Corporate report

Race Action Plan 2022 to 2023

Published 15 February 2022

Board and Executive Committee commitment

The CMA’s Executive Committee (XCo) and Board are committed to the personal and professional development of all staff, including those from all under-represented groups.

We commit to:

• educate ourselves about the barriers and challenges facing colleagues from ethnic minority communities, both inside and outside the CMA
• removing barriers to career progression for colleagues from ethnic minority communities
• address the lack of ethnic diversity in our senior leadership
• seeking to ensure the CMA’s diversity at all levels reflects that of the UK public
• delivering a range of initiatives in the coming year that will impact the organisation and ensure sustainable change for colleagues from ethnic minority communities
• work in partnership with our EDI Working Group and our Race Network to deliver the ambitious work programme outlined in the following slides

Racism and discrimination of any sort have no place in our society and no place at the CMA. We all have a personal and professional duty to know where inequality persists and to call it out if we see it. We must address these issues together, as colleagues and as citizens, to make society fairer and to support each other. 

Theme 1: Our Recruitment

Action 1

We will ensure that our Recruitment methods and approaches are reviewed to provide the most diverse candidate pools for our campaigns. We will build our recruitment talent pool through identifying key specialists and targeting our networks.

Action 2

We will work on analysing our recruitment data to understand the diversity profile at key stages in the recruitment process.

Theme 2: Community Social Responsibility

The CMA Board and Executive are committed to eradicating inequalities in the CMA and championing the needs of colleagues from underrepresented groups. In our role within the public sector we want to ensure that we are visible in our leadership of driving race equalities across our professions.

Action 1

We will work with other key organisations across our professions to establish appropriate forums for discussion, learning and challenge so we can adopt improved practices to improve our diversity profile in the CMA.

Action 2

We will establish a set of specific actions to lead the development of a wide reaching community of practice, engaging with a variety of organisations and wider competition law specialists, with a focus on challenging traditional practice through events and distinguished speakers.

Action 3

We will ensure we promote our work through external media and communication campaigns to highlight our ambitions and achievements, which will include alumni outreach.

Theme 3: Embedding Practice Locally

The CMA Board and Executive want to ensure that there is a focus on race equality locally within directorates and teams as well as driving improvements in key areas such as performance management.

Action 1

Building on the initiatives progressed by the CMA Staff Race Network we want to ensure that all teams consider developing and implementing their own local race action plan and take meaningful actions at a local level to ensure we are building diverse teams with the right opportunities to develop their careers.

Theme 4: Evaluating the effectiveness of our 2020 to 2021 plan and key initiatives

The CMA Board and Executive want to ensure that the steps we took in 2020 – 2021 have had positive impact, have been effectively embedded and will ensure lasting and tangible change at the CMA.

Action 1

We have established our Advisory Committee to better hear and represent those diverse voices at senior levels of decision making. We will ensure we enable and support our volunteer participants by providing them with ongoing key training and coaching support. We will evaluate the progress and maturity of our Advisory Committee to inform how this becomes embedded in our practice.

Action 2

We established our Accelerate Sponsorship Programme as our commitment to provide effective opportunities for talented colleagues to progress into senior roles. We will ensure this programme is evaluated in order for the Board and Executive to decide how this programme could become embedded into our core talent offer.