As a major UK employer and high profile recruiter the Civil Service yesterday set out its stall by this announcement. The transparency of what they have achieved and what they hope to achieve is to be applauded.
John Manzoni, Chief Executive of the Civil Service and Cabinet Office Permanent Secretary, said: "There are many studies and reports that evidence that diverse and inclusive organisations perform better and have happier people. The Civil Service, in order to ensure that it delivers the best quality service to the taxpayer, has a duty to attract and retain the best people from all corners of society. Our commitment to becoming the most inclusive employer in the UK by 2020 should also set an example to other public and private sector organisations."
The real challenge comes in the execution and how to achieve these targets. It starts by building and managing your employer brand as a diverse employer and then needs to extend to building pipelines from total talent pool which would include the right mix of the target groups and then ensuring that the selection process are fair and remove bias (conscious and unconscious).
The Civil Service has made significant progress towards increasing the diversity of its workforce. Introducing measures such as anonymised recruitment and making Permanent Secretaries accountable to the Head of the Civil Service for improving diversity and inclusion have made a positive difference. On gender whilst 42% of current Senior Civil Servants are women, in 2017, 49% of all new recruits were women. The proportion of women at Senior Civil Service level (42%) is now greater than the representation of female executives and Board Directors in FTSE 100 companies (26%). The proportion of ethnic minority civil servants has increased from 9.4% in 2012 to 11.2%, and representation of disabled people has increased every year since 2010, from 7.6% to 9.9% in 2017. Only 4.6% of Senior Civil Servants are from ethnic minority communities, however, and only 3.3% report having a disability.
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