Targeted actions

Targeted action to reduce and close the gender pay gap

UKSA has a comprehensive plan to be a more inclusive employer.

Aligned to the core principles of UKSA’s Strategy to be radical, ambitious, inclusive and sustainable, we have a detailed Inclusion & Diversity Plan to ensure the workforce reflects the communities we serve, and our colleagues have opportunities to develop, progress and adapt their careers at all stages of their lives.

We will continue to actively engage with our employee networks and workforce to further explore the reasons for our pay and bonus gaps.

To enable us to publish pay and bonus gap information for disability, ethnicity and sexual orientation, we will continue to engage and share information to encourage higher rates of self-declaration and how this will inform our action plans to achieve a truly representative workforce.

Our commitments, both delivered, underway and in development, include:

Engagement and transparency

• Continue to work with our network groups to develop and share our workforce analysis across the organisation to increase understanding and awareness of pay gaps.
• Regularly monitor pay outcomes to enable us to identify and address inequalities in our pay and grading structures.
• Ensure recruitment pay decisions are evidence based, fair and equitable.
• Introduce gender identity and social economic background questions onto our HR technology to better understand our workforce.
• We have a consistent inclusive leader objective that clearly outlines behavioural expectations, supported by an inclusion check list across all Senior Civil Service colleagues, and through line management chains.
• We have developed and launched an Inclusion, Culture, and Wellbeing dashboard that enables us to use colleague data to measure inclusion across the employee lifecycle in the organisation and use it to inform strategic direction and decisions.
• Ensuring reproductive health-related disabilities/long-term health conditions can be declared through our online HR platform, and that our current guidance and policies are updated to reflect the support available for colleagues living with such conditions.

Recruitment and outreach

• To continue to grow our brand as an employer of choice, through promotion of our flexible working ethos and ensuring job adverts reach as wide an audience as possible, particularly those in underrepresented groups.
• Ensure all job opportunities offer flexible working in terms of hours and location, including options for part-time, job share and promote the flexibility available on location under our hybrid working model.
• All recruitment interviews have moved to virtual by default.
• Minimise bias by ensuring recruitment panels are diverse and representative of our communities and name blank recruitment is mandated where possible.
• Ensuring selection processes are accessible for all.
• Partner with universities to offer an internship specifically targeting candidates from under-represented communities to create new entry channels into the organisation. We also have a wide range of entry talent programmes to support opportunities for all.

Flexible working

• Learning lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic, we have moved to a hybrid working model by default, supporting, and encouraging greater flexibility in work location and achieving a positive work life balance.
• Continuing to offer a wide range of flexible working approaches which are available throughout people’s careers to meet changing circumstances.
• We are committed to challenging assumptions about traditional ways of working, taking account of the needs of our work, our customers, and our colleagues.
• Extensive support for time off, including annual leave, special leave, and a refreshed family leave framework to further support work life balance.

Career development and learning

Continue to develop our internal leadership development offering in consultation with our networks, to build capability and promote a more diverse workforce, providing individuals with the tools they need to develop their careers and progress. Some examples include:

• Our new inclusion learning pathway and new mandatory “Active Bystander” training
• Our Women into Leadership programme, also combining where appropriate with our Ethnic Minority and disability into Leadership programmes to support individuals from an intersectionality perspective
• Mentoring, reverse mentoring, shadowing and sponsorship opportunities
• Where non disclosive, reviewing our gender balance and protected characteristic data against applications for high potential programmes to understand current practice and address areas of concern.

Networks

• Evolve and develop our community of diversity networks and sponsors, ensuring consistency of approach, clear aims and action plans are in place. We have nine recognised diversity networks in place, with a Social Mobility network having launched within the last year.
• Build on the investment in our diversity network leaders following their receipt of a dedicated leadership development package.
• Continue to expand the opportunities available to our diversity networks to input into corporate decision making and priorities, including:
  • The opportunity for network members to become members of all key committees
  • A ‘shadow board’
  • The Women’s Network raising awareness of violence against women and girls, enabling the delivery of a learning intervention to every Directorate to raise awareness, as well as raising awareness of menopause and menstrual health, also trialling the Peppy app.