Meetings

Selina Moyo (Black Minority Ethnic Action Plan Coordinator, HR) and Razaque Roap (BME Staff Network Chair) were welcomed to the meeting to update the Board on activities and progress on the BME Action Plan and further recommendations in light of their experiences.

They presented a report to the Board and Selina provided an overview highlighting the barriers to progress in increasing diversity of the workforce. These included the need for greater awareness, frequent internal advertising of posts and that those advertised externally were at team support level.

The project was seen as a starting point for ongoing work. There had been some success engaging with BME communities who wanted to know more. Internally, BME staff had not felt that the Assembly wanted to engage with them or to encourage their progress. However, since the implementation of the action plan a change had started to take place.

The following recommendations were made:

·                HR to continue working on recruitment policies to link these with the equalities duties;

·                external engagement needed to continue; and

·                line managers needed more understanding of diversity issues.

Razaque updated the Board on the work of the BME Staff Network, which was established two years ago. Dave Tosh had been appointed to champion the activities and progress of the BME Action Plan. They had networked with other organisations to discuss common issues and had arranged a BME networking day on 24 June, hosted by the Assembly and sponsored by the Presiding Officer. The vision was to have an All-Wales BME forum led by the Assembly.

It had been found that BME staff felt a lack of motivation and confidence to ask for development opportunities, and social barriers created isolation. The recommendations to help overcome these issues included:

·                organisational KPIs and scorecards to monitor recruitment;

·                consideration of recognition awards for BME staff to boost morale;

·                more transparency in selection and recruitment;

·                diversity training for line managers; and

·                talent programmes and skills registers to recognise and develop skills such as languages.

The aim was to make the Assembly an employer of choice for BME staff and to be an exemplar to other public sector bodies. The Management Board agreed the following action, in order to progress the plan and embed practices into the culture of the organisation:

·                the Equalities team to work with HR to determine roles;

·                options for awards and benchmarking to be considered; and

·                the Communications team to work with HR and the Network to maintain the dialogue with external organisations.

The Management Board thanked Selina and Razaque for sharing their experience and recommendations and complimented them on the report presented.