Organisational context

Structure

The UK Statistics Authority is an independent body at arm’s length from government and has a statutory objective of promoting and safeguarding the production and publication of official statistics that “serve the public good”.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is the executive office of the UK Statistics Authority and is the largest producer of official statistics in the UK. The vast majority of UK Statistics Authority staff work in the ONS.

Gender representation

As of March 2024:

• 56.0% of our workforce were women, a small decrease from 56.4% in 2023.
• 44.9% of our Senior Civil Servants were women, an increase from 42.0% in 2023.

We will continue to work on achieving an equal gender balance across the workforce. Figure 1 shows the breakdown of women and men across all grades as of March 2024:

Figure 1: Breakdown of grade by gender (March 2024)

Approach

Inclusion is one of the UK Statistics Authority’s strategic pillars and we aim to be inclusive in our approach to our workforce, talent management, and the design of data, statistics, and analysis.

Our Inclusion and Diversity (I&D) strategy focuses on five key areas:

• Building a coordinated approach to I&D across the organisation.
• Hardwiring I&D into everything we do, ensuring accountability is shared across the organisation.
• Building representation of underrepresented groups and supporting their career progression, identifying and addressing barriers to success.
• Continuing to build our reputation as an inclusive and equal opportunities employer.
• Improving and developing our evidence base, using data to inform decision making.

The UK Statistics Authority has an internal I&D Steering Group, reporting to the People Committee, whose role is to monitor the progress and implementation of our strategy and drive forward positive change. The group’s membership includes senior leaders, employee networks, internal communications, trade unions and members of the People and Business Services directorate.