Acas equality information report 2022 to 2023

The Equality Act 2010 requires relevant public bodies, including Acas, to publish information to show how they comply with the public sector equality duty. This ties in with the equality objectives we publish at least every 4 years.

To understand, produce, measure and ultimately achieve our objectives, we need to produce an Equality Information Report.

Although the Equality Act has 9 protected characteristics, for the purpose of measuring and confidentiality it is necessary at this time to limit our focus on age, disability, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation.

It is also important that we only measure data where there could reasonably be a clear plan to make use of the data being collected to promote equality between the protected characteristics.

The report covers the period 1 April 2022 to 31 March 2023.

We have used rounded values which means there is a slightly different total value in some statistics. 

Under the Equality Act 2010, public authorities such as Acas must meet the public sector equality duty. We do this by looking at employees' needs across our services.

Our equality objectives are an integral part of our Acas strategy, which sets out to make working life better for everyone. 

We are experts in promoting diversity and inclusion outside our organisation through our training and advice. But we want to do more – more to promote diversity and inclusion, and more to make sure that our services are accessible for everyone who needs us.

Through our strategy, Ambition 4 – 'embracing difference, increasing inclusion, creating fairness' – sets out our equality objectives. These objectives are that, by 2025, we will:

• influence the state of equality, diversity and inclusion in the workplace, through our services and in partnership with organisations across England, Scotland and Wales
• provide services that are accessible and effective for those who need to use them, irrespective of place, sector, and individual circumstances
• be an organisation that fully reflects the diversity of the communities that we serve

To achieve these objectives in 2022 to 2023 we have: 

• updated the advice on our website around equality and discrimination to better meet the needs of employers and employees, providing clarity on their rights, responsibilities and the good practice that creates an inclusive workplace
• expanded our advice covering all the characteristics
• updated our advice on the specific protections related to disability and race (we intend to have guidance that covers each protected characteristic by the end of 2023 to 2024)
• launched a campaign in October to raise awareness of menopause, which included advice for employers on how to manage the effects of menopause, the current law and good practice in supporting staff with links to other Acas articles and helpline services
• partnered with a number of organisations to raise awareness and share our insight and expertise

While we are committed to helping employers and employees across the country make their workplaces inclusive and fair, we have also been looking at how we can improve as an organisation ourselves. In 2023 we completed an audit into the accessibility of internal communications and our external services. Actions set us on track to ensure we provide inclusive services that are accessible to all and to achieve the recommendations suggested by the audit reports, ensuring colleagues and customers can access all information and services in the right way and at the right time.

We carried out an evaluation of our recruitment processes and have started to act on the recommendations it identified. We are improving our people data and are continuing to encourage our people to disclose their disability status, ethnicity, sexual orientation and religion or belief.

Our diversity data has been integrated into a Power BI People Dashboard. This complements and enhances our current system bringing all people data together into one place. This will ensure diversity data is integrated into all people decisions.

We continue to monitor and encourage development and promotion of all our staff and found it encouraging to have an increase in female staff at senior level in this Gender Pay Gap reporting year.

To ensure that we are an organisation that fully reflects the diversity of the communities that we serve, we have worked closely with our staff networks to: 

• understand and address the barriers they experience
• offer support, networking, and training opportunities to grow their skills
• increase collaboration and intersectionality

We are proud of the progress made over the year in our Race Equality Action plan. This has included the implementation of a positive action programme and supporting our Race Equality Network. We delivered a virtual pathways programme – a development programme to help staff understand career options and ways to get there.

We had a great response from colleagues during National Inclusion Week. We ran multiple events for our staff with guest speakers, senior leaders, our staff networks and colleagues. The events concentrated on promoting inclusion and achieving a sense of belonging. 

We have launched 'The Acas leadership way', Acas's core leadership values. They promote leadership good practice across the organisation. The framework focuses on trust, incorporating inclusion, support, accountability, strategy, customer focus and expertise.

At Acas, we continue to be committed to creating and maintaining a non-discriminatory and respectful working environment for our staff. A range of policies support this, such as:

• bullying and harassment
• diversity and inclusion
• recruitment

The policies are available on our staff intranet in line with the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED).

We have also relaunched our speak up policy with an additional way for employees to report concerns in the workplace. 

The equality and diversity information in this report is based on a total headcount of 1011 members of staff on 31 March 2023. Information is taken from Acas's HR information system unless otherwise stated.

Staff on loan and not paid directly by Acas are not included in the analysis, nor are agency staff or contractors. 

Our representation data shows that 59% of our staff are women, 19% disabled, 11% are from ethnic minority groups and 5% identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or other.

The representation of ethnic minority staff is lower than the wider working population of 19%. The representation of disabled staff is above the working population of 11%.

Declaration

The data in this section shows Acas's workforce by grade as of 31 March 2023.

Age

The age demographics at Acas remain relatively stable with the majority of staff aged between 30 and 60 years of age.

Compared to the 2021 to 2022 report, all but one age group has remained stable across the two reporting years, except age categories of under 29 which has reduced by 3% in 2022 to 2023.

There are now more staff aged 65 and over in grade 8 and less in grade 6 than in the previous report.

Disability

The overall percentage of staff that shared their disability status as disabled, not disabled or prefer not to say was 65%. This is an increase of 3% from the 2021 to 2022 declaration.

From that overall declaration those that shared that they were disabled rose by 2% in 2022 to 2023.

Representation of disabled staff is mainly evenly spread across grades, although there is a lower representation in higher grades. Due to the small numbers of grade 6’s and SCS, we have amalgamated the grades for confidentiality reasons.

Ethnicity

Overall, our ethnic minority representation has remained the same at 11%. There has been a decrease at grades 9 and 11.

Sex

Overall data on sex has remained the same with 59% of our staff being female. Representation of women in the SCS and grade 6 has increased by 14% and 28%, respectively. There has been a decrease of women by 7% at grade 7 but the remaining grades continue to be stable.

Sexual orientation

Because of numbers and confidentiality reasons, data for sexual orientation in some grades cannot be reported separately, therefore data at those different grades has been amalgamated. The following table shows the representation of staff who identify as either gay, lesbian, bisexual or other by grade. Overall representation has stayed the same with a slight increase in the higher grades.

From 1 April 2022 to 31 March 2023 there were 3,680 applications for vacancies. 

Age

Candidates aged between 30 to 39 made up the largest group of applications at 27%. The biggest success rate at interview stage at 29% were candidates aged between 40 to 49. 

Disability

Candidates that shared that they had a disability represented 16% of applications and went on to represent 18% of successful candidates at sift stage and 16% of those successful at interview. 

Ethnicity

The data shows that the total number of applications were made up of:

• 13% Asian and Asian black candidates 
• 9% black African, black Caribbean, and black British candidates 
• 3% of candidates from a mixed ethnicity group
• 68% from a white ethnicity group

At sift stage the successful group were made up of:

• 10% from Asian or Asian black ethnicity group
• 6% from black African, black Caribbean and black British ethnicity 
• 3% from a mixed ethnicity group
• 74% from a white ethnicity

Successful candidates at interview stage shows us a make-up of:

• 5% from Asian and Asian black ethnicity 
• 18% from black African, black Caribbean and black British ethnicity
• 2% from a mixed ethnicity group
• 70% from a white ethnicity

Gender

The data shows that the total number of applications were made up of:

• 57% women
• 39% men
• 4% a combination of those who wanted to self-describe and those not wanting to share gender

At sift stage the successful group were made up of:

• 83% women
• 16% of men
• 1% of those who self-describe or prefer not to share 

At interview stage the successful group were made up of:

• 63% women
• 35% men
• 1% those who self-describe or prefer not to share

Sexual orientation

Because of small numbers and confidentiality those candidates who do not identify as heterosexual will be identified for the purposes of this information as LGBTI+. 

The data shows that the total number of applications were made up of:

• 80% of those who described themselves as heterosexual
• 20% of those who identified as LGBTI+ (including self-described, preferred not to share or omitted to share data)

At sift stage the successful group were made up of:

• 79% heterosexual
• 21% LGBTI+ (including self-described, preferred not to share or omitted to share data)

At interview stage the successful group were made up of:

• 82% heterosexual candidates
• 18% LGBTI+ candidates (including self-described, preferred not to share or omitted to share data)

The data analysis presented here shows the reasons why employees left during the period 1 April 2022 to 31 March 2023.

The overall data shows that:

• resignation was the main reason for leaving Acas – a change from the previous year (2021 to 2022) when transferring to another government department was the main reason for leaving
• resignation made up 35% of the total leavers – a slight increase of 1% on the previous year (2021-2022)
• transferring to another government department made up 23% – a decrease of 19% on the previous year (2021 to 2022)
• voluntary early severance made up 17% of leavers – this was not offered in the previous year (2021 to 2022)
• retirement made up 14% of leavers – a slight increase of less than 1% on the previous year (2021 to 2022)
• dismissals made up 5% of total leavers – a slight increase of less than 1% on the previous year (2021 to 2022)
• a combination of end of contract, redundancy, not known or other reasons for leaving made up 5% of leavers
• there were more leavers who were men (51%) compared to women in this reporting year – this was different from the reporting year 2021 to 2022 where women made up 58% of leavers
• leavers from a white ethnicity made up 59% of total leavers – a slight increase of 1% from the previous year (2021 to 2022)
• colleagues from an ethnic minority made up 10% of leavers – a slight decrease of less than 1% from the previous year (2021 to 2022)
• the proportion of leavers who declared themselves as disabled made up 12% – an increase of 4% from the previous year (2021 to 2022)
• age group 50 to 59 had the most leavers – a change from the previous reporting year (2021 to 2022) where age groups 20 to 29 and 30 to 39 had the most leavers

Reasons for leaving by protected characteristic

Sex

Resignation was the main reason for leaving – 44% of women resigned compared with 27% of men.

For those transferring to another government department, the data showed that 26% of women transferred compared to 21% of men. 

The voluntary early severance scheme showed that 20% of men left on the scheme compared to 16% of women.

Ethnicity

In reporting year 2022 to 2023 there was an increase in the number of colleagues from ethnic minority groups that resigned – 36% of total leavers were from ethnic minority groups compared with 29% of those from a white ethnicity. 

Ethnic minority colleagues that transferred to another government department made up 36% of leavers compared to 5% of colleagues from a white ethnicity. 

Disability

In 2022 to 2023 data shows that 46% of those who declared themselves as disabled resigned, compared to 34% of those declared as not disabled. 

31% of disabled colleagues left on voluntary early severance compared to 21% of the group who declared as not disabled. 

15% of colleagues who declared themselves as disabled transferred to other government departments compared to 25% of those who declared themselves as not disabled.

LGBTI+

40% of colleagues who identified as LGBTI+ and left Acas in 2022 to 2023 resigned from the organisation.

60% of colleagues who identified as LGBTI+ left Acas to move to another government department compared with 18% of those that declared as heterosexual.

An assessment of performance data available showed that less than 1% of staff did not demonstrate the standards for their role therefore due to confidentiality we are not reporting on this data.

For this reporting year, the reward and recognition awards were distributed equally amongst all staff.

During the period 1 April 2022 to 31 March 2023 there were 19 formal grievances raised. Informal grievances are dealt with by management within the directorate and not recorded centrally.  There were also a small number of disciplinaries during this period made up of a number of different protected characteristics.

Reasons for grievances (combined)

• Disability discrimination or failure to implement reasonable adjustment 
• Payment decisions 
• Trade union detriment 
• Bullying and harassment, unfavourable treatment or inappropriate behaviours 
• Workplace decisions

The results for engagement, discrimination, bullying and harassment are taken from the Civil Service People survey conducted annually each October.

At the end of the survey, staff are asked to complete a diversity monitoring form, which is voluntary. As this is voluntary it was evident from the data that not all who completed the survey filled in the monitoring information at the end.

It should also be taken into account that for the staff that did fill in the diversity monitoring form, not all filled in all of the categories available on the form.

From the data available, the table on engagement indicators shows the engagement index scores.

The overall engagement rate (the percentage of people who fill in the diversity monitoring form) is 63% – a reduction of 4% on the previous survey. Compared to the survey results for 2021 to 2022, the engagement rate of disabled people has reduced by 6%. Ethnicity representation has remained stable at 11% and engagement has increased by 3%. The engagement rate of women has decreased by 3% and the engagement rate of those declaring as gay, lesbian or bisexual has decreased by 4%.

The People Survey measures inclusion – this covers respect for individuals within their teams, respect for individual differences within the organisation and being treated fairly at work.  The overall data shows a 3% decrease in this area compared with the 2021 people survey.  

The survey results show there has been a 5% reduction in bullying and harassment but also an overall 1% increase in discrimination.

Read the Acas gender pay gap report 2023

Read the Acas ethnicity pay gap report 2023