About the Civil Service
Promoting Equality, Valuing Diversity – A Strategy for the Civil Service
What is the strategy?
The strategy is a key building block in our vision for the Civil Service. It sets out what we want to achieve in equality and diversity in employment over the next three to five years. It also provides a framework against which individual departments and agencies will take actions.
The Government's new vision for equality, Framework for a Fairer Future – The Equality Bill, includes a new single public equality duty which for the first time includes age, sexual orientation and religion and belief. This strategy is an important contribution towards preparing the Civil Service for the introduction of the duty.
We will regularly measure our performance against the strategy's framework and publish the results.
The strategy reflects our drive to mainstream equality and diversity further into every aspect of our business. It sets out what we will do to:
- change behaviour and culture to create a fully inclusive Civil Service, confident in its diversity;
- promote strong leadership – down to first line management level – and clear accountability for delivering diversity;
- attract, keep and develop talent from all areas of society; and
- become more representative of the society we serve, at all levels.
Who is it for?
This strategy is about our performance and ability to deliver world-class public services. So it is for all civil servants, whatever job they do and wherever they work.
Delivery will depend on the commitment of everyone, at every level in the Civil Service. We must drive forward the changes that we need to make if we are to create an inclusive and confident Civil Service that reflects society in the future.
Why do we need it?
The Civil Service is committed to improving the delivery of public services for everyone in society. Respecting and valuing differences will help ensure that our policies and services reflect the needs and experiences of the people we serve.
To do this effectively, we need a workforce with the very best possible mix of existing and future talent. We have already made good progress to achieve a more diverse workforce that will help make us better equipped to deliver, adapt and innovate. But there is more to do. The strategy builds on this progress and sets out how we will take this forward.
The key themes are:
Behaviour and culture change
- Changing behaviour to create a Civil Service-wide inclusive culture, confident in its own diversity.
Leadership and accountability
- Strong leadership – down to first line management level – and clear, transparent accountability for delivering diversity.
Talent management
- Talent management systems that enable everyone to realise their potential, and accelerates the rate at which we bring in and bring on people from different backgrounds.
Representation
- A diverse workforce at all levels. We will measure our progress against targets over the next few years for the following groups of people in the Senior Civil Service: women, women in top management posts, people from minority ethnic backgrounds and disabled people. This will help drive progress towards our aspiration to reflect the society we serve by 2020.