Transparency data

DWP 2019 voluntary report on disability, mental health and wellbeing

Published 4 October 2019

In November 2018 the government published a voluntary framework to encourage businesses to report how many of their staff have a disability or health condition and their health and wellbeing. This report sets out progress made in DWP up to August 2019.

Attachment In November 2018 the government launched a new framework to encourage businesses to report how many of their staff have a disability or health condition, and also to report on the health and wellbeing of staff. The framework is voluntary, and was created in partnership with employers and charities. The Civil Service as a whole currently reports against the framework in full – this report provides progress in DWP as at August 2019 in accordance with the guidance for voluntary reporting.

1. Introduction from DWP: Debbie Alder, Disability and Mental Health Champion and John-Paul Marks, Wellbeing Champion

We understand it is really important to make sure our colleagues feel safe, well and included while at work so that they feel best able to support DWP’s diverse range of customers.

Through DWP’s wellbeing and inclusion strategies and frameworks, we are creating a safe, healthy and inclusive environment. By prioritising employee wellbeing, encouraging and supporting healthy behaviours, we are supporting all colleagues to flourish and thrive; helping to ensure DWP is a great place to work. This is enabling business delivery and serving our customers well.

Our overall objective is to improve employee health outcomes by taking a proactive and preventative approach to wellbeing, and by doing this positively contribute to the nation’s health goals. We continue to be recognised as a thought-leader in workplace wellbeing, and our work is regularly published by organisations such as the Reward and Employee Benefits Association (REBA) and Business in the Community (BITC).

We are proud to be participating for the first time this year in the Voluntary Reporting Framework on employee disability, health and wellbeing.

2. Voluntary reporting on disability

DWP is proud to be a Disability Confident Leader demonstrating the departmental commitment to attracting, recruiting and retaining disabled people, and supporting them in achieving their full potential. We are achieving this commitment through the following:

• we have set ambitious targets of 12% new disabled entrants into our Senior Civil Service grades by 2025. We are currently on track to meet our interim 2020 target of 3.4%, attaining 11.3% on-flow for new disabled entrants from April 2017 to March 2019
• we have implemented success profile recruitment practices which focus on behaviours and strengths, and maintained increased diversity on Senior Civil Service and Grade 6 and 7 selection panels
• we are committed to increasing the vibrancy and reach of our disability networks, with plans to launch a new National Disability Network in September 2019
• as of August 2019, 4,089 employees have completed Becoming Disability Confident Civil Service Learning e-training. We are promoting this learning regularly through our internal communications, and it is imbedded in our new DWP Leadership Essentials programme
• we are an active member of the Business Disability Forum, which ensures we are putting in place the best support for disabled employees and utilising a range of expert advice
• to ensure we attract, recruit and retain disabled individuals, we have worked with glass-door on our external brand, and embedded inclusion and wellbeing narratives throughout our recruitment and performance management guidance
• the DWP Workplace Adjustment Team (DWPWAT) is responsible for providing advice and help on workplace adjustments, and for implementing physical workplace adjustments. DWPWAT work closely with the Civil Service Workplace Adjustment Service (CSWAS). DWP are improving the standard and consistency of workplace adjustments for everyone overseen by a Workplace Adjustment Governance Board. This includes reviewing processes to reduce the time taken to implement workplace adjustments, action around line manager capability and enhancing our management information
• through a dedicated Accessibility Improvement Project, we are driving changes in our operating model to modernise the Information Technology and the support services that colleagues rely upon, to fully exploit technologies to put in place the right support structures to ensure that disabled colleagues are able to achieve their potential

At June 2019, the proportion of employees who had shared information about their disability on our self-service HR system was 91.0%. Across all grades disability representation levels are 12.9%, above the DWP figure from 5 years ago of 6.8% (2014).

At the Senior Civil Service (SCS) grade the percentage of people who have declared themselves as having a disability is 9.6%, significantly above the December 2018 Civil Service average of 4.6%.

In the 2018 People Survey we know that 74% of disabled colleagues said they felt included/fairly treated compared with 84% non-disabled colleagues. This gap has decreased by 4% since 2014.

DWP voluntary reporting on mental health and wellbeing

In DWP our wellbeing framework is universal, offering something for everyone. It has been built on 4 pillars – ‘my body’, ‘my mind’, ‘my finances’, ‘my community’. It recognises the importance of all of these factors on our people’s mental and emotional wellbeing. Our strategy aims are to:

• educate and raise awareness through our topical health and inclusion campaigns, helping colleagues to look after themselves and others to remain at work and return to work more quickly with access to the right support
• build a culture and environment where people are at the centre of everything we do
• inspire and empower our people to make healthy personal choices about their own wellbeing and access the tools and specialist support provided by DWP

Our Working Well Together Wellbeing Wheel demonstrates how all parts of our wellbeing strategy lock together.

A snapshot of wellbeing in DWP

Through our wellbeing and inclusion strategies we are empowering all our people to feel confident to talk about mental health and access mental health and wellbeing support. Our first-class Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) service offers a range of psychological support including structured telephonic support and face-to-face counselling, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and eye movement de-sensitisation reprogramming (EMDR). In addition, our new wellness platform gives colleagues real-time access to coaches, including mind coaches, who can provide colleagues with techniques to build resilience and reduce stress levels for example.

Our achievements include:

• we have developed a network of 1,243 mental health first aid (MHFA) colleagues to date (August 2019) who provide sign-posting to our bespoke EAP offer
• we have embedded Mental Health Civil Service learning training into DWP’s new Leadership Essentials Programme
• our campaign called ‘I Can Be Me in DWP’ is designed to help build an inclusive culture throughout the department. This campaign encourages the sharing of personal stories about what makes them feel included and we have used the campaign to raise the level of conversation around mental health and wellbeing
• our active Wellbeing Network of over 1,000 Advocates has been instrumental in embedding Working Well Together consistently across DWP’s 800+ sites. Our volunteers are responsible for implementing DWP’s wellbeing activity locally and sign-posting colleagues into our vast range of wellbeing services
• our wellness contracts are delivering return on investment with good clinical outcomes following treatment and high levels of customer satisfaction
• our new interactive wellbeing platform and real-time wellbeing coaches are helping individuals and teams to set goals and take small steps with expert advice to improve their wellbeing together; encouraging local ownership and empowerment to lead wellbeing improvement through positive team behaviours
• we are rolling-out a programme of ‘Wellbeing Confident Leaders’ to all Senior Civil Servants. At August 2019, DWP have trained 139 (57%) of our senior leaders and 79 HR Business Partners. In October a Wellbeing Confidence team-based product will roll-out for all colleagues below SCS and our aspiration is to train up to 15,000 colleagues per year
• we delivered Mental Health Training to 19,775 work coaches in 2018 to 2019. We estimate further delivery of this training to front facing staff in a number of Directorates will involve approximately a further 34,000 staff

In DWP we have a range of metrics in place to measure workplace wellbeing. These include our new Wellness Survey and Wellness Dashboard in addition to the Thriving at Work Standards and People Survey indicators including Office for National Statistics (ONS), PERMA (Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Accomplishments) and Stress Proxy.

Wellness Survey

DWP were the first government department to develop a stand-alone Wellness Survey; a holistic diagnostic tool that looks across a range of factors that influence our feelings of wellbeing in the workplace which are health, security, environment, relationships and purpose.

DWP’s 2018 wellness score was 60% and was benchmarked against an overall cross-sector score of 64%. Our data insight has helped us identify areas where wellbeing challenges exist in DWP so that we can take action to improve workplace wellbeing. Our intention is to re-run the survey in future years to assess progress being made against our 2018 baseline score.

Wellness Dashboard

To ensure that we are measuring our progress regularly we developed a new Wellness Dashboard that is produced quarterly and shared with our Executive Team. In the last year we have reported that we’ve been consistently ‘orange – making progress’. Our aim is to be ‘green – doing well’ by December 2020.

Thriving at Work Standards

We are making good progress against both the ‘core’ and ‘enhanced’ Thriving at Work Standards. Our progress to-date across all Standards is further along than that of the Civil Service as a whole with the majority of the standards in DWP rated ‘amber-green’ or ‘green’. We have committed to ensure DWP is rated ‘green’ across all standards in the next 12 months.

People Survey

Between 2017 and 2018 personal wellbeing levels in DWP generally remained aligned to the median score for the Civil Service as a whole with levels of life satisfaction at 66%, happiness at 63% and sense that activities in life are worthwhile at 72%. The proportion of employees rating their anxiety as low has been largely stable. These changes are very small and overall the picture is of general stability.

Stress Proxy Index

We calculate a stress index score using the Civil Service People Survey questions aligned to the Health and Safety Executive Stress Management Standards. The higher the index, the more challenging the workplace environment is for stress. Factors include higher workloads, lower control over how work is done, and poor support from team and manager. The stress index increased by one percentage point in 2018 to 29% and is consistent with the median score for the Civil Service.

PERMA Index

Since 2016 we have been monitoring an index of ‘flourishing’ by combining 5 Civil Service People Survey questions related to 5 dimensions of flourishing – Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning and Accomplishment. In 2018 DWP employees had a PERMA index score of 74%, consistent with the median score for the Civil Service as a whole. This score represented a reduction of one percentage point on 2017.

3. Our key priorities

In DWP we’ve made good progress over the last 3 years, which has been achieved against a backdrop of unprecedented change and uncertainty. We recognise there is a critical need to sustain this focus over the coming months and years and to continue to invest in the development of positive mental health, wellbeing and inclusion for our people and teams.

Our immediate priorities over the next 6 to 12 months:

• we will continue to build the wellbeing confidence and capability of colleagues at all grades through Wellbeing Confidence Training
• we will achieve our ambition of Mental Health First Aid parity (MHFA) with Physical First Aid with 1,600 MHFA in place by 2020
• we will build a national disability network, to enhance support, increase line manager capability and all colleague disability confidence
• we will continue to raise mental health and disability issues through our internal blogging and colleague events, highlighting inspiring personal stories which enable conversations to take place and reduce the stigma around these topics
• we will pilot new therapies through our EAP for colleagues who may be vulnerable to different forms of stress in their work, as well as continuing to inspire colleagues to use the range of support services to remain resilient, healthy and well
• we will continue to increase the provision of safe spaces right across the DWP estate, in partnership with the Charity for Civil Servants
• importantly we will be developing DWP’s financial wellbeing strategy including campaigns to break down barriers and stigma associated with money worries to ensure DWP is a safe place where colleagues can talk openly and feel confident seeking help and support if in financial distress

We will next provide a report in May 2020.