Diversity, Equality, or Inclusivity staffing and costs: FOI release

Information requested

a) The number of civil servants (expressed in numbers of FTE), that are mainly or exclusively focussed on issues of equality, diversity, or inclusivity. For example, this could include (amongst other guises) “EDI officers” or “diversity and inclusion project managers” but would not include general HR managers.

b) Either a) the pay band of each of these roles, or b) the combined total salaries for these roles. Whichever measure is more in accordance with your data preferences.

c) In the past 12 months the number of staff days across the Scottish government which have been committed to attending equality training programmes, whether internally run or with external consultants. (staff days = duration of the training programme multiplied by the number of staff in attendance for the course).

d) The contractual cost of any consultants hired, in the past twelve months, to provide any external training or advice on issues of diversity, equality, or inclusivity.

e) In the past twelve months, the number of staff days committed to attending conferences relating mainly or exclusively to matters of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. (duration of conference multiplied by the number of staff in attendance).

f) The costs of attending these conferences. 

g) Membership costs the organisation pays for participation in equality charters such as the Stonewall Equality Champions, or Diversity and Inclusion Workplace champions.

Response

I enclose a copy of some of the information you requested.

a) Please see attached file.

b) Please see attached file.

While it is our aim to provide information wherever possible, we are unable to provide all of the information you have requested. This is because the information provided below has been drawn from the Scottish Government’s HR system as at 30 November 2023 and uses job titles to identify staff that are mainly or exclusively focussed on issues of equality, diversity, or inclusivity. The Scottish Government only holds information for those agencies and public bodies to which it provides an HR service. Most notably, this excludes: Crown Office & Procurator Fiscal Service, Scottish Courts and Tribunal Service, Registers of Scotland, Scottish Forestry and Forestry & Land Scotland. Additionally, the extent to which job titles reflect a policy area varies between teams and individuals. As such, staff members working in these areas may have a job title of ‘policy officer’ and may not be recorded here. Accordingly section 17(1) of FOISA applies.

We searched job titles in that HR system against the keywords “diversity” (excluding “biodiversity”), “inclusive/inclusion”, “equalities/equality” and the term “D&I/D+I” to identify job roles. Job titles are free text and entered self-service by staff. This means they vary in language and format, and that there may not be 100% completion for all staff or a time lag in updates being made. The keyword search also means the information provided includes some job roles which are not equality or inclusion related in the wider context of your questions and so includes, but is not restricted to, for example, posts such as ‘Health Equality Team Leader’ and ‘Inclusive Growth Investment Manager’.

c) In terms of equality training, the Scottish Government has mandatory inclusive culture training which was introduced in June 2021. The training is delivered to all employees, and between June 2021 and December 2022, comprised of a 75 minute training for employees without line management responsibility and 90 minute training for employees with line management responsibility and for senior civil servants. This has been replaced with a mandatory e-learning module estimated to take 30 minutes.

In the 12 months prior to 21 November, our records indicate that 442 staff days have been committed to this training.

d) e) f) While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the costs of locating, retrieving and providing the information requested would exceed the upper cost limit of £600. The reason for this is that to locate and retrieve that information we would need to conduct a search of all of the records of the Scottish Government. Under Section 12 of FOISA public authorities are not required to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying would exceed the upper cost limit, which is currently set at £600 by Regulations made under section 12.

You may, however, wish to consider reducing the scope of your request in order that the costs can be brought below £600. For example, you could restrict your request to a specific business area of the Scottish Government, as this would allow us to limit the searches that would require to be conducted. You may also find it helpful to look at the Scottish Information Commissioner's 'Tips for requesting information under FOI and the EIRs' on his website at: http://www.itspublicknowledge.info/YourRights/Tipsforrequesters.aspx.

g) Scottish Government is a member of Business Disability Forum, Employers Network for Equality and Inclusion, Stonewall Diversity Champions Scheme.

Associated annual membership fees are outlined below:

Business Disability Forum - £4,320

Employers Network for Equality and Inclusion - £1,800

Stonewall Scotland - £3,090

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.

FOI 202300386099 - Information Released - Annex

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CSV file

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