Corporate report

HMRC equality objectives 2020 to 2024

Published 29 January 2021

Foreword

Every day, HMRC does important work to develop and deliver policies and services that affect the lives of people across the country and beyond.

Our vision, values, strategic objectives and the HMRC Charter describe the type of organisation we want to be – one that treats customers and colleagues fairly, protects society from harm and makes HMRC a great place to work.

‘Respect at Work’ is our change programme helping us to create the best environment possible for everyone in HMRC and addresses the challenges identified in Laura Whyte’s independent review of what it’s like to work at HMRC.

Developed with the help of 17,000 colleagues ‘Our Commitments’, is a set of principles that guide how we treat one another to help us make HMRC a great place to work. It’s how we’re building the kind of HMRC that we can be proud to work for.

We are committed to improving customer experience and the HMRC Charter defines the service and standard of behaviour that customers should expect when interacting with us. Following a period of public consultation we refreshed the HMRC Charter in November 2020.

For the first time we also included our principles of support for customers who need extra help, which outlines what customers can expect if they require additional support.

We expect every colleague to live our values every day in every decision.

Jim Harra, HMRC First Permanent Secretary and Chief Executive

Our equality objectives

As a public authority, HMRC has statutory responsibilities under section 149 of the Equality Act 2010 Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) to:

a) eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation and other unlawful conduct prohibited under the Equality Act 2010

b) advance equality of opportunity between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it

c) foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it

Under the Equality Act 2010, we have specific duties to publish one or more equality objectives and equality information to communicate how we meet our statutory requirements. As a non-devolved public authority, HMRC has statutory equality responsibilities in England, Scotland and Wales under the Equality Act 2010 and in Northern Ireland under section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998.

This document sets out our equality objectives, our strategic approach to achieving them and our plans for 2020 to 2024. They are explicitly linked to Our Commitments and HMRC Charter standards.

Our equality objectives apply to our work with our customers and how we interact with our colleagues. They will be reviewed at least every four years and as new priorities emerge. They are designed to eliminate unfair disparities by being transparent about our challenges and increasing accountability for addressing them throughout the department.

Our equality objectives are accompanied by a customer-facing plan and colleague-facing plan which set out how we measure progress. They are reviewed at least annually to reflect any changes in our priorities.

We publish equality information in our annual report of HMRC compliance with the Public Sector Equality Duties. The Equality and Human Rights Commission monitors our compliance with the Equality Act 2010.

HMRC also has duties under section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998, to ensure equality of opportunity and good relations are central to policy making and service delivery, to address inequalities and demonstrate measurable positive impact on the lives of people experiencing inequalities. Compliance is monitored by the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland.

Objective 1: inclusive

To be a great place to work for all our colleagues. To have a safe physical and digital environment with a culture where we can be authentic, have a voice and feel that we belong. To provide products and services that are designed around what customers need to do, are accessible, easy and quick to use.

Our inclusive environment means we value each other’s contributions and can recognise, attract and retain the most diverse range of thoughts, experiences, skills and talent.

Objective 2: respectful

For every colleague to treat each other and our customers with respect every day. We will work together to achieve our common goals and have honest conversations with respect when we do not live up to our standards.

We will always treat customers fairly, in line with our values of respect, professionalism and integrity. We will be mindful of customers’ personal situation, and provide extra support where required.

Respect at work means taking personal responsibility for living our values, our commitments to each other and our charter obligations. We will hold each other to account through our systems and behaviours. We will support each other to keep our knowledge up to date, to be self-aware of our impact on others, and to speak up and make changes when things aren’t right.

Objective 3: representative

For the diversity of our colleagues to reflect the diversity of our customers. We will improve the health of the tax system by building trust and increasing fairness to improve our customer and colleague experience.

To become more representative, we will improve the quality of our colleague equality information year on year and improve our customer equality information. We will use data and insight to identify, understand and address disparities and under-representation.

Our strategic approach

In our 2016 to 2020 equality, diversity and inclusion strategy we described our approach as being led by insight and focused on outcomes. We have made progress, for example the proportion of Senior Civil Servants from a Black, Asian or ethnic minority background has increased from 4.5% in April 2016 to 9.4% in March 2020 but we know there is more to do.

In 2020 to 2024 we will continue to take an evidence-based approach.

In HMRC we use the Civil Service inclusion model which provides a measure of how individuals feel a sense of belonging, can be their authentic selves, and feel they have a voice in their teams and organisations.

In addition to our legal responsibilities for equality under the Equality Act 2010 and the Northern Ireland Act 1998 - which protect our customers and colleagues from discrimination because of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage/civil partnership status, pregnancy, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation and political identity - we consider fairness in terms of caring responsibilities, socio-economic background, individual differences and combinations of diversity characteristics where possible.

For our customers, the HMRC Charter sets out the standards of behaviour which we aspire to when dealing with people in the exercise of our functions.

This means what customers can expect from HMRC and what HMRC expects from customers. It is also a legal requirement under the Finance Act 2009. We will continue to report on our performance against the Charter through the annual publication of the Charter Annual Report.

To gain an accurate understanding of our challenges, we will continue to improve the quality of our customer and colleague equality data and gather insight by listening to the personal impact of our colleagues’ and customers’ experiences.

To gain a shared understanding of, and accountability for, our challenges, we will continue to increase the transparency of our diversity information and use it to inform our decision-making, to tailor and target interventions and measure impact.

To build our inclusive culture, we will ensure equality consideration is embedded in our decision-making, governance and assurance processes.

We will continue to work together with internal and external stakeholders, such as the Cabinet Office, other government departments, and our stakeholder forums to improve practices and share learning.

HMRC action plans

For colleagues

Each year we identify our priorities with our internal stakeholders and Cabinet Office and review our plans. We set annual priorities to support change where evidence shows it is needed most but we work across all areas of equality, diversity and inclusion. In practice, actions taken through the lens of one equality characteristic bring broader inclusion benefits.

For example, if our recruitment process produced outcome disparities because there was bias in the process, improving the process would produce fairer outcomes for all colleagues and applicants.

Our actions span across our equality objectives of being inclusive, respectful and representative. We report on progress internally via the Chief People Officer and externally on GOV.UK (equality schemes).

We will continuously improve across 4 areas.

1. Process improvement

We will continue to eliminate, justify or mitigate evidenced disparities in opportunity, usage or outcome of our processes by reviewing, evaluating and revising our policies and processes and how they are implemented, including:

• recruitment, promotion and talent
• workplace adjustments
• concerns, grievances and disciplinaries
• reward and recognition

2. Learning and development

We will continue to ensure high quality and tailored learning offers to support the development of talent, knowledge and inclusive and respectful behaviours by:

• designing and rolling out learning on how to recognise and supportively challenge discriminatory behaviour and language
• reviewing our learning offering to ensure it is fit for purpose, effective delivering value for money and the desired learning outcomes
• working with Cabinet Office and other government department stakeholders to evaluate the effectiveness of relevant Civil Service Learning products

3. Accountability and governance

We will continue to develop frameworks to embed consideration of equality throughout all our functions across the department by:

• reviewing our frameworks and strengthening structures to support relevant accountability and assurance
• embedding systematic consideration of equality impact and involvement of the people affected into our decision-making processes
• maximising opportunities to promote equality, diversity and inclusion
• developing a strong operating model for our staff networks
• increasing the quality and transparency of our equality information, to encourage top-down and bottom-up accountability and to support evidence-based actions and impact measures
• increasing our diversity declaration rates to accurately identify the scope, size and locations of our challenges
• auditing our data sets to identify aggregate disparities between groups sharing diversity characteristics

4. Communicating our inclusive culture

We will continue to raise awareness of our vision, of where we have areas for improvement and our expectations of all HMRC colleagues to contribute positively to making HMRC a great place to work by:

• running regular communication campaigns to encourage actions to build inclusion, to raise awareness of our challenges, and to celebrate our diversity
• visibly celebrating diversity and embedding equality consideration into our estates, events and communications
• creating opportunities for the department to listen to and understand the personal impact of inequalities on people different from themselves, to reduce barriers and inspire allyship

Measuring progress

Our success measures and assurance processes are embedded into our Respect at Work programme.

We will measure our progress by:

• analysing our engagement and inclusion data by equality protected characteristics from the Civil Service People Survey, Civil Service Inclusion Survey and regular HMRC Pulse surveys
• analysing our process outcomes by equality protected characteristics, to identify, reduce, eliminate and mitigate disparities, including casework volume and outcome, recruitment stages, reward nominations and performance management
• monitoring colleagues’ willingness to challenge and report inappropriate behaviour
• monitoring levels of reported bullying, harassment, discrimination and victimisation levels
• monitoring colleague diversity declaration rates
• monitoring our diversity representation and distribution data
• meeting our statutory reporting requirements
• receiving feedback from our staff networks, union representatives, leaders and colleagues

For customers

Our objectives and action plans have been developed with the HMRC Charter in mind and are underpinned with training initiatives such as empathy, core customer insights and customer focused leadership.

They reflect our commitment to meeting the needs of all of those in protected groups, and those who need extra support.

Our actions span across our equality objectives of being inclusive, respectful and representative.

We will continuously to improve across 3 areas.

1. System improvement

We will continue to build services that meet the needs of customers by:

• involving users and stakeholders to work collaboratively, share information and build supportive, trusting and professional relationships, improving the accessibility of our digital services
• working with the UK devolved governments to deliver UK nation language commitments
• improving our knowledge of customers’ characteristics to better understand our impact on different customer groups
• increasing stakeholder representation on consultation networks to ensure a diverse range of customer groups who might require extra support are represented

2. Accountability and governance

We will continue to ensure required standards of practice are achieved by:

• providing support for customers who have difficulties accessing online services or are digitally excluded
• reviewing our customer communications to make sure they are clear and easy to understand, meeting the needs of all customers, and are available in other languages and alternative formats
• ensuring all new digital services meet Public Sector Accessibility Regulations 2018
• ensuring the equality impacts of all policies and services are considered in line with the public sector equality duty
• producing statutory reports to demonstrate how we meet our legal obligations in the devolved nations and UK
• monitor and publish our performance against the Charter on an annual basis
• report on the extent to which HMRC has demonstrated the standards of behaviour and values included in the HMRC Charter through the quarterly meeting of the Customer Experience Committee

3. Raising awareness

We will continue building a customer-centred culture by:

• ensuring our colleagues are equipped with the right tools and training to understand their responsibilities under the public sector equality duty and Charter obligations
• providing funding to voluntary and charity sector organisations through our grant funding programme, to provide holistic advice and support to HMRC’s diverse range of customers, particularly those in vulnerable circumstances
• supporting our customer facing staff to treat all customers fairly and empathetically, offering appropriate support as set out in our principles for support and ensuring our customers know how to access extra help
• learning from the monitoring and analysing of customers’ feedback from customer groups who access extra support and complaints for equality relevance
• analysing equality-related complaints identifying any trends and areas requiring improvements to guidance or processes

Measuring progress

We will measure our progress by:

• monitoring the number of online forms that meet website accessibility standards
• monitoring satisfaction levels of our alternative provisions and from customer group representatives
• monitoring our customer experience, as customers find it easier to meet their obligations and access entitlements
• achieving legal compliance with our statutory requirements
• evaluating the effectiveness of our learning and development
• evaluating the effectiveness of our grant funding in terms of value added to the services offered by Voluntary and Charity Sector organisations