Black, Asian and minority ethnic people and disabled people are currently under-represented in the Welsh Government workforce and across the One Welsh Public Service. In response to this, the Welsh Government has specific targets related to the recruitment and progression of Black, Asian and minority ethnic people and disabled people at all levels, and women within the Senior Civil Service. Public bodies across Wales share similar aims.
The Welsh Government asked the Wales Centre for Public Policy (WCPP) to provide evidence to help to implement its vision of an organisation that fully reflects the diversity of Wales at every level. WCPP has previously conducted evidence reviews and held roundtables looking at ways to encourage diversity in recruitment (Park et al., 2020; Taylor-Collins and Park, 2020; Hatch et al., 2021; Showumni and Price, 2021; Price et al., 2021).
To address existing evidence to the specific needs of the Welsh Government and to facilitate learning across the Welsh public service, we held a roundtable in April 2024, bringing together the Welsh Government, public services, and stakeholder organisations to identify and share good practice relating to three key areas of recruitment:
- Advertising and outreach;
- Assessment methodologies; and
- Positive action.
For recruitment, active outreach was felt to be important to help understand and address any challenges such as mistrust towards public service organisations. Actions that can be taken to build trust can include recruitment drives, listening campaigns, job fairs and open days.
For assessment methodologies, flexibility in assessing candidates and moving away from a one size fits all recruitment approach was seen as key to making processes more inclusive. The discussion also highlighted that organisations should be aiming for an ‘adjustments by default’ approach, working to integrate adjustments into their recruitment process so that they occur automatically.
Discussions also focused on the practical application of positive action tools by employers. Some organisations used these to good effect, for instance through mentoring or networking schemes. However, more robust forms of positive action, such as reserving jobs for disabled candidates, were perceived as risky by some organisations, despite being in use elsewhere. Organisational confidence to use these tools appropriately will be important.
The roundtable was held in the context of the Welsh Government’s existing commitments, including its adoption of the social model of disability; recruitment commitments made in the Anti-racist Wales Action Plan; and changes to recruitment practices which have already been made.
This report summarises the roundtable discussion.