Issue - items at meetings - Workforce Diversity

Report of the Acting director for Strategy and Governance

5.1       The Head of Human Resources said the council was not yet reaching its targets for numbers of BME and disabled people in its workforce but numbers had been increasing since 2004.

5.2       Work was being undertaken on a range of initiatives to improve performance in this area, an equalities impact assessment had been completed on the recruitment and selection policy.  This would come to the meeting on the 14 July along with a more general update on equalities work and the feedback report from the peer assessment.

5.3       The Head of Human Resources clarified that on Table 2, the ‘% offers’ column was based on the total number of candidates at each stage of the process which  would be different. 

5.4 The Commission were pleased with the gradual increase in the representation of the minority groups within the work force and acknowledged the importance of the action being taken in terms of risk and opportunity management implications.

5.5 It was generally felt that in view of the 7% proportion of economically active BME people within the local community, that the BVPI target for BME could be raised higher than 3.5% as at present. Some Members were also of the opinion that a BVPI target for sexual orientation of applicants for vacancies or employees of BHCC should be considered despite there being no legal requirement to do so.

5.6 Asked about disabled workers, the Head of Human Resources outlined what was being done to encourage disabled job candidates. The Council displayed the ‘two ticks’ disability symbol awarded by Job Centre Plus and its Disabled Worker’s Forum discussed more ideas. Further suggestions would be welcome.

5.7 Regarding blind or partially-sighted staff and job applicants, relevant work was not restricted only to telephone operations but to jobs across the whole range of opportunities. The Council collected data on disabilities but not on the nature of the disability.

5.8 The Chairman referred to report paragraph 3.5.2 and the Council achieving level 3 Equality standard following the completed Peer Review. Councillor Mitchell said the inspection report had not been circulated to Group Leaders as had been agreed, and went on to ask for the full inspection report, albeit in sketchy or bullet-point form, to be presented to OSC.

5.9 RESOLVED:

(1)   that the report be noted

(2)   that officers be requested to bring the unabridged version of the equalities peer inspection report, with separate dialogue and additional material to 14 July Commission meeting.