work flexibly.
- Investing in the development of our staff.
Any feedback or comments are welcome via email to hr@londonmet.ac.uk.
Our duties and commitments are set out in our published Equality and Diversity Policy and are covered in our online Diversity Essentials course, which all staff are asked to complete. We are in the process of moving this and other essential training to our newly developed online portal, MyDevelopment, to enable us to better track participation and completion rates.
Our equality and diversity targets and progress are set out in our work plan and the KPIs in our University Strategic Plan. Our Bronze Level Athena Swan Award Application was submitted to Advance HE at the end of May 2021 and in September 2021 we were successfully accredited.
We are a member of Stonewall’s Diversity Champions programme and have taken part in the Workplace Equality Index, to help us improve and implement LGBT+ inclusive policies and practices across the University. This has given us an action plan to work through.
We have active staff networks for LGBTQ+, women, staff with disabilities and Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) staff.
Our Harassment Policy sets out our commitment to dealing with complaints of bullying and harassment.
All our employment policies and procedures are reviewed every two years and we are working with Stonewall and our Athena Swan and Race Equality Charter (REC) teams and with our staff networks, to review our policies to ensure they are inclusive.
We have a proud tradition of embracing and valuing diversity and this is reflected in our student body and staff, which we monitor and report on annually at the end of each academic year.
We welcome students from all over the world and currently have more than 120 nationalities on campus.
The data below provides ethnicity, gender, age and disability representation across our staff.
2021/22 staff by ethnicity
| Ethnicity | 2021-22 % | 2020-21 % | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Asian | 11% | 10% | 1% |
| Black | 13.4% | 13.6% | -0.2% |
| Mixed | 5.7% | 4.8% | 0.9% |
| Not known/information refused | 11.9% | 14.1% | -2.2% |
| Other | 5.6% | 5.4% | 0.2% |
| White | 52.4% | 52.1% | 0.3% |
2021/22 staff by gender
Women make up 56% of our workforce.
| Gender | 2021/22 % | 2020/21 % | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Female | 56% | 55.9% | 0.1% |
| Male | 44% | 44.1% | -0.1% |
2021/22 staff with declared disabilities
Numbers of staff with declared disabilities remain low and with little change year on year.
| Disability | 2021/22 % | 2020/21 % | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| No | 99% | 99% | 0% |
| Yes | 1% | 1% | 0% |
2021/22 age profile
There has been little change in employee age profile from last year.
| Age group | 2021/22 % | 2020/21 % | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 26 | 14.1% | 12% | 2.1% |
| 26-50 | 54% | 47% | 7% |
| 51-65 | 26.3% | 35% | -8.7% |
| Over 65 | 5.6% | 6% | -0.4% |
We value and promote diversity and dignity at work through our staff development programmes, policies and practices, as well as new staff induction.
We also value the contribution of our staff and seek to ensure that they are supported and do not face unnecessary barriers to their employment. We have set out our commitments in our Strategic Plan and in our Equality and Diversity Policy.
All job applicants are asked to submit an equality and diversity statement of no more than one page, articulating how they will contribute to making our University more inclusive and what they have previously done to advance equality.
Our equality and diversity policies, guidance and information
Our duties and commitments are set out in our published Equality and Diversity Policy and are covered in our online Diversity Essentials course, which all staff are asked to complete. We are in the process of moving this and other essential training to our newly developed online portal, MyDevelopment, to enable us to better track participation and completion rates.
Our equality and diversity targets and progress are set out in our work plan and the KPIs in our University Strategic Plan. Our Bronze Level Athena Swan Award Application was submitted to Advance HE at the end of May 2021 and in September 2021 we were successfully accredited.
We are a member of Stonewall’s Diversity Champions programme and have taken part in the Workplace Equality Index, to help us improve and implement LGBT+ inclusive policies and practices across the University. This has given us an action plan to work through.
We have active staff networks for LGBTQ+, women, staff with disabilities and Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) staff.
Our Harassment Policy sets out our commitment to dealing with complaints of bullying and harassment.
Disability information
We are a Disability Confident Employer
- Guide for line managers: Recruiting, managing and developing people with a disability or health condition
- Disability Declaration Guidance
- Disability Declaration Consent Form
Our employment policies and procedures
All our employment policies and procedures are reviewed every two years and we are working with Stonewall and our Athena Swan and Race Equality Charter (REC) teams and with our staff networks, to review our policies to ensure they are inclusive.
Read our Equality and Diversity Policy