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RESOLVED:
 
Cabinet and Council are invited to note
the contents of this report.
 
REASONS FOR DECISION
 
While our mean gender pay gap continues to grow in favour
of women, we cannot become complacent as the difference could
easily be reversed.
 
In May of this year (2023) Hackney increased its provision
for supporting equality, diversity, and inclusion for the workforce
by recruiting a designated Workforce Inclusion Officer, and further
investment in recruiting a Head of Organisational Development,
Strategic Workforce, and Inclusion.
 
These additional resources will lead all equality,
diversity, and inclusion initiatives aimed at supporting the
workforce.
 
We must also work hard to continue reducing the ethnicity
pay gap.
 
As pledged by Councillor Williams, “[Hackney Council]
will continue to develop an Anti-Racism Action Plan, maintaining
our stance as an anti-racist council and borough.”
 
As an organisation, Hackney continues to be more actively
anti-racist, by inviting conversations about racism and providing
specialist support for staff who have experienced racialised trauma.
 
In late 2021, a 10-week pilot scheme provided peer support
to workers in Hackney, listening to the voices of Black and Global
Majority colleagues as they shared their day-to-day lived
experiences of racism.
 
As a result of this pilot, we launched racialised trauma peer support sessions, utilising
the peer support model, to help alleviate some of the symptoms of
racialised trauma.
 
In 2023 we ran several peer support sessions specifically
to support staff regarding the case of Child Q. We allocated 60
spaces, had 41 sign-ups, and 23 people attended. We also
commissioned one-to-one counselling for 15 members of staff who
requested support.
 
We are now undertaking an evaluation of the feedback from
these provisions and will use this to inform future services and
support in this area.
 
In October 2023, the Council held its second Anti-Racism
Summit, which was open across the whole Council for the first
time.
 
The Summit started with a live day-long event that welcomed
550 employees in person, with 2,700 employees joining live online
and many more watching the recording. It was the most highly
attended staff event in Council history, with a total equivalent to
over half of our workforce in attendance either in person or
online.
 
After the initial launch event, each Council directorate
delivered events that were designed for their areas but were open
to all staff. In total, there were around 30 directorate-specific
events. Evaluation of the events resulted in an average
satisfaction rating of 4.5 out of 5.
 
One of these specific events focused on the breakdown of
Black and Global Majority staff across the different salary scale
points, working in groups to identify problems and barriers, and
collectively identifying ideas for action.
 
The Summit closed on 21 November and following feedback and
an evaluation of the programme, there will be a targeted focus on
actions that we will all take to further the work of the council
and continue to be actively anti-racist as employees and as an
organisation.
 
We understand the key role our line managers hold in
building an inclusive culture, so in 2021, we launched an Inclusive
Management Toolkit which is designed to support managers in
considering all stages of an employee’s journey, their own
role as managers in supporting their staff, and how each of these
roles can be made more inclusive.
 
To ensure wide coverage of these inclusive principles and
uptake of the toolkit, we also built a network of Inclusion
Champions whom we trained in the principles of inclusive
leadership. These champions take on a range of citizenship-style
roles for the Council including becoming trainers, providing
support for inclusive projects, and working on cross-organisational
policy development. Inclusion champions were involved in the
recruitment of a number of senior directors and the Chief
Executive.
 
As pledged by Councillor Williams, “[Hackney Council]
will continue reporting on and understanding the intersectional
impact of pay gaps on [gender as well as] other protected
characteristics”. But to do this, we need to improve
declaration rates (percentage of staff who declare their
demographic details as opposed to those who choose ‘Prefer
not to say’).
 
Therefore, over the next two years, we will work to improve
organisational trust, creating a culture where employees are happy
sharing their true selves with the Council, with the ultimate aim
of encouraging staff to complete equalities information on their HR
records so that we will be able to publish statistically
significant disabled and intersectional pay gap figures by
2024/25.
 
We would also like to work with the Pensions Team to
explore publishing pensions specific gender and ethnicity pay gaps
and build an action plan to address any inequality.