PERTH & KINROSS COUNCIL. Equality & Diversity Member Officer Working Group. 18 September Equality and Diversity in Employment

Transcription

1 6 G/15/241 PERTH & KINROSS COUNCIL Equality & Diversity Member Officer Working Group 18 September 2015 Equality and Diversity in Employment Section 1 Introduction 2 Page No. Section 2 Our Equality Duties 2 Section 3 Our Commitment to Equality and Diversity in Employment 3-4 Section 4 Gathering and Using Employee Information 4-7 Section 5 Equality Impact Assessments 7 Section 6 Our Workforce Profile Employee Information 7-9 Section 7 Summary and Next Steps 9-10

2 2 1. Introduction 1.1 Perth & Kinross Council is committed to promoting equality and diversity across our workforce. This document details our progress in the last 12 months (1 April March 2015) and what we plan to do next to mainstream equalities to ensure equality is considered in decisions taken that affect our workforce. 2. Our Equality Duties 2.1 There are nine protected characteristics covered by the Equality Act (2010). These are age, disability, gender, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief and sexual orientation. 2.2 The Act introduced a general equality duty for listed public bodies. This requires the Council, in the exercise of our functions, to have due regard for the need to: Eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation and other conduct which is prohibited by the Act. Advance equality of opportunity between people who share a relevant protected characteristic and those who do not. Foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not. 2.3 In May 2012 the Equality Act (Specific Duties) (Scotland) Regulations 2012 came into force. This introduced specific duties which public bodies must undertake to help achieve the general equality duty by 30 April 2013 and update at not more than two yearly intervals. In employment using information for 2013/2014, these duties required us to: Gather and use employee information and to present this in a mainstreaming report. Publish our gender pay gap information. Publish our equal pay statement which includes our policy on equal pay, detailing information on occupational segregation. 2.4 This information is published on the Council s website at

3 3 3. Our Commitment to Equality and Diversity in Employment 3.1 The Council s commitment to equality and diversity in employment is reflected in our Corporate Equality Policy and our Equal Pay Policy by providing a framework within which we work. 3.2 In 2013/2014 we committed to a number of equalities initiatives. Some of the highlights are below. 3.3 Gender The Council continues to encourage applications from the opposite gender for particular job roles. We continue to use our occupational segregation Equalities Leaflet at career fairs and recruitment events Last year Education and Children Services lodged an application as part of the Securing the Future Awards for their Men in Childcare project to encourage men into childcare. They ultimately won the Silver Award under the Equalities category. 3.4 Youth Employment The Council is committed to promoting and encouraging youth employment. Our target is to recruit 250 Modern Apprentices (MA) and 30 Professional Trainees (PT) by 2017 and progress to date is shown below. Period Number of MA Opportunities Cumulative Total Number of PT Opportunities Cumulative Total 2012/ / / Modern Apprenticeships have been offered in Business & Administration, Health & Social Care, Facilities Services, Frontline Environmental Services, Youth Work, Horticulture, Lab Technician, IT and Finance. 86% of those who completed the MA programme last year achieved a positive outcome Last year 20 professional trainees were recruited and all professional trainee leavers achieved a positive outcome as shown below. Continuing with their Qualification in PKC Secured Employment in PKC Secured Employment Externally Undertaking Post Graduate Qualification at University Total

4 4 3.5 Pay Practices Following recent publicity and employment law judgements surrounding holiday pay, the Council is addressing this issue raised through a local agreement An 8.3% plussage will now apply to rates for plain time overtime, part-time additional hours, shift allowances, standby, callouts, disturbance, night working and sleep in payments. This applies to all employee groups with the exception of Teachers No Council employee has been paid below the Living Wage since 1 April 2012 and the Council will be given the opportunity to consider becoming a Living Wage Accredited employer during 2015/ Gathering and Using Employee Information 4.1 Information used from employment monitoring ensures that a focus on workplace equality issues is used when carrying out policy review and development. 4.2 The key points from the employee information as at 31 March 2015 are presented in this section. More detailed information for this year and trend information is available on request from the Corporate Human Resources Manager. 4.3 Protected Characteristics Religion or Belief and Sexual Orientation Last year the Council asked employees to review and update their personal details, including the two new equality categories of Religion or Belief and Sexual Orientation The disclosure rates from employees for religion or belief and sexual orientation have improved in the last year as shown below. Protected Improvement Characteristic Religion or Belief 6.3% 7.9% 1.6% Sexual Orientation 6.2% 8.2% 2% Advice from Stonewall is to treat preliminary data with caution and that it may take up to five years for the numerical data to become reliable, as employees get used to the process and develop the confidence to self-identify.

5 The Council recently signed up to Stonewall s Diversity Champions Programme. We will use the opportunities this presents to communicate key messages about the importance of employees providing all equality information requested so that the Council can; Establish to what extent its workforce reflects the rich diversity within its community Ensure that our Human Resources policies reflect the needs of the Council and employees Stonewall has also published useful guidance which should help the Council improve the reliability of data. In particular, their guidance entitled What's it got to do with you? is aimed at people who may be concerned about completing monitoring information. 4.4 Recruitment Applications Disclosure rates for religion or belief and sexual orientation for recruitment have remained stable at 98.8% for both protected characteristics A breakdown of responses from applicants on religion or belief and sexual orientation follows. Religion or Belief Number of Applications Percentage of Applications Buddhist % 0.2% Church of Scotland % 32.4% Hindu % 0.3% Humanist % Jewish * * 0.1% Muslim % 1.4% None % 36.7% Other Christian % 5.5% Other Religion or Belief % 0.3% Pagan % Prefer not to answer % Roman Catholic % 15.9% Sikh * * 0.2% No response % 7% Total applications % * numbers of less than 5 not reported. 1 Source: Scotland's 2011 Census Release 2A (Table 7) Scotland Results from 2011 Census 1

6 6 Sexual Orientation Number of Applications Percentage of Applications Bisexual % Gay % Heterosexual / Straight % Lesbian % Other % Prefer not to answer 301 4% No response % Total applications % This compares with government actuaries estimate that 6% of the British population, around 3.6 million people, are lesbian, gay or bisexual. 4.5 Recruitment Complaints Monitoring of recruitment complaints is used to identify whether any complaints cited discrimination on the grounds of any of the protected characteristics. There have been 8 recruitment complaints in 2014/15 and none of them cited discrimination on the grounds of any of the protected characteristics Following conclusion of the investigation into the complaint, one complainant raised an Employment Tribunal claim. At that stage they cited discrimination on the grounds of a protected characteristic but the case was subsequently withdrawn. 4.6 Maternity Leave of the 86 women on maternity leave last year returned to work from maternity leave % of those who returned did so without any change to their working pattern. 52% did return with some change to their working hours, either increasing or decreasing their contractual hours. This shows that the Council s Flexible Working Policy is providing working parents with a variety of options to enhance their worklife balance. 4.7 Flexible Retirements There has been little change in the number and age profile of employees taking flexible retirement this year compared to the previous year. Flexible Retirements Age Band 2009 / / / / / / Total

7 7 4.8 Employment Equality Monitoring Development Plan Our current employment monitoring arrangements cover 7 of the 9 protected characteristics. We will consider introducing monitoring of the two remaining protected characteristics of marriage & civil partnership and gender reassignment within the next two years We will also annually review the type of monitoring the Council carries out to determine whether any further monitoring should be introduced. 5. Equality Impact Assessments 5.1 We continue to use the Integrated Impact Assessment (IIA) toolkit to carry out our Equality Impact Assessments (EqIA). One example that led to a change in practice is below. 5.2 Modern Apprenticeship Programme The EqIA concluded that the Council was not attracting a wide range of diversity of applicants into Modern Apprenticeship opportunities, i.e. young men and women tend to only express interest into roles traditionally carried out by their gender Through career fairs and talking to young people we are trying to improve the diversity of applicants from all protected characteristics, including ethnic minorities, people with a disability or additional support needs and people leaving the care system. 6. Our Workforce Profile Employee Information In this section, we highlight relevant variations and trends over recent years /2015 Disability Eleven people with a disability achieved an internal promotion. This represents 7.1% of all internal promotions which compares favourably with the 1.1% of the workforce who have advised they have a disability. 6.2 Trends Ethnicity The number of ethnic minority employees continues to increase from 43 (0.7%) at 31 March 2008 to 219 (3.8%) at 31 March This is partly attributed to the changes introduced in the 2011 Census, i.e. minority ethnic now includes all categories except White Scottish and White Other British.

8 The number of applications from ethnic minority people continues to increase from 360 (3.1%) in 2007/2008 to 746 (9.9%) in 2014/ The number of appointments for ethnic minority people has also increased from 8 (1.5%) in 2007/08 to 43 (5.1%) in 2014/2015. Disability The number of employees who have advised they have a disability has slowly improved from 36 (0.6%) in 2007/2008 to 61 (1.1%) at 31 March However, this is not an accurate representation of the number of people the Council employs who would meet the definition of disability under the Equality Act (2010) The number of applications from people with a disability continues to increase from 238 (2%) in 2007/2008 to 474 (6.3%) in 2014/2015. This indicates that the Guaranteed Job Interview Scheme continues to fulfil its objective of encouraging applicants with a disability to disclose this information as part of the application process. Age There was a concern that the removal of the Default Retirement Age in 2011 would result in a significant increase in the number of employees age 65 and over. However, following an initial spike in 2012/2013 and 2013/2014 the numbers have since fallen as shown in the following table. Age Band No. % No. % No. % No. % Under % % 58 1% % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % Gender There has been no significant changes in the workforce profile, recruitment activity and employee relations cases in relation to gender. 7. Summary and Next Steps 7.1 This section highlights work which has been undertaken in this year and is/will be undertaken next year to mainstream equalities. 7.2 In 2014/2015

9 9 71 Modern Apprenticeship opportunities were signed up for in 2014/15 Certificates of Work Readiness were awarded following completion of Work Experience Placements 22 corporately funded Professional Trainees were recruited Education and Children s Services concluded a Men in Childcare project pilot and ultimately won the Silver Award under the Equalities category as part of the Securing the Future Awards A Shared Parental Leave Policy was implemented Discussion has taken place with Stonewall to seek to improve response rates for sexual orientation and consider introducing gender identity monitoring questions. Improved the monitoring arrangements on Flexible Retirements, Maternity Leave, Parental Leave, Shared Parental Leave and Recruitment Complaints 7.3 In 2015/2016 We will: Continue to support the Modern Apprenticeship Programme, Graduate Work Experience Programme and Professional Traineeships. Take forward the Equality Challenge Fund Education and Childrens Services will run a further Men in Childcare course with Perth College to encourage more men into childcare roles. In conjunction with Services, undertake further workforce planning activity to identify specific initiatives or projects to address occupational segregation in particular job roles Progress the Carers Kitemark Scheme Participate in the Local Government Benchmarking Framework groups to agree equality indicators for benchmarking purposes with other Councils in our Family Group Maintain awareness of the fair work agenda. 7.4 In conclusion, we will continue to eliminate unlawful discrimination and to advance equality of opportunity through the Council s role as an employer and through its work with community planning partners and other employers. 7.5 Progress on this will be reported in September Author(s) Name Designation Contact Details Sheila Munro Karen Mackie HR Officer HR Officer ssmunro@pkc.gov.uk kmackie@pkc.gov.uk

10 10 Approved Name Designation Date John Walker Executive Director (Housing and Community Care) 9 September 2015 Sheila Munro,