I'm delighted that the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) is hosting the 2014 Civil Service Diversity and Equality Awards tomorrow. This will be an opportunity to welcome teams from across the Civil Service and to celebrate their achievements.
We started the celebrations early in the MoJ with an event last week to meet our own nominees and hear their stories. They ranged from individuals who had simply gone out of their way to help a colleague in need, to teams working on equality policies and campaigns.
The response to the Awards this year has been really impressive, with an amazing 74% increase in nominations!
In the Civil Service we serve a diverse population and we want our workforce to reflect that diversity. Today I helped to launch a new Gender Equality Forum in MoJ with a group of women - and men - who are committed to working to ensure that we get more women into senior roles in our department. We talked about barriers, incentives, false assumptions and culture, and much more.
Tomorrow we'll be celebrating men and women who've done their bit to remove barriers, create a more open culture and help everyone, regardless of gender, ethnicity, disability or sexuality to fulfil their potential. Look out for news of the winners tomorrow and a blog from Sir Simon Fraser on the Awards!
2 comments
Comment by anon posted on
This is somewhat superficial, as the civil service may internally try and look diverse, but still discriminates aggressively in its functions in breach of the equality act through the use of outsourced agents as decision makers that are largely exempt from the law.
For example the civil service will happily cut someone’s student funding on protected characteristics. If for example HSBC used agents as decision makers and some were, discriminatory and would refuse loans on funding on protected characteristic region, sexual, etc and you complained to HSBC they would most likely withdraw the use of the agent.
The civil service will run with illegal agents and give them privilege to breach the law. I tend to think the civil service diversity is somewhat false.
Comment by Stephen Waring posted on
This is fantastic. A week ago I took part in an LGBT role models event at Defra. The Civil Service is waking up to the strong business case that the corporate sector is already alive to - that people perform better if they can be themselves at work. Look at today's Financial Times. They have an entire supplement on
Executive diversity.