Issue - meetings

Vickie Jameson (Recruitment Manager)

Vickie Jameson, Recruitment Manager, and Lynsey Fulcher, Head of People, shared highlights from the council’s Equality in Employment report, which provided a profile of the City Council Workforce as of 31st March 2023. The report provides a snapshot of the year covering recruitment, learning & development, starters, leavers, promotions, employment, pay bands and flexible working. This is analysed relating to age, disability, ethnicity, religion/ belief, sex, and sexual orientation. Some highlights shared were:

·      The highest representation of staff is in the 55 to 64 age group (this has changed from 45 to 54 since 2010). City Pay Band 1 has the widest representation of ages (under 18 to 65 and over).

·      A total of 7.37% of the workforce declared a disability, down from 8.15% as at 31 March 2022 (this is a decrease of 5 individuals).

·      9.09% of the workforce are from an ethnic minority background, up from 8.32%. 

·      47% of the workforce are female and 52% male. A total of 56% of promotions were for women and 44% for men.

·      The Gender Pay Gap is the difference between the average (mean and median) earnings of men and women across a workforce. The gender pay gap in the council is 0.95% mean or 6.81% median. This means that for every £1 men earn, women earn 92 pence. The more transparent the council is about pay, and the action it is taking to reduce pay gaps, the more people are aware and can help to contribute to reduce the gap. It is not just about increasing pay for women: actions to reduce our pay gap need to encompass more than just pay and include indirect policies like greater flexibility in the council’s roles.

·      116 staff have not declared their religion, an increase from the previous year. 46.7% of staff have no religion. 44.6% of staff identify as Christian, a slight increase from the previous year.

·      6.76% of staff declare themselves as LGBTQ+, an increase from last year. 93.2% of the workforce declare themselves as heterosexual, a slight decrease from last year. 118 individuals preferred not to disclose their sexual orientation, a decrease from last year.

Vickie and Lynsey also shared actions the council will undertake for the rest of 2023/24 and beyond to help improve workforce diversity and promote inclusion. The council will:

·      Increase the target of ethnic minority staff representation in our workforce to 10% in line with the most recent census data (23.3% in Cambridge).

·      Look for further opportunities to increase disability representation in the workforce.

·      Continue to monitor internal promotion activity including reviewing career pathways across the organisation.

·      Continue to monitor its Gender Pay Gap and extend this to Ethnicity Pay Gap monitoring.

·      Explore the possibility of a flexible bank holiday policy.

·      Ensure that the People & Culture Strategy addresses key equalities, diversity, and inclusivity matters.

Panel members provided the following feedback on the presentation:

·      One member said it was great to see improvement in the council’s diversity and suggested that one way to improve ethnic diversity might be to provide more apprenticeship opportunities to ethnic minority people.

·      Another member shared that they were concerned with the ethnic diversity of staff at senior levels and asked for the council to monitor this going forward. They suggested that managers hiring new staff might be held accountable and asked to justify where they have shortlists of all White people. The Panel member asked if the council has anonymised applications.

·      A member shared that they appreciate the council looking into flexible Bank Holidays and monitoring workplace flexibility requests relating to gender. They offered to put the council in touch with staff networks at Anglia Ruskin University so that the council can learn about their progress and successes in supporting the networks.

One non-Panel member shared that it would be helpful for the council to report on proportions of staff with other religions than Christianity when presenting the data. Another non-Panel member shared that the Commission for Race Equality’s UK research found that where Asian people put names on job applications, they were less likely to get interviewed, and that where Black people use English names, they were more likely to get interviews but less likely to get the job.

Vickie Jameson shared that the council anonymises job applications.

Deborah Simson (Head of Human Resources) and Vickie Jameson (Recruitment Manager)