The story so far...

Here at the Audit Commission we’ve been sharing knowledge and working together to create a more welcoming, supportive, inclusive place to work. There are three key areas we’ve concentrated on so far: creating strong leadership and governance structures to put equality and diversity policies into practice; improving our approach as an employer; and encouraging external organisations to follow our lead.

Relevant initiatives include our graduate recruitment drive which targets academically strong Universities with diverse student populations, including London (University College and King’s College), Bradford and Birmingham. Our most recent scheme was a real success: new graduate intake for 2007 breaks down as 24% BME, 51% female and 7% disabled. However, graduate intake isn’t the only area in which we’ve become more diverse.

Another project we have undertaken to position ourselves as an employer who celebrates difference and welcomes applications from all sectors of the community is by launching a campaign of web banners and buttons on a variety of minority community websites. We were very pleased when we reviewed the traffic figures and found that 10% of the visitors to our recruitment website in the months we advertised came to us through this awareness campaign.

We’re proud to have gained ‘two ticks’ status as an employer, which proves our commitment towards enabling and empowering disabled people. We’ve reviewed our employment terms and conditions to include enhanced maternity pay (26 weeks at full pay plus 13 statutory weeks); introduced carers leave; increased partner/paternity leave to a full ten days and improved our flexible working policies so everyone can better balance work and other commitments. We offer part-time, term-time, even flexible start and finish times too.

Starting at the very top of our structure, we’ve created a Diversity Strategy Board (DSB) to promote and drive change and we’ve got Diversity Champions and Diversity and Equality Representatives to ensure support at every level (see organisational structure). We’ve introduced a hugely successful Opportunities Mentoring Project and carried out accessibility reviews to make sure our buildings are all accessible to disabled people. We’ve also introduced and carried out training to help our staff understand the impact of inequality, develop a shared culture and instil an understanding of why diversity and equality are so very vital to our organisation as a whole.