The article is written by Soraya Zahid and Rachel Salmon, strategic delivery officers at London Borough of Hackney Council

Why is a diverse workforce in the public sector important? Look no further than the quality of services it creates.

The public sector workforce is not always diverse, especially at senior levels. This can lead us to shy away from genuine engagement with local communities, for example by assuming that some marginalised groups are 'hard to reach' and therefore make no effort to reach them.

This limits our ability to understand and tackle inequality effectively. A lack of diversity, both in terms of demography and cultural understanding, impacts the services we provide to our residents.

Inclusion in action

In Hackney Council, one of London’s 32 boroughs, we have adopted a dual focus: promoting workforce diversity, and promoting an inclusive leadership culture.

We recognised the importance of this work following feedback from an Equality Framework for Local Government self-assessment, desk research, staff survey results and feedback from unions. In 2018, we launched a major corporate programme to achieve these aims.

In order to drive and deliver some of this work, we created an Inclusion Champions programme, recruiting and training 33 Inclusion Champions from across the council who would champion values of diversity, equality and inclusion. Initially, their job was to deliver in-house inclusive leadership and cultural competency training to senior managers. The courses aimed to encourage greater self-awareness about inter-personal biases and preferences, so as to better understand our own culture and how this impacts our outlook and the decisions we take.

Services are best placed to recognise where they need to focus their efforts, and to do so accordingly, for instance focusing on more staff training, better recruitment protocols or better visibility of management in the workplace

We have also recently looked at internal workforce diversity, particularly at senior levels. Directors held focus groups with staff from culturally and ethnically diverse backgrounds, which helped us understand the way management behaviours, policies and procedures impact the wellbeing and career progression of staff.

These focus groups led to an action plan, co-produced with staff, which looks at the entire employee journey (recruitment, induction, development, progression, exit) with measures to improve management practices that would be more transparent, fair and encouraging of career progression for staff. The action plan also advocates for greater cultural visibility to the council’s ethnically diverse staff, as well as improvement of workforce data that could pinpoint 'problem' areas for development.

Away from the one-size-fits-all approach

We intend to continue this work across the organisation, but we are now moving away from a one-size-fits-all approach. This shift is a recognition that the council employs many different kinds of people from hundreds of different professional backgrounds, each with their own qualifications and career pathways.

What works for an accountant may not work for a librarian. Likewise, what might work for a social worker may not work for an IT analyst.

Services are best placed to recognise where they need to focus their efforts, and to do so accordingly, for instance focusing on more staff training, better recruitment protocols or better visibility of management in the workplace. Although feedback from staff was consistent across departments, there were some service-specific concerns, for instance around department culture and visibility.

Diversity works and brings its own benefits:

  • A diverse workforce brings in a diversity of experiences and perspectives to better meet the needs of residents and improve services. It enables us to tap into and harness talent from across the community
  • Diversity supports innovation
  • Last but not least, diversity and promoting a more inclusive leadership culture is crucial to the way we can tackle underlying and systemic issues that might drive inequalities.

Some of our Inclusion Champions have already started to work with their managers on anti-racist action plans for their services, and we expect to launch an equalities coaching and reverse mentoring programme in 2021, along with data dashboards to track progress and ensure accountability.

Only through inclusive and diverse leadership, can we be able to successfully support those we serve, in hard times and in good

In recognition of feedback from staff on the inconsistencies in management practice in regards to supporting staff career development, we are also developing a single management standard, with an inclusive management toolkit to encourage best practice and consistency. We hope this toolkit will nudge managers to embed inclusive practice in everything they do to manage staff and deliver services.

To make the organisation more race-literate, we have recorded a number of short videos featuring conversations with colleagues on microaggressions, challenging prejudices, intersectionality and the dynamics of power and privilege. We will continue to review our staff survey feedback and look at what else might be needed.

A diverse public sector for a diverse society

Our work to upskill managers on these fronts has continued throughout the pandemic.

Over the summer, our Inclusion Champions and Strategic Delivery Team delivered short, online sessions covering the key principles of inclusive leadership, cultural competency while talking about race to over 500 managers. The training was designed to offer an introductory session to greater self-awareness of biases and encourage managers to learn more about the realities of racism and the impact this may have on staff health and wellbeing.

In the coming months, over 100 managers will undertake more in-depth training in these areas. An updated online module on equality and diversity in the workplace has also been launched by the council for all managers, and we have begun to pilot a specific workshop on understanding institutional racism as senior leaders.

In 2021, we are also planning to launch a leadership programme for senior managers (possibly delivered with partner organisations) to equip managers with strategies more confidently engage those outside the organisation, and encourage inclusive procurement practices that will hopefully benefit the wider economy. For instance, building values and expectations around diversity and inclusion into contract specifications that we expect companies who bid for our contracts to have.

Only through inclusive and diverse leadership, can we be able to successfully support those we serve, in hard times and in good. — Soraya Zahid and Rachel Salmon

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