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Survey - 69% of HR staff are not aware of new diversity legislation

A survey by fuel Group highlights that Government needs to raise profile of new laws if companies are to implement them.

A remarkable 69% of HR staff are not aware of the new diversity legislation and only 10% have been trained for it, according to a new survey by fuel Group, the leading e-learning specialist, which owns Wide Learning.

The survey of 293 HR managers and executives from the public and private sector was carried out between 7 and 19 December 2003, just after the new legislation came into force.

The sample was equally split between the public and private sectors and revealed interesting variations.

While only 15% of the private sector staff had ever received any diversity training, exactly half of the public sector executives had been on courses, making a total of 33% of all those questioned. Similarly there were big differences over awareness of the new regulations. 40% of the public sector staff were aware of them, yet only 22% of those in commerce had heard of them, resulting in 31% of the sample in total.

However, there was little difference when considering who had actually been trained on the new laws, with just 9% of the private sector and 11% of the civil service HR staff having so far been trained.

Steve Dineen, chief executive of fuel Group comments: "This confirms that awareness and training, even among those who ought to be the first to know, is still low. The Government needs to increase awareness among HR staff if this legislation is to be implemented successfully through companies and the public sector."

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