all things being equal

Lincolnshire’s councils, like others across the UK, are seeking to attain the Equality Standard for Local Government. Working in partnership, the county and seven district councils have produced an innovative 20-minute tv programme, set to accelerate their individual communications efforts in support of their work towards the standard.

Faced with the challenge of enhancing understanding of equality and diversity issues to an audience whose beliefs, motives and preconceptions are mixed and complex, Stuart Webster, Internal Communications Manager at Lincolnshire County Council, chose video to communicate the message.

The aim of the production was to communicate the importance of embedding equality and diversity principles across the councils’ operations. To achieve the standard each member of staff would need to understand the part they play, each day, through their work.

The partnership chose video after considering a variety of options.  Stuart explains: “We wanted to achieve a lot with one hit and video gave us the opportunity for everyone, from senior managers to our frontline staff, to take something meaningful and useful from the content and at the same time put into context what it meant for them within their own role.”

cost-effective solution

Stuart also found that video offered more flexible and reliable delivery: “The video works as a standalone product, or broken down into bite-size clips issue by issue. It will be seen by senior managers, at staff induction events, public events, on the intranet and external websites, through key advocate groups such as Age Concern, to support diversity training sessions, and on our front of house video screens.

“The other advantage of video is that the message can’t be changed or diluted in any way – it remains consistent across all our disparate outlets.”

The professional presenter-led debate style of the programme was chosen over a documentary style because Stuart was keen to get a dialogue going that the viewer would feel they were a part of. He said: “The fact that the presenter had the role of an ‘outsider’ asking questions the viewer might be thinking, was key to ensuring viewers felt represented.”

Stuart added that choosing interviewees who were relevant, engaging and passionate about what they were talking about, was crucial to the video’s success.

Video is often thought to be an expensive communication tool, but Stuart said it was a very cost-effective solution for Lincolnshire: “We have eight local authorities all pursuing the Equality Standard for Local Government.

By pooling our resources and working together on this project it became very affordable.

By working in partnership we achieved great value for money.”

Stuart is satisfied that the new video will enable Lincolnshire to make significant achievement progress toward achieving the Equality Standard goals: “Two years ago, we had made little progress towards the Equality Standard, we are now at Level 2 and the video should help us achieve Level 3 in 2009.”