In 2019 Devon Air Ambulance was among the first charities to sign up to ACEVO’s diversity principles.

By championing the 8 principles, Devon Air Ambulance can support the charity sector in becoming more inclusive and help engage talent that fairly reflects the communities we serve. 

Over the last year, the charity has taken several steps to improve recruitment processes. To start with we introduced a anonymised CV process to prevent unconscious bias based on protected characteristics influencing the shortlisting process.

We added our commitment to the principles to the footer of all job briefs to say:

Devon Air Ambulance is signed up to ACEVO’s Diversity Principles, which will help address the diversity deficit in charity leadership. DAA does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status or disability status.

We introduced diversity training, so far covering disability, mental health and special needs with future plans to cover gender and ethnicity. 

Our inhouse Management Development Program has been developed to ensure that line managers are equipped with the skills and confidence to address issues or behaviours within their teams that might disadvantage others as well as impact on performance.

We have changed our recruitment process for Trustees introducing a more open process with a briefing pack available on our website for all to access. 

All policies now have an Equality Impact Assessment, which has been a useful exercise in helping us to scrutinise our policies and procedures to ensure they support equality and diversity. Head of People, Kim Jones says:

As an organisation we are keen to support diversity and recognise the benefit of engaging people from a range of cultures and backgrounds in bringing fresh perspectives to our work. For example, we have expanded our recruitment methods to reach a wider audience.

However, measuring the impact of our approaches is challenging. Nevertheless we are committed to investing our resources to improve diversity within the organisation and to find ways to draw on the lived experience of a range of people to help develop our work.

See which vacancies are currently available and find out more about working with us.