The Learning and Skills Council's Annual Report and Accounts for ...

Learners and providersAs part of the Single Equality Scheme,we put in place equality and diversityimpact measures to ensure moreequal outcomes for the learnerswe fund. We have commissioneda review of progress against thesemeasures, which will be published insummer 2009.Our Single Equality Schemecommitted us to going beyondthe requirements of legislation. Inparticular, we set out our intentionto work with the sector and supportproviders in developing their ownequality schemes and in takingpractical steps to tackle inequalities.The LSC workforceAs part of the Single EqualityScheme, we set ourselves a numberof equality goals which aim to makeour workforce more representative.We are making substantial progresstowards achieving these, and havealready surpassed two of our goalsfor 2010: the proportion of womenin middle and senior roles is now at52 per cent and the proportion of allstaff from black and minority ethnicbackgrounds is now at 14 per cent, upfrom 7.2 per cent in 2002.We have now made the first of thesegoals more challenging by focusing onthe most senior roles, 48 per cent ofwhich are filled by women. We haveexceeded our goal of 7.6 per cent ofmiddle and senior roles being filled bystaff from black and minority ethnicbackgrounds. This now stands at10 per cent.To ensure that our workforce practicesare fair, we have established aWorkforce Equality and DiversitySteering Group, made up of staff fromacross the organisation. This group hasalso been involved in consultationssuch as how we meet the MindfulEmployer Charter, which the LSCsigned up to in 2007.We remain committed to increasingthe proportion of staff declaringa disability or limiting illness. Thefigure remains low at 3.4 per centbut has improved. To this end, weare raising awareness among ourstaff, encouraging them to talk abouttheir need for support and makingreasonable adjustments for staff withdisabilities.BenchmarkingachievementsAccording to benchmarking tools fromthe Employers’ Forum on Disability,Race for Opportunity and OpportunityNow, we have already madesubstantial achievements against ourHR action plan.•Monitoring – we now have inplace a comprehensive employeemonitoring system, which enablesthe LSC to report on the diversity ofour workforce in line with the publicduty requirements.•Case management – informationfrom any incidents is now reviewedand used for learning to improvepeople management and reducerisks to the LSC.•Improving personal data – wehave completed a regional eventto encourage more employees –particularly those with disabilities– to declare their personal data.Following the event, there was aclear improvement in the data forthe region.• Mindful Employer Charter –our Chief Executive signed theCharter, which commits the LSC tosupporting the mental health andwell-being of our employees.•Consultation and action plan –we have developed an action planto implement the principles of theCharter, and it has been approvedby our HR leadership team.•Equal pay – we implemented equalpay audits in 2008 and 2009 andare committed to undertaking thisexercise annually, which links toour responsibilities under our SingleEquality Scheme.•Dignity at Work – we havesuccessfully implemented a pilotDignity at Work programme acrossone region and have made theresource available to all employees,which will be supported by ane-learning tool.•Health and well-being – a similarpiece of work has been completedaround managing health andwell-being in the workplace and isavailable regionally.As a result of these achievements,Race for Opportunity ranked the LSCin the top 10 most improved publicsector organisations in 2008. Wehave also been showcased, throughbenchmarking networks, as anexemplar of good practice in the publicsector, particularly in our approach toequality impact assessment and theSingle Equality Scheme.Leadership and GovernanceLSC Annual Report and Accounts 2008–09 37