Public Sector Equality Duty Reports 2023

The Council is committed to being an exemplar employer and one where its employees are supported and can thrive.  It is also committed to being a leader amongst our local businesses and industries, showcasing how fair work and best practice benefits our people and local economy.

In 2022 the remit for equalities was transferred to the Chief Officer, People Resources’ portfolio and this has provided additional resources and a focus to further advance equality in our employment environment.

The following illustrates some aspects of our employment practices where advancing equality is at its heart.

Supporting a diverse workforce

With a predominantly female workforce and an ageing one we recognised that many of those women will be approaching and going through the menopause. Our menopause information leaflet provides advice and guidance for employees that are either directly experiencing symptoms of the menopause or are affected by it. Guidance for managers has also been published.

There is also the inevitability that some, if not many employees in our workforce, will have experience of gender-based violence (GBV). Eight employees have volunteered to become GBV Support Officers to provide emotional and practical support to any employee who requests it. We also have a GBV Policy that sets out the support that employees can expect and additional guidance provides information for line-managers and supervisors.

We are in the process of developing a Women’s Health Policy that will bring all related policies and supports for our female employees into one accessible resource.

Our Dignity at Work Policy aims to tackle bullying and harassment in the workplace and provide recourse for those who experience it. To support employees we also have a number of Dignity at Work Support Officers who will support employees who wish to address bullying or harassment.  

To address issues of harassment experienced by an employee by a service user the Council in partnership with the Employee Equality Forum developed anti-violence and harassment posters to be displayed in all public reception areas.   

The Reasonable Adjustment Protocol aims to provide a standardised process for disabled employees to negotiate and agree the reasonable adjustments they need to support and sustain their employment. We have also developed bespoke disability equality and reasonable adjustment training for managers. The protocol was subject of a review in 2022 and an employee survey is about to be issued to gauge experiences of using the protocol.

Our Smarter Working Policy allows employees to work flexibly, allowing them to balance the needs of their work and home life.  To compliment this we have developed an e-learning module What is flexible working? This gives an overview of the aims and types of Flexible working available and how to deal with Flexible working requests.  We also include the Happy to Talk Flexible Working logo on all of our job adverts opening up the application process to a wider pool of people.

We continue to provide access to occupational health services like medical advice, counselling, debt counselling and physiotherapy and we continue to develop and promote our WorkwellNL and NL Life provisions to support and reward our employees across the Council. These programmes have been well received and well used by our employees and they will become increasingly important as we enter a period of increased change and transformation across all our services.

Employee Health and Wellbeing

Our people management practices across the Council have been recognised through the accreditations we have received. We were the first Local Authority in Scotland to be accredited as a Disability Confident Leader. In 2023 this accreditation was subject to external validation and was renewed for a further three years.  In March 2020 we were awarded the Bronze Standard in the Equally Safe at Work accreditation that aims to advance gender equality in the workplace – one of only 4 Councils to achieve this.  In addition, we also hold Investors in People, Investors in Young People and Gold Healthy Working Lives accreditation.

Our workforce Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy was born out of recognising that our employees are experiencing high levels of mental health issues, resulting in high levels of absenteeism, and the need to support them better. The Strategy has recently been reviewed and its aims are to:

1. develop a supportive culture, build resilience and address factors that may negatively affect mental wellbeing;
2. support employees to minimise the risk of mental ill health by providing information on how to control stress, increase resilience and to boost low self-esteem as a way to help keep symptoms under control;
3. to provide support for employees experiencing mental health and wellbeing difficulties; and
4. to recognise that workplace stress is classed as occupational ill health. We will train & support our managers in proactive approaches to reduce instances of workplace stress.

To support the aims of the strategy and our employees better there is now a focus on service based mental health groups that will tailor support and strategies to the individual needs of the services and their workers rather than have a one size fits all approach. These service groups were launched in March 2023.

Employee Engagement

We use a variety of means to engage with employees around equality issues.

Having employees with the lived experience to influence our work is important to us not only to provide their own experience but also for the credibility of the work.

• Our Employee Equality Forum are engaged in many employee initiatives and its membership spans most if not all of the protected characteristics. Recent activity has included:
  • hosting three workshops in support of understanding and promoting good mental health;
  • hosting an event to bring together our BAME employees;
  • working with the Health and Safety Team to develop, promote and star in anti-violence and harassment posters to support employees in front-line services
  • assisted in the development of 2 employee surveys on the experiences of BAME employee and accessing reasonable adjustments; and
  • meeting with the Council’s Elected Member Equality Champion to discuss roles and areas for potential collaboration       
• Disabled employees are members of our Disability Confident Leader Working Group;
• Some of our BAME employees have signed up to assist with the monitoring and review of our Advancing Race Equality Action Plans;
• We use surveys to gather information from employees on their experiences - most recent examples include:
  • the BAME employee survey which we have committed to carrying out every two years;
  • the mental health and wellbeing survey to support our Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy;
  • the Reasonable Adjustment Survey to explore how our protocol is supporting disabled employees and their managers;
  • as part of the commitments for our Healthy Working Lives accreditation we carry out an employee health needs assessment survey every 3 years; and
  • since the pandemic and the move for over 1000 employees to working a hybrid model we have carried out surveys to hear from our employees how they are faring working from home both personally and professionally.   

Using our employment gathering information - example

Advancing Race Equality in employment

Having analysed the information from the 2021 employment gathering exercise a decision was taken to have a focus on advancing race equality in employment. A race equality in employment action plan was developed to address the issues arising from this analysis. Some of the issues included disproportionate numbers of BAME employees in comparison to the local population, no BAME people were promoted in the Council, interviews for BAME applicants were disproportionately low in comparison to other characteristics etc.  To date the following progress has been achieved:  

• Council signed up to the seven commitments of the Business in the Community Race at Work Charter;  
• appointed the Council’s first Executive Sponsor for Race; 
• undertook a survey to gauge the experiences of our BAME employees;  
• appointed a BAME employee representative on the short-life Black Lives Matter Working Group;  
• hosted a BAME employee event in partnership with the Employee Equality Forum in October 2022; 
• our Jobs and Training section on the Council website now includes an equality and diversity section to promote our commitments and policies to anyone checking us out as a potential place to work; and  
• through iTrent recruitment we have developed an anonymous recruitment process that was fully implemented in February 2023.   

The action plan has been subject to a consultation with BAME employees and they have signed up to be involved in the monitoring and review of the plan to ensure it progresses and remains relevant.

Campaign and positive action measures to increase North Lanarkshire BAME teacher numbers.

In 2022 further research was undertaken to understand the ethnic diversity of our pupils and teachers. The findings show that across the school estate 1% of our teaching workforce are Black, Asian or from another minority ethnic group while the average percentage of BAME pupils in NL schools is 5.78%.  Some of our schools have over 12% of BAME pupils.

Because of the low rates of BAME teachers throughout our education estate many of our young people, at no point in their school life, will they see or be taught by a BAME teacher. This will have implications for young people’s experiences at school as well as their aspirations to be teachers and therefore has an impact on the diversity of our future teaching workforce.  

Furthermore, for our existing BAME teachers they may feel isolated in an environment where they are the only person of colour among their colleagues. This may have implications for BAME teacher retention. 

To address this a report was presented to the Education Senior Leadership Team (ESLT) setting out the case for change with recommendations for actions that have the full support of the Depute Chief Executive and Executive Sponsor for Race. These actions include:

• Head Teachers of those schools with the highest numbers of BAME pupils should be engaged to encourage positive action in promotion and recruitment; 
• consider the potential for BAME teachers in the permanent pool and supply cohort to be strategically moved into those schools - at the very least encouraged to apply for vacancies as they arise;
• leadership pathways to be developed for BAME teachers and promoted by line managers and other senior education staff. Leadership training opportunities to be promoted to BAME teachers;
• support and promote participation of current BAME staff across Education Service, including Early Years, in the Scottish Association of Minority Ethnic Educators (SAMEE) Leadership and Mentoring Programme;
• a campaign to increase ethnicity recording for all teachers on all contracts should take place. In the case of probationer teachers coming to NL this should be made compulsory; and
• the Council’s website should contain a Teach Here section where information can be provided on our commitments to increase ethnic diversity within our teaching staff.   

The recommendations have been included in an action plan for advancing race equality in our schools’ environment and will be progressed and monitored by the ESLT.

Workforce for the Future

North Lanarkshire Council has a well-established Workforce for the Future Strategy, which takes forward the aspirations of our single Plan for North Lanarkshire to drive inclusive growth. Through the delivery of this strategy, we want to ensure that people and businesses across the area benefit from the opportunities available, particularly in our growth sectors. Our plan is to create jobs and meet employment demand, by enabling our businesses to grow and develop their workforce. Engaging with key industry sectors and education bodies as part of our academy model is critical to our future success and will ensure more effective pathways are in place to employment in these areas.

A key aspiration of the Academy model is to support and encourage an inclusive culture and attract talent across the broad spectrum of North Lanarkshire and naturally promote diversity, across all industries.  It is important that the workforce for the future reflects the vibrant communities within North Lanarkshire.  Going forward, we will create more collaboration opportunities with communities, industry and education and make a positive difference towards addressing imbalances across the North Lanarkshire’s workforce.

Fair Work First commitments

The Council recognises that work is an important part of adult life and is critical to our wellbeing and shaping how we live. The Fair Work Convention’s Framework defines Fair Work as work that offers effective voice, fulfilment, opportunity, respect and security. We believe Fair Work can boost creativity, realise untapped potential and increase productivity. We are committed to Fair Work and are meeting the criteria by:  

• providing effective channels for effective employee engagement; 
• investing in workforce development; 
• not using zero hours contracts inappropriately; 
• taking action to tackle the gender pay gap and create a more diverse and inclusive workplace;
• committing to paying the Real Living Wage;
• offering flexible and family friendly working practices for all workers from day one of employment; and 
• opposing the use of fire and rehire practice.  

We have agreed with our Trade Union colleagues a statement on Fair Work First and this has been published on the Council’s website.