FAQ

There’s no cost to join the programme. However, it will require staff time and resource to complete all the criteria.

When you start the programme, you have 18 months to complete all the criteria. We recommend that employers only start the programme when they have secured senior leadership buy-in and have assembled a working group. This will make it easier to start working through the criteria and making the most of the 18 months.

We also have suggested timelines for the Development and Bronze tier for when you should aim to get certain criteria done by. This is based on our experience of working with employers and taking into consideration factors such as trade union consultations or committee approval.

No, the programme is designed to be cumulative. Therefore, all organisations must start at either Development or Bronze. Once you’ve received accreditation, you have two years to embed the criteria into your organisation and after the two-year period you can indicate to Close the Gap that you’d like to progress. You are only able to progress to the next tier up.

The Development tier is an entry point into the Equally Safe at Work accreditation process. The Development tier, which comprises selected criteria from the Bronze tier, enables organisations to begin developing gender-sensitive policies and practices that will support them to meet the full criteria for Bronze. Once you’ve successfully completed Development you can immediately start Bronze, if you’d like.

Equally Safe in Practice is a separate initiative to Equally Safe at Work, which is delivery by Scottish Women’s Aid. Both initiatives support the wider Equally Safe strategy. The Equally Safe in Practice framework is designed to support workers across all levels of the workforce, and targets different staff groups with specific knowledge and skills. The Equally Safe at Work programme and e-learning modules have been specifically designed to focus on building capacity in line managers on key areas including flexible working, sexual harassment and violence against women and work.

If you are undertaking both Equally Safe in Practice and Equally Safe at Work, you will be required to complete the e-learning modules specific to each programme, where the learning will be complementary.

The Equally Safe Initiatives infographic explains how ‘Equally Safe at Work’, ‘Equally Safe in Practice’ and ‘Equally Safe at School’ connect, where they differ, and how each initiative supports organisations to take action to prevent violence against women and girls.

No. You must use the Equally Safe at Work e-learning modules. Our e-learning modules have been carefully developed by Close the Gap, with over 25 years of expertise and specialist knowledge on women’s labour market inequality. All modules include up to date information on good practice and legal requirements. They also align with the rest of the criteria of the programme, for example, the content that should be included in your updated policies.

E-learning modules can be shared via SCORM files that you can embed in your own LMS or can be accessed through the Equally Safe at Work website. For NHS boards, all e-learning modules are available on Turas.

For those working toward Development tier, you are only required at this stage to have a representative sample of line managers complete two out of three e-learning modules:

• Flexible working
• Violence against women and work

For those working towards the Bronze tier and/or above this level, you are required to have a representative sample of line managers complete:

• Flexible working
• Sexual harassment
• Violence against women and work

Flexible working for line managers e-learning

Module 1- 20 minutes.

Sexual harassment for line managers e-learning

Module 1 - 35 minutes.
Module 2 - 20 minutes.

Violence against women and work for line managers e-learning

Module 1 - 35 minutes.
Module 2 - 35 minutes.

We understand that the composition of your working group will depend on the size and structure of your organisation.

It’s important that there is representation from different departments or people doing different roles on the working group, including equality and diversity, HR, communications and violence against women, as a minimum. Where possible, you should include trade union representatives and a senior member of staff should also participate. For NHS boards, this may include the Employee Director.

As part of the Data standard, at the Bronze tier level, you are required to collect intersectional gender-disaggregated data on employee experiences of violence against women (VAW).

Collecting VAW data might require you to take a few different approaches. This is because VAW is underreported and in many cases, staff may discuss their experience informally with a line manager.

It’s important to introduce various methods to capture what is happening in your organisation to determine whether there are gaps in practice. Examples of how other organisations have collected this data includes:

• Including questions in a staff survey, asking whether they experienced a form of VAW, if they reported, and how satisfied they were with how it was handled
• Formal reporting processes through HR, however, this may only give a snapshot of what is happening and should be used alongside other methods
• Anonymous reporting systems
• Introducing gender-based violence support officers as a point of contact for staff, who collect data on number of reports and forms of VAW

Alongside developing systems to collect VAW data, it’s important to consider how you will build trust in your reporting systems and provide support to staff coming forward either formally or informally. It’s essential that staff know that their report will be taken seriously and steps will be taken to ensure their safety in the workplace. Further, by ensuring confidentiality, employees will feel more comfortable in sharing their experiences.

Yes. While some employers include sexual harassment in their dignity and respect at work policy or in a wider bullying and harassment policy, it’s important to ensure that you have a standalone sexual harassment policy. This is because sexual harassment is often conflated with other forms of harassment and does not recognise the gendered dynamics which is critical for effectively preventing and addressing sexual harassment. Having a standalone policy is also good practice for ensuring you’re meeting the preventative duty of the Worker Protection (Amendment to the Equality Act 2010) Act and the Employment Rights Act 2025.

For more information, visit Think Business Think Equality to access the suite of guidance which will support you to deliver a best practice approach to preventing sexual harassment in your workplace.

You can also watch our short animation focused on tackling workplace sexual harassment.

Yes, we often share the MODEL Sexual Harassment Prevention and Action Policy which was produced for Engender by Professor Nicole Busby and Professor Rosalind Searle.

You may wish to use this as a template and personalise it in areas to make it relevant to your workplace. This was developed before the Worker Protection (Amendment to the Equality Act 2010) Act and the Employment Rights Act 2025, so you will need to consider how you adapt the new legal provisions into your policy.

To further understand the importance of having a standalone sexual harassment policy and what to include in it and why, you can also use the ‘How to: develop a sexual harassment policy’. Again, you will need to consider how to adapt the new legal provisions into your policy.

Yes. You will need a separate violence against women (VAW) policy. As VAW is a cause and consequence of gender inequality, an effective policy must recognise this and complexities around supporting victim-survivors in the workplace. There’s often confusion between VAW and violence and aggression, and they’re often conflated. However, it’s important to recognise that VAW is violence or abuse directed at someone because of their gender.

We outline good practice for what should be included in a VAW policy, including recognising the different forms of VAW, the responsibilities of staff, how you will manage perpetrators and support mechanisms for staff. Further, having a separate VAW policy communicates to your staff that this is a priority, and that VAW is a workplace issue.

To highlight the importance of building trust in your organisation and responding appropriately to disclosures of VAW, you can view our animation ‘A different result’. This is based on a true story and demonstrates best practice.

No. You will have to develop a separate violence against women (VAW) policy to be able to capture all the forms of VAW that staff may be experiencing. The reason for this is VAW is an umbrella term used to describe the wide range of abuse that women and girls are more likely to experience. Gender-based violence (GBV) is a broader concept that encompasses any violence directed against an individual because of their gender.

Domestic abuse is a form of VAW, and should be included in your VAW policy, alongside other forms of VAW that impact women’s experiences at work such as stalking, rape and sexual assault and so-called ‘honour-based’ abuse.

We strongly encourage you to use the term violence against women (VAW) for your policy. This term aligns with the Equally Safe strategy, which is Scotland’s national strategy to eradicate violence against women and girls. It recognises that women are the majority of victim-survivors and that VAW is intricately linked to gender inequality. The term acknowledges the increased vulnerability of women from childhood throughout their lifecycle and the profound, long-term impacts of sexual and physical abuse on women throughout their lives. As well, it contains an additional element as it is legally considered as a human rights violation and a form of discrimination against women.

Some organisations use the term gender-based violence (GBV) for their policy and supporting guidance. The definition of GBV is violence directed against a person because of that person’s gender or violence that affects persons of a particular gender disproportionately.

Yes. To meet the Workplace Culture criteria, you will be required to review a minimum of one policy, programme or practice to ensure gender sensitivity that is separate to the other policies you are reviewing or development as part of the programme i.e. your flexible working policy and violence against women (VAW) policy. This is because we provide a framework of what should be included in your flexible working policy and your VAW policy, and the aim of this criterion is demonstrating that you know how to apply a gender lens.

However, it doesn’t have to be a policy that you review. You could choose to review a specific practice within your organisation or programme to ensure gender sensitivity. For example, reviewing your recruitment practice, learning and development practice or modern apprenticeship programmes.

Many NHS boards have gone through the Equally Safe at Work programme and have achieved accreditation at Development and Bronze tier. Since you are unable to change the policies set at the national level, we recommend you develop complementary guidance for your organisation which meets the criteria and ensure this information is clearly communicated and accessible to staff. Often, we find that one of the key challenges for staff is not knowing where to find information. Any additional pieces of guidance should be highlighted and made available for all staff.

The policy you decide to review should be relevant to your organisational needs. Some policies which have been selected by employers include Lone Working, Maternity and Parental, Distributed Working, Menopause, IT Use, Learning and Development, and Personal Relationships at Work. Some have also reviewed practice including internal workplace coaching and modern apprenticeship programmes. You can find examples of good practice in our case studies section.

If you choose to select a policy that has an inherent focus on women such as your existing Menopause Policy, you should consider the ways in which this policy should take account of the gendered inequalities women experience in accessing menopause support at work. For example, stigma resulting from a lack of discourse on women’s specific health needs. You should also include consideration of the experiences of different groups of women, for example racially minoritised women, whose experiences of menopause can be different.

All policy reviews should include information of the intersecting barriers and include any impact on racially minoritised women, older women, younger women, and disabled women, and single parents, for example.

Applying a gender lens to policies or practices means applying knowledge about women’s and men’s different life experiences to make sure that a policy or programme takes account of these differences. This means recognising the different expectations, inequalities, levels of power and needs of groups of women and men in the workplace. We developed a tool for employers, which outlines the four steps for applying a gender lens:

1. Reviewing and gathering data
2. Identifying the gendered differences within your workplace
3. Work out why these gendered differences exist
4. Decide on actions to address these inequalities and determine how you will measure progress

Once your organisation is involved in the programme, members of the working group will be required to attend the applying a gender lens workshop. This workshop is designed to advance members learning, understanding and application of this in practice.

Taking an anti-racist approach to gender equality means recognising that gender inequality and racialised inequality do not function separately. They intersect to create double discrimination for racially minoritised women. Close the Gap has developed guidance to support employers about how to do this in practice. It includes an action plan template, and recommendations for improving practice on leadership, flexible working, recruitment and promotion, and learning and development. We also have further supporting resources:

• Core actions for key people
• Capacity building for key roles
• Using data
• Level the playing field
• Key messages

When developing your occupational segregation initiatives, you must use your current data to help you understand where there may be gaps in your practice. By doing so, you also identify potential areas for intervention and can monitor change.

Depending on what your data reveals, you may wish to focus on areas like recruitment, access to learning and development opportunities, progression and promotion, flexible working, and/or Modern Apprenticeships. Examples of what other employers have done include: