With the new OFS E6 regulations looming, has your higher education institution begun to take the additional steps needed to ensure they are complying with the new condition of registration?
The new OFS E6 regulation requires higher education providers to protect students from harassment and sexual misconduct, the guidelines covering both staff and student behaviour, after an OFS survey found that 20% of students were experiencing unwanted sexual behaviour during their time at university.
For the last seven years, we’ve worked extensively with higher education providers to work towards eliminating harassment and sexual misconduct across the sector. With our experience working alongside our higher education partners, whilst the OFS survey is a useful statistics, we know that prevalence can vary greatly across the sector, with our partners’ prevalence data ranging from 8-80%, depending on the types of harassment reported.
Whilst 8% might not sound like a big percentage, the reality is that that equates to around 250,000 students experiencing different forms of harassment at the lowest end of the estimate, so it’s highly likely that potentially upward of a million students are having some experience of these harmful behaviours.
Higher education institutions who currently do not have a centralised space for student reporting will need to reconsider their options for student reporting of harassment and other types of problematic behaviour to comply with the new OFS E6 regulations.
It’s likely you have already begun looking at solutions, and as the leading online student reporting tool for universities and higher education providers, these are some of the reasons why hundreds of higher education providers choose Culture Shift’s Report + Support software to centralise their student reporting into an all-in-one reporting and case management tool to help them respond effectively to harassment and sexual misconduct.
1. We’re a dedicated reporting platform, not a software add-on
Unlike many of our competitors, we are a dedicated anonymous reporting platform for students to report incidents of bullying, harassment, discrimination, sexual misconduct, sexual violence and any other form of unwanted behaviour that they may experience whilst at university.
Whilst many of our competitors offer an anonymous reporting tool as part of their software package, it’s often built into their other software offering and therefore their main focus is not on student reporting or about transforming student experience to eliminate harassment and sexual harassment throughout the higher education sector.
At Culture Shift, our Report + Support software is complimented by our wrap-around services and deep sector knowledge, coupled with our drive to make workplaces and student environments a better place to be, by removing the barriers to reporting and supporting higher education teams to improve the sector. Our goal is to help the higher education sector decrease prevalence and increase awareness of the issues impacting students and staff, rather than simply providing a software solution.
2. We have deep sector expertise
Culture Shift is the leading student reporting tool in the Higher Education sector, providing an all-in-one online reporting software and case management system to tackle issues such as bullying and harassment, sexual misconduct and discrimination.
Our online reporting software has been developed by culture transformation and software experts to create a user-friendly, survivor-centric reporting tool that can help universities track, monitor, prevent and improve their response to harassment and sexual misconduct.
3. We have built in risk assessment templates
Our built-in risk assessment template comprehensively helps you to assess the need for any precautionary action and ensure communication with all parties involved is clear. The built in risk assessment form associates with the specific report and guides you through the risk assessment process. Once completed, it is saved in the system and visible to everyone who has permission to access the report it relates to.
4. We help Higher Education institutions move beyond policies with proactive insights
Our Report + Support software provides a space for universities to clearly articulate their organisation’s definitions of unacceptable behaviour which can help identify when someone has breached your policies along with the details of what happens if a breach is found to take place. It also allows institutions to provide clear and supportive guidance to users and can help you fulfil the one central source of information part of the new E6 condition of registration.
However, one of the most important features of our platform is the reporting dashboards that provide deep insights into the types of behaviours students are experiencing which allows you to respond and actively prevent them from happening again.
These types of insights are invaluable for teams to not only report on prevalence levels but also being able to monitor trends and review data over time, informing the changes you put in place. This can help you be both targeted and evidence-based in your approach to addressing harassment and sexual misconduct.
Many of our higher education partners who implemented Report + Support and were at the time, the only member of their organisation responsible for leading on the implementation, have found that by having access to live data and reporting insights it has helped them to grow specialist student wellbeing teams with experts in sexual violence, domestic abuse, hate crime and harassment, working together with external partners to provide students with an increased level of support for those subjected to harmful behaviours. The insights allow them to continuously improve their service and student experience, making a substantial difference to how students feel both practically and emotionally.
Download our OFS E6 whitepaper for a selection of case studies on how our higher education partners have used our software to drive change.
5. Our platform enables anonymous, direct communication with two-way messaging
With our two-way messaging feature built into the platform, we give universities a powerful feature changing how you engage with students making a report, whether they’ve chosen to stay anonymous or have provided their details.
Two-way messaging is a crucial step in helping universities create safer environments for students and improves communication, providing a more proactive, comprehensive approach to handling reports.
Effective communication with reporters is essential to any higher education’s response strategy and can help case handlers bridge the gap by helping you to provide further support, updates to their case and the immediate action that has been taken.
You can read more about this feature on our website here.
6. Your team gets access to our community of practice
Our community of practice is a valuable resource for anyone working in student services, EDI or HR who are responsible for culture transformation, culture management and those who have some level of responsibility for student experience.
We bring practitioners together at exclusive events throughout the year, virtually and in person, we facilitate discussion spaces, ongoing conversations and peer-to-peer support on whatever challenges you face when it comes to improving student experience and eliminating culture damaging behaviours at university.
We’re proud that 85%% of our partners have engaged in this community of practice demonstrating how valuable they find this space.
7. I have Access to our Training Academy, with experts in culture transformation
Our Training Academy has been developed by our team of culture transformation experts and their learnings in the sector over the last decade. For us, simply providing reporting software is not enough to help institutions drive change, we want to partner with our higher education customers to help them succeed and a big part of that is through education.
We recently launched our accredited Train the Trainer programme which will support institutions to build their internal capacity to deliver both staff and student training sessions to meet Condition E6 requirements. This programme provides best practice guidance and a framework for facilitating training sessions on harassment and sexual misconduct, including topics such as consent and healthy relationships, responding to disclosures, trauma-informed practice and bystander interventions. In addition to gaining knowledge around harassment and sexual misconduct, participants will exercise and develop their facilitation skills to ensure that they can foster an effective learning environment within these sessions and can train and support other facilitators within their institution to do so.
When the OFS E6 regulations come into force in August 2025, the Office for Students will be expecting all relevant providers to be delivering training that ensures students are ‘appropriately informed to ensure understanding’ and staff have a sufficient level of expertise to be able to inform students what behaviours constitute harassment and sexual misconduct and can support students to navigate the relevant processes to get support and resolution. Participants on our first Train the Trainer programme will be accredited by mid-May 2025, allowing them plenty of time to go back to their institutions and prepare for the August 2025 deadline.
Along with our Train the Trainer programme we have a range of other training including our Responder Training programme which is designed to up-skill anybody who is responding to reports on the Report and Support platform, and we are also taking expressions of interest for a training session on Addressing Staff/Student Sexual Misconduct Disclosures and Complaints that we can deliver in partnership with the 1752 Group.
Explore the full range of training sessions available in the training academy on our website.
8. Access to prevention & awareness campaign resources that are ready to roll out to students
Our prevention and awareness campaigns are ready to roll out resources that you can tailor to your brand and implement across your university or higher education institution as soon as Culture Shift’s Report + Support platform is live. Each of our campaigns are worth upwards of £15,000 in design and development time, so we save you time and money, making it easy to drive awareness of the problem and increase reporting rates.
Ready to explore our student reporting platform further?
