Group Manager HR and Organisational Development presented report which The Group Manager HR and Organisational development presented a report which updated the Cabinet Committee Equalities with a summary of the equality profile of the Council’s workforce as at 31st March 2023.
He highlighted appendix 1, which provided an equality profile with comparative data from the previous two years. The data included protected characteristics of the workforce as listed at 3.2 of the report.
The Group Manager HR and Organisational development explained that the Council continued to work through the Strategic Equality Plan in terms of specific actions. The Equalities monitoring form was currently being revised and rollout of this was planned during 2023/24.
The Group Manager HR and Organisational development outlined some of the key monitoring stats in relation to the spread of diversity across the Councils workforce and stated that there were no significant changes on previous years. He highlighted the exception which were the figures for disability, which showed an increased identification of disability compared with previous years.
The Cabinet Member for Housing, Planning and Regeneration stated that we had an aging workforce in the Council, with 46% of the overall workforce being over 50 years of age. He asked what the Council was doing to recruit younger people and encouraging them to pursue a career in BCBC and to ensure succession planning and risk mitigation.
The Group Manager HR and Organisational development explained that recognising the challenge we have with recruitment and retention of staff in BCBC we were looking to develop the Strategic Workforce Plan and looking to engage with schools, colleges and other further/higher education establishments.
The Deputy Leader echoed the comments of the Cabinet Member and stated that further care needed to be taken on this issue as each year the challenge will be greater and this is reflected also in the aging population of Bridgend.
The Leader stated that the figures for disability identification were a positive reflection on people feeling comfortable disclosing this and understanding that it would not impact negatively on themselves. He stressed the importance that people of all disabilities played in the workforce within BCBC.
A Member asked how many staff completed the information in the report and therefore did it accurately represent the majority of the workforce within BCBC. The Group Manager HR and Organisational development stated that gender and age was a mandatory completion and therefore we held 100% of this data, however all other fields are voluntary and not all staff complete this data and therefore this varied across the questions.
RESOLVED: that the Cabinet Committee Equalities noted the information contained in this report and within Appendix 1.