Diversity and Inclusion Employment Monitoring Report 2025

1. How we collect equality information

The monitoring information set out in this report has been collected from the council's new Oracle enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, which includes our recruitment system, and the completion of an equality monitoring questionnaire which is sent out to staff annually.  The council also collects additional information through the employee experience survey.

The equalities monitoring questionnaire was supported with clear information about why we were collecting the information and how it would be used. Staff are encouraged to complete as much of the questionnaire as possible but could opt to state 'prefer not to say' if they did not feel comfortable sharing their information.

The new Oracle ERP will help us use and analyse diversity and inclusion data more effectively and we will be reviewing our data collecting methods as part of our work to improve our workforce data analytics capability.

This data will be used, alongside the Wiltshire Census data, to identify and reduce barriers to inclusion, identify key areas of development and inform decision making.

2. What data we collect

We collect data on all the protected characteristics in addition to caring responsibilities at different stages of the employee lifecycle. This enables the council to analyse and assess the impact of policies, procedures, practices and decisions on specific groups and to identify where action is required to remedy any disadvantage and ensure equality of opportunity for all.

3. Data gaps

The introduction of Oracle to hold staff data means that EDI information held previously has not been included in the report, other than for leavers, where applicable. This means that with the exception of leavers data where applicable, we are reliant on current staff completing the equalities monitoring questionnaire and new joiners completing the started journey in Oracle. Work is underway to improve the completion rate, and we will continue to seek to address the data gap and reduce the unstated figures by building confidence amongst staff in sharing information. Data is currently known for around 50% of staff overall. However, there are some staff groups (on lower grades, in jobs that are not office-based) where the level is lower than average.

The data in the report is now presented as percentages where the information is known, omitting any 'Unstated' or 'Prefer not to say' responses from the calculations. Figures from previous years, where used for comparison, have been recalculated in the same way.

4.   Census 2021

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) undertook a national census in 2021 and workforce data on this report has been compared against the census data for the whole of the Wiltshire population as opposed to the age-specific data sets (i.e., working age population) which are not yet available. Further analysis will be undertaken in the future once age-specific data sets are released by the ONS.

We aspire for our workforce demographics to mirror that of the Wiltshire population as identified in the Census 2021, to ensure that we remain an inclusive organisation reflecting the diverse backgrounds of the communities we serve.