The Government has outlined plans to become the UK’s most inclusive employer by 2020.
The Government has released its Civil Service Diversity & Inclusion Strategy, which outlines a range of ambitious proposals to achieve this aim.
These include building a dedicated ethnic minority programme to improve the representation of ethnic minority staff at the most senior level across the Civil Service; create a Diverse Leadership Task Force that will report to the Cabinet Secretary; publishing data dashboard tracking progress on diversity and inclusion targets by April 2018; establishing a new framework for measuring inclusion; and embedding diversity and inclusion in Single Departmental Plans.
The Civil Service has already made significant progress towards increasing the diversity of its workforce.
Within the Civil Service, 42 per cent of current Senior Civil Servants are women. Alongside this, in 2017, 49 per cent of all new recruits into the SCS were women.
The proportion of women at Senior Civil Service level is now greater than the representation of female executives and Board Directors in FTSE 100 companies.
The proportion of ethnic minority civil servants has increased rapidly from 9.4 per cent in 2012 to 11.2 per cent today, and representation of disabled people within the Civil Service has increased every year since 2010, from 7.6 per cent to 9.9 per cent in 2017.
Caroline Nokes, Minister for Government Resilience and Efficiency, said, “The Civil Service leads the way on diversity in many ways.”
“The gender pay gap is lower than in the private sector, we have significantly increased our representation of minority groups at every level, and our award winning Fast Stream programme is now broadly representative of the wider population in terms of diversity characteristics and social background.”
“We are committed to driving this further, however, and I am proud that we are putting inclusion at the forefront of our agenda and for the Civil Service to act as a leading light for other organisations across the UK.”
Cabinet Secretary, Jeremy Heywood, said, “In order to serve the country to the best of it ability, the Civil Service must ensure that it reflects the diversity of the UK.”
“Having a diverse workforce is not enough though, if it is to be truly brilliant, the Civil Service must strive to be inclusive and must create an environment where differences of thought and outlook are not only respected, but expected.”
“Although progress has been considerable over the past few years, today’s strategy highlights how we must go further.”
“Our ambition to become the most inclusive employer by 2020 is testament to our commitment to diversity and inclusion and to making the best use of talent that exists in all parts of society.”
