Go Ape is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to ensuring equal opportunities, fairness of treatment, dignity, work-life balance and the elimination of all forms of discrimination in the workplace for all co-owners and job applicants.

We believe in a working environment in which all individuals are able to make best use of their skills, free from discrimination or harassment, and in which all decisions are based on merit.

We provide a working environment in which people feel comfortable and confident that they will be treated with respect and dignity.

We treat all workers and job applicants equally and fairly irrespective of sex, marital status, civil partnership status, trans-gender status, sexual orientation, race, colour, nationality, ethnic origin, national origin, culture, religion, age, or disability.

Discrimination by or against a co-owner is prohibited.

Our principles of non-discrimination and equality of opportunity also apply to the way in which we treat visitors, clients, customers, suppliers and former co-owners.

Go Ape is also committed to ensuring that no policy, procedure, provision, rule, requirement, condition or criterion will be imposed on any co-owner or job applicant without justification if it would be likely to put that person at a disadvantage on any of the above grounds.

Everyone who has responsibility for recruitment, selection and promotion, or who supervise others, should receive equal opportunities training. All staff will have awareness training in equality and the avoidance of discrimination as part of their induction.

Everyone has a responsibility to embrace and support this vision and must continue to challenge behaviour and attitudes that prevent us from achieving this. Using fair, objective and innovative employment practices, our aim is to ensure that:

• all co-owners and potential co-owners are treated fairly and with respect at all stages of their employment
• all co-owners have the right to be free from harassment and bullying of any description, or any other form of unwanted behaviour, whether based on sex, trans-gender status, marital status, civil partnership status, pregnancy, race, disability, age, political or religious belief or sexuality
• everyone has an equal chance to contribute and to achieve their potential, irrespective of any defining feature that may give rise to unfair discrimination

Your rights and responsibilities

At Go Ape we expect everyone to relate to each other professionally, in a manner, which recognises everyone's right to dignity at work. Bullying or harassment will not be tolerated.

Everyone is required to conform to acceptable standards of behaviour towards each other, irrespective of status. It is important that those making complaints do so in the honest and genuine belief that they are being bullied or harassed.

Go Ape will ensure that adequate resources are made available to promote respect and dignity in the workplace and to deal effectively with complaints of harassment and bullying.

Information shared or obtained during the handling of a complaint will be treated sensitively. The question of maintaining information in confidence will be discussed with all of those involved, but it is important to recognise that certain types of information will have to be shared with individuals as necessary within the Company in order to help the decision-making or remedy for the person making the complaint, or during any appropriate disciplinary action taken against the person responding.

Go Ape's EDI Timeline:

Then:

2020:

• In our support functions, we have a relaxed dress code with no uniform. This means everyone can turn up to work in whatever attire makes them feel comfortable.
• We developed our free internal learning library to include a page on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. This page now contains over 35 courses and resources. Our learning library has been in place since 2019 and has had 6,126 hits overall with 140 hits on our EDI page.
• We introduced much more flexible ways of working, whether this was predominantly from home or hybrid between home and the office/site. We also allow for school drop off and pick up for our teams in addition to taking time off for ‘magic moments’ such as school plays,competitions, assemblies etc.
• We started utilising the 2to3days online job board, which is the UK’s leading female-focused recruitment platform, connecting talented women with flexible career opportunities.

2021:

• We introduced the voluntary addition of preferred pronouns on to our email signatures.
• We organised Disability Awareness training for our entire management cohort, this was delivered externally by Enhance the UK over 3 sessions.
• We launched our first Diversity monitoring survey which received 272 responses. We launched the survey with the aim to build a more accurate picture of the make-up of our teams at Go Ape and to be able to inform us where we can encourage further diversity.
• We joined the government’s Kickstart Scheme, to help get people aged between 16 and 24 who were in receipt of universal credit back into work. This consisted of a 6-month placement with Go Ape in which they received support from The Prince’s Trust on employability skills for the duration of their placement and 6 months post-placement.

2022:

• We introduced mandatory Equality, Diversity and Inclusion training for all our Co-owners at Go Ape. Level 1 covers the foundations and should be completed by all, level 2 is for those incustomer facing roles and level 3 is focused on content relevant to those who line manage.
• We organised Race Equality training for our entire management cohort, this was delivered externally by SARI across 3 sessions.
• We gained Disability Confident – Committed Status. This is the first level of a 3-level framework and confirms that we’re committed to providing opportunities for applicants and employees with disabilities.
• Upon gaining our Disability Confident status we started to advertise all our roles on Findajob.gov so candidates could see we are an accessible employer.
• We joined the Hidden Disabilities Sunflower Scheme to raise awareness of hidden disabilities amongst our co-owners and enable them to provide the best customer experience possible for our customers with hidden disabilities.
• We improved our online induction process to incorporate a text-to-speech translation of all written copy in the hopes it would increase accessibility of that content.
• We introduced a Well-being hub full of content and resources that our Co-owners can utiliseif they need support.

2023:

• We enhanced the EDI matters section on our website, to make our internal thinking and policies around the subject visible and clear to our co-owners, potential co-owners and customers.

where we are Now:

• We’ve partnered with an external EDI consultant to help us to evaluate our existing culture and prioritise changes we need to make. This project will include running workshops with our managers, surveying our co-owners and forming focus groups with willing participants.
• We’ve formed a partnership with Ingeus, they are working with us to get people who are signed up to universal credit or have been in a period of long-term unemployment back into work.
• We’re in the process of providing external Mental Health First Aid training to a group of our co-owners, with the aim that we’ll be able to provide better support to those challenged by ill mental health going forward.
• We’ve organised with an external training provider to offer Mental Health and Resilience training to our entire management cohort.
• We’re going to be asking everyone to provide their preferred pronouns for us to add to theiremail signatures, unless they’d like to opt-out.

Our plans for the future:

• We’re working towards gaining our Disability Confident – Employer status and Ingeus are supporting us with that journey.
• We’re exploring joining the Purple Tuesday campaign which aims to improve the customer experience for people with disabilities and their families 365 days a year.
• We’re exploring partnering with the Duke of Edinburgh scheme to incorporate Go Ape as an activity on the programme, this will enable us to provide worthwhile and meaningful work experience/training to young people.
• As a secondary step to including text to speech conversions in our online induction courses, we’re aiming to roll this out across all our online training modules to increase the accessibility of that content.
• We’re looking to produce an annual report on our social impact, this will include any efforts or improvements we have made in the EDI space.
• When we reach our second year of being part of the Hidden Disabilities Sunflower scheme we’ll conduct a review of how it’s gone with our Manager cohort and a group of our Co-owners to ensure the training is adequate and our involvement with the scheme is reaching the intended positive outcomes.