The Public Sector Equality Duty (Specific Duty) requires that the Council provide information on its employees by protected characteristic. The following information is provided within this section.

• Composition of the workforce by characteristic for the years 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2024.

• Pay Gap information – average hourly pay between men and women, disabled people and non-disabled people; and people from a Black and Minority Ethnic background and those who are not.

• The % of females working in the top 2% and 5% of earners.  

• Employees who left the Council by characteristic for the years 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2024.

• Employees promoted within the Council by characteristic for the years 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2024.

• Applications for employment (applied, interviewed and appointed) by characteristic for the years 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2024.

• For some characteristics, applications for Flexible Working for the year 2024.

• Occupational segregation – grades and occupations of employees - men and women; people who are disabled and people who are not; and people who fall into an ethnic minority group and those who do not.

We gather most of the information for this exercise from i-Trent. Employees are responsible for inputting the information on their own characteristics, and if they do not then we don’t have a clear picture. For some of the characteristics there are low recording rates despite ongoing campaigns to encourage self-recording.  We rely on the information contained within this system to report and so we need to bear this in mind when considering the information.

Within the ethnicity category we have used the term BME – Black and Minority Ethnic. For this grouping we have reported using the following:

• African

• Asian Chinese

• Asian Indian

• Asian Other

• Asian Pakistani

• Black

• Caribbean

• Mixed

For the white minority category, we have collated – White Eastern European, Gypsy Traveller and White other.

Employment Information Analysis - Key points

The following details some of the information gleaned from analysing this data by protected characteristic. The data on Occupational Segregation (Grades and Occupations) is contained in the following pages.

Sex

There has been a small increase in the number of people employed in the Council. Since 2018 the % of the workforce who are women has remained consistent at just over 77%.

58% of females work part-time. That is 45.2% of the entire workforce. 20% of males work part-time.

The Gender pay gap has reduced across the Council and among teaching and non-teaching from 4.97% in 2022 to 3.97% in 2024.

86.35% of promotions went to females in 2024, the highest percentage since 2020.

In 2024, 2340 appointments were made. Of these 25.73% of male applicants were appointed and 72.78% of female applicants were appointed.

Occupational Segregation

There is strong gender-based segregation noted in traditional female dominated roles of caring and catering. The only service with more males than females is Enterprise and Communities – the host service for more male traditional roles like cleansing, gardeners, cemetery workers and drivers.

93% of admin and clerical employees are women.

96% of cleaners are female – the only NLC 1 graded post is cleaner.

93.4% of Home Support Workers are women.

100% of drivers are male.

77% of Estate Officers and 100% Estate Maintenance staff are male.

The % of females in the top 5% of earners in the Council has increased from 53.2% in 2020 to 65% in 2024.The top 2% has also increased slightly with 57.4% female.

Chief Officers have disproportionately more males than females, illustrating occupational segregation in grades (the glass ceiling effect).

Females are disproportionately employed in the lowest grades. While females make up 82.7% of the teaching workforce males are disproportionately employed in the Deputy and Head Teacher grades.

Disability

3.55% of our workforce have said they are disabled. This is the highest percentage ever recorded. However, 43.39% of employees have not recorded in this category. This is down from over 67% non-recordings in 2022 – a significant increase.

45.7% of disabled employees work part time. This is near on a par with non-disabled employees, 46.6% of whom work part-time.

The disability pay gap is 3.18% with those who said they are disabled earning £0.61 per hour less than non-disabled people.

Promotions to disabled employees has risen from 2.63% in 2020 to 4.4% in 2024.

Of those disabled people who applied to work for the Council in 2024 33% were interviewed. 27% were interviewed in 2020. Of those interviewed 24.4% were appointed. Out of all appointments 4.36% were to disabled people.

Occupational Segregation

37.9% disabled employees are employed in grades NLC1 - 5.

3.73% of employees in AHSC are disabled.

3.5% are working in grades 15 -18. No Chief Officers have recorded a disability.

2% of teachers are disabled.

Ethnicity

The numbers of employees from a Black and minority ethnic background rose from 123 in in 2022 to 219 in 2024. 1.3% of employees are recorded as BME.

42.67% of BME employees work part-time.

The ethnicity pay gap is 6.78% with those who are from BME background earning £1.27 less on average than those who are not from BME background. This has increased sharply since 2023 when the pay gap was 0.7%.

76 BME people were appointed in 2024 – the highest number ever in a year, 3.24% of all appointments. Of those BME people who applied 22.7% were interviewed and 14.8% of those appointed. The Council is receiving higher numbers of applications from BME people. In 2020 3.13% of applications were from BME people this rose to 10.7% in 2024.

In 2022 there were 106 white Eastern Europeans, in 2024 there were 16. This is a decrease of 85%.

Occupational Segregation

44.9% of BME workers are in NLC grade 1- 6.

There are no BME employees in NLC 15 and above.

There are 30 BME teachers at all levels across the whole estate. There are no minority ethnic deputy Heads or Head Teachers.

We know that in some schools there is a 12% BME pupil population with some of those schools having no BME teachers, this has a known impact on pupil at schools and their aspirations to become a teacher.

3.3% of Social Workers are from a BME group – 13 in total.

There are only 6 recorded BME employees working in all areas of Home Support – out of over 1430 (0.4%). The Our Lives research told us that people are rejecting home care due to the lack of cultural and language competence of carers.

Age

Over half the workforce are aged 40-59 though this age group has decreased year on year. All other age groups have increased. 3.76% of our workforce are over 65.

Out of 20895 applications 57.3% were received form the 20-40 age group. 51% of those were appointed.

There was an increase in the under 20s applying to work in the Council - the only age group that saw an increase.

4.4% of appointments were to people aged over 60.

76.4% of people aged 65+ work part-time.

Sexual Orientation

The number of LGB people employed in the Council has increased since 2023 from 190 to 342 (2% of the workforce).  in 2024 non-recording rates have reduced from 51.2% in 2022 to 35.02% in 2024.

Out of 1644 leavers 41 (2.5%) LG&B people left the Council. In 2022 it was 1.94% of leavers.

149 LG&B people were appointed in 2024 6.36% of total appointments.

7 applications were received form LGB people to work flexibly there were none in 2022, of those all were approved.

Gender Reassignment

In 2024 59 employees have recorded under Gender Reassignment through MySelf, 17 of those were newly appointed employees. This is the first year we have recorded employees under this characteristic.

Religion and Belief

Employees of the Roman Catholic faith (22.5%) remain the largest religious group in the Council followed by Church of Scotland (12.45%) More than 1/5 of employees have no religious faith and for 36.2% of our workforce we have no information.

0.6% of employees describe their faith as Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh or Hindu.

Pregnancy and Maternity

Of 726 females on maternity leave in 2023 and 2024, 558 returned and 168 are still on maternity leave.

Marriage and Civil Partnership

39% of our employees are married or in a civil partnership. Over 26% of employees have not recorded under this category.