Enabling factor two: A skilled organisation where diversity is valued

We want our workforce to feel valued and be supported to achieve their potential. We are working to: 

• Implement refreshed working practices to reflect wider changes in our work environment and culture
• Attract, retain and develop the people we need
• Maintain and improve high standards of management, with a focus on developing our people 
• Further embed equality, diversity and inclusion in all aspects of our work.

• We continued to implement our People Strategy, which underpins our Corporate Plan and establishes inclusive ways of working that apply to everyone. This included streamlining our approach to recruitment, improving our induction process, and offering staff more development opportunities and internally-run learning hours.
• We refreshed our equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) action plan to make it more action-oriented, evidence-based and outcome-focused. Through the plan we aim to mainstream EDI into everything we do. 
• We will be looking to increase awareness amongst disabled voters of the support and equipment available, especially in polling stations, and ensure that EDI is embedded in our policies, such as the Voter Engagement Strategy. 
• We have partnered with Inclusive Employers, providing staff with access to online webinars, blogs, factsheets and much more. We are also committed to the Race at Work Charter and the Disability Confident Scheme. 
• We conducted a post-implementation review of our equality screening guidance and template, to ensure it remains fit for purpose and will be introducing additional training to embed equality screening further.
• We have introduced an inclusion calendar, celebrating important events for our staff, examples include Diwali, Ramadan, LGBT+ history month and International Women’s Day.
• Staff have been provided with training on EDI topics, such as menopause, diversity data, inclusive recruitment and unconscious bias.

• Continue to support staff to undertake training relevant to their skill set and experience.
• Undertake talent and succession planning conversations to shape the future of our talent pipeline, ensuring business continuity and a readiness for teams and individuals to step up when required. 
• Roll-out ‘new manager’ training, equipping newly recruited and existing managers with the skills they require to lead a team.
•  Introduce mentoring and coaching schemes, tailored to the needs of the Commission, particularly focussing on reverse mentoring, ‘preparing for a step-up’coaching and return to work coaching for anyone returning from long term absence 
  such as maternity, paternity or sickness.
• Launch a new HR and applicant tracking system, to strengthen our ability to track and monitor applications and improve the success of applicants from under-represented groups.
• Continue working closely with recruitment agencies and executive search firms to ensure our commitment to EDI is at the top of their search, with only diverse and inclusive shortlists accepted. 
• Continue our commitment to anonymous recruitment, where any identifiable personal data such as name, gender, mandatory educational dates are removed from their application before being sent to the hiring manager.
• Require any manager involved in recruitment to undertake new recruitment training and unconscious bias training. 
• We will continue to make progress against our commitments under the Race at Work Charter and Disability Confident Scheme. 
• We will launch an EDI information hub on our intranet pages – providing information and resources on a range of topics, including UK Equality legislation, protected characteristics, equality screening, sharing personal stories and much more.

We are here to ensure that everyone who is eligible can participate in the democratic process – whether as a voter, campaigner or candidate. So recognising and responding to the needs of a diverse population and electorate is at the heart of our work and is what we are committed to do. 

We continued to serve a diverse democracy in our external, voter-facing activity, including:

• Our public-facing voter engagement work includes targeted support for different communities across the UK, both directly and through partners. In conjunction with local authorities and civil society partner organisations, we have worked to reach a diverse range of voters to ensure they had the tailored information they needed to take part, in the formats and languages they can access.
• This has included ongoing work with partners representing groups with low ID ownership to support their audiences to understand the voter ID requirement, such as Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, and trans and non-binary people.
• We have also worked with disability charity partners to research the barriers their audiences face and identify actions we can take to remove them through our communications and education work. This includes projects looking at the needs of people with a mental illness (with Centre for Mental Health), people with a learning disability and/or autism (with Mencap), and blind and partially-sighted people (with the Royal National Institute for Blind People).
  We have worked to ensure our public awareness campaign material reflects the diversity of the audiences we represent, and is as representative and inclusive as possible. This includes in our new-look voter registration campaign and resources
  which showcase members of the public representing groups we know are typically
  under-registered and/or who face additional barriers to participation, including 
  people experiencing homelessness and people with a learning disability. 
• We work to ensure our website and our publications are as accessible as possible.