SLC Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Annual Report 2022
Published 30 March 2023
© Crown copyright 2023
This publication is licensed under the terms of the Open Government Licence v3.0 except where otherwise stated. To view this licence, visit nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3 or write to the Information Policy Team, The National Archives, Kew, London TW9 4DU, or email: psi@nationalarchives.gov.uk.
Where we have identified any third party copyright information you will need to obtain permission from the copyright holders concerned.
This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/slc-equality-diversity-and-inclusion-annual-report-2022/slc-equality-diversity-and-inclusion-annual-report-2022
1. Introduction - CEO Chris Larmer
I am pleased to publish SLC’s annual Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Annual Report for 2022, my first as the Chief Executive of Student Loans Company (SLC). The report outlines our activity over the past 12 months and gives an update on progress against our equality objectives for 2020 – 2023.
Upon commencing the role of SLC’s CEO in late 2022, I made it clear that supporting SLC’s people was my top priority, as our people are the key to our success as a business. I committed to continue the good work already started via our People Strategy to make SLC a great place to work and to make sure we are providing opportunities for fulfilling careers for everyone within SLC. So, for me, the purpose of this report is not just to demonstrate that SLC meets its equality obligations, but that we are genuinely building a positive, supportive, and inclusive workplace where everyone is treated fairly, can achieve their full potential, and feels comfortable to be themselves.
We have made some good progress this year and a real highlight has been achieving Disability Confident Leadership status, following close collaboration with the Business Disability Forum.
This year we have also introduced an ‘inclusive leadership’ module to our leadership development programme; and for the first time included an ‘inclusive champion’ award as part of our People Star Awards, SLC’s annual recognition awards.
Driving much of this work forward has been our new Policy, Equality and Wellbeing Manager, a new role we have created and filled in the last year, showing our organisational commitment to progressing our EDI maturity.
But there is much more to be done. Now that we have achieved Disability Confident Leadership status, we must cement this and bring it to life for our colleagues. We must reduce our gender pay gap, which, disappointingly, has widened this year, and we must improve our diversity profile in senior leadership roles by supporting more women, colleagues with a disability, and those from ethnic minority backgrounds.
The next step for SLC is to develop our new EDI Strategy setting our equality objectives for 2023 – 2026. This strategy will focus on progressing our EDI maturity beyond compliance. Of course, ultimately it is our people who define our culture and drive our EDI agenda, so our people will play a key role in developing our next EDI strategy and helping to make SLC a great place to work.
2. Our Commitment to EDI
2.1 Equality Legislation
Due to our status as a government-owned organisation listed under Schedule 2 of the Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties), SLC must demonstrate compliance with our general duty as a public body; to have due regard when exercising our public functions to:
- eliminating unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation;
- advancing equality of opportunity; and
- promoting good relations between those who share a protected characteristic and those who do not.
In accordance with the Specific Duties provision, we understand that we must:
- publish information to show our compliance with the Equality Duty annually; and
- set and publish equality objectives, at least every four years.
SLC published its last EDI strategy in 2020, containing the following three objectives and spanning over three years:
- To build and maintain a diverse and inclusive workforce.
- To cultivate and promote a workplace culture where everyone is included and is encouraged to be their true selves and feels accepted for who they are.
- To work together towards an empowered and engaged workforce.
Currently, we are working to develop our refreshed EDI strategy for 2023-2026.
2.2 Governance and Measuring Success
Progress against the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy is monitored as part of SLC’s corporate governance. Within SLC’s governance structures, the Board has established a Remuneration Committee (RemCo) as a committee of the Board to support its responsibilities in formally reviewing regular compliance reports and diversity and employee engagement data; and formally receiving updates on progress of the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy.
At a corporate level, activity is overseen by a Policy, Equality and Wellbeing Manager, a role that we introduced for the first time in 2022. Day to day priorities will be driven by the Executive Director of People and the People team will provide regular updates on our workforce data in support of our three objectives and associated actions.
We will regularly monitor and review our EDI strategy objectives to ensure they are fit for purpose and truly help shape SLC towards a diverse and inclusive workforce. We will make improvements on an ongoing basis where there is a clear case for change or where new priorities emerge.
This will be achieved by:
- Publishing an annual EDI report against the company EDI strategy document on the progress we make on the equality objectives and actions we have set.
- Comparing our monitoring data with regional representational data to see how far our workforce reflects the local communities we have a presence in.
- Closely monitoring our employee equality data and compare annual trends to identify relevant business actions to improve workforce representativeness, for example whether the people we are recruiting are very similar to one another or very different from the pool of people we are recruiting from.
- Comparing the position and treatment of workers with certain protected characteristics within our workforce compared with those without those characteristics.
- Using our equality data to help plan positive action campaigns, for example targeted at existing employees or externally at the local communities with the aim of increasing the talent pool from which we recruit.
- External and internal benchmarking of our performance against other organisations; and comparing our monitoring data with industry standard to see how we are doing compared to others in our sector.
- Continuing to engage with all our employees so that we listen and work together towards a diverse and inclusive workforce.
- Keeping an open mind to change and taking onboard recommendations, so that we will continue to make improvements year on year.
- Continuing to use our internal and external communications to embed EDI at the heart of everything that we do.
2.3 Accreditations/Memberships
SLC is committed to being a great place to work and to unlocking the potential of all colleagues, so SLC is proud that our ongoing efforts to embed equality, diversity and inclusion has received the highest level of recognition this year under the Government’s Disability Confident scheme.
The scheme encourages employers to take action to improve how they recruit, retain and develop people living with disabilities. There are three levels of accreditation: from committing to the scheme (which SLC completed in 2016), to becoming a Disability Confident Employer and now progressed to a Disability Confident Leader.
The accreditation process involved several assessments, including independent validation by an external organisation, where we were commended for improving support for colleagues across the business; for instance, through the launch of our remote mental health first aid service; and for continually reviewing our policies to ensure they are inclusive, accessible, and allow for discretion to help break down potential barriers and facilitate the development of colleagues with disabilities. To achieve this, SLC is a member of the Business Disability Forum enabling us to draw upon best practice in reviews of our policies and practices to identify and break down barriers.
In June 2020 SLC successfully achieved Investors in Diversity (IiD) a national equality standard with the National Centre for Diversity (NCD), and the assessment process for re-accreditations is currently underway.
SLC are members of Employers for Carers (EFC) showing our commitment to supporting carers in the workplace, and recognising that our colleagues may care for family or friends who are elderly, ill or have additional support needs such as a disability.
2.4 Leadership Development
We know that ultimately our leaders are a key driver in creating an inclusive culture. We need to harness talent across the widest possible base reflecting diversity in all its forms to develop an engaged, inclusive and talented workforce that contributes to the development of a high-performing organisation. We also need to develop leaders with an authentic commitment to diversity and inclusion, who are aware of bias, and the negative impacts to team and others, and attentive to diverse cultures, beliefs, and traditions, adapting as required. The company has developed a suite of leadership development programmes to build the pipeline of senior talent in the organisation, including the Role of the Manager: ‘Building Blocks to Brilliance’ programme now under way, with a Wellbeing and Inclusivity module underpinned by the six ‘Cs’ of an inclusive leader: committed, courageous, conscious of bias, curious, collaborative and communicating with empathy. The session aims to develop leaders in the themes of emotional intelligence, promoting wellbeing, fostering inclusion and psychological safety, while recognising and mitigating unconscious bias.
2.5 Emerging Talent
Supporting women into STEM careers is a key element of our Emerging Talent strategy. Currently we have 30% uptake from women in our STEM Apprenticeship programmes. Apprentices studying Data Science/Data Analytics/Software Development and Cyber Security; and 43% in our Graduate Technology programmes. That figure jumps to 66% for our Security programme.
We have implemented a STEM women working group, which has been involved in careers fairs and school visits. SLC has also been involved with various programmes including Hello World in England, Career Ready in Scotland and sits on the Skills Development Scotland working group ‘Women into Tech’. Getting more women into tech is not just about attraction for relevant posts - we know we need to encourage more women to consider a STEM-related career, therefore early intervention is required. One of the main aims of our schools partnership programme is to support education and socialisation of many different careers stories and discuss requirements for future skills in order to influence choices for more young people.
We have carefully considered the recruitment methods for our Emerging Talent programme to ensure we are encouraging uptake from women whilst being fair and consistent. This includes ensuring we have equal gender representation at interviews and flexibility and inclusiveness in recruitment processes. We have designed a 360 Assessment centre process which is based on meta-skills, aptitude and openness to learn, not just current ability. This has proven to be a key strength in allowing our Emerging Talent programme to support our Women in STEM agenda.
3. Our Equality Journey – Progress on our EDI objectives for 2020-2023
Objective 1: to build and maintain a diverse and inclusive workforce
Recruitment that is diverse and inclusive
We have acted continuously to mitigate unconscious bias in our recruitment processes. Our refreshed EDI module launched in 2020 addresses unconscious bias and is weaved through managers’ guidance and has attracted praise from the National Centre for Diversity. To date, 96% of SLC colleagues have successfully completed the module, continuing the trend of high completion rates from last year.
We have taken steps to ensure we are sourcing diverse talent from a range of pools. SLC’s careers microsite was launched in late 2021 with an emphasis on EDI and visibility of our status as an organisation accredited by external diversity organisations. This is an exciting shift in our approach as we ensure we position SLC as an ‘Employer of Choice’ in the recruitment space. Our schools outreach programme, launched in Glasgow in 2021, was expanded this year to also include Darlington, and saw SLC return to schools in our local communities to inspire young people to learn more about apprenticeship opportunities at SLC.
Equality in Retention
We have delivered topical coaching circles for managers to build their understanding and familiarity of the various tools available to support the mental health of themselves and their team. These sessions covered stress risks assessments, wellness action plans and the role of Mental Health First Aiders. Following a successful pilot in which 190 managers enrolled, further coaching circles were stood up to coincide with Mental Health Awareness Week.
In recent years, we fulfilled our objective to extend the right to request workplace modifications to be reactive to requests from employees not covered by the Equality Act 2010, embedded into the Employee Wellbeing Policy, and supported by Health and Safety and Estates colleagues. We have continued to build upon this progress in subsequent reviews. For example, a recently included section on caring responsibilities signposts avenues for support.
Further to the above, we have taken targeted action to support colleagues with by strengthening our neurodiversity process and providing screening for those who suspect they may have dyslexia but do not have a formal diagnosis. This generates tailored recommendations to inform further reasonable adjustments to support the colleague to remain and thrive in the workplace. We also provide mental health first aid and have facilitated a remote provision for colleagues working from home. To assist colleagues who experience photosensitivity, we have included warnings and alternatives on technology user guides where infrared/flashing lights are used.
A more representative workforce
We are continually working to improve data quality and inform targeted action in line with our EDI objectives. Colleagues can share their equality data on a voluntary basis via our self-service ERP platform, Workday. In 2021, we enhanced the options to choose from to deepen our understanding of our workforce and encourage provision of equality data. This data is reported publicly on gov.uk on an annual basis via our EDI reports and Annual Report and Accounts.
SLC is proud that our ongoing efforts to embed equality, diversity and inclusion has received the highest level of recognition under the Government’s Disability Confident scheme. As a Disability Confident Leader, we have an opportunity to progress and strengthen our commitment to developing an environment and a culture that enables colleagues with disabilities or long-term conditions to thrive in the workplace. We have continued to engage with Business Disability Forum and Civil Service Disability Network to ensure we are taking cognisance of evolving best practice, for example, by reviewing our policies and procedures via an accessibility lens and attending cross-government events.
Objective 2: to cultivate and promote a workplace culture where everyone is included and is encouraged to be their true selves and feels accepted for who they are
An inclusive culture
We have continued to organise and encourage employee participation in regular SLC events throughout the calendar that celebrate diversity and inclusivity (for example International Day of People with Disabilities, International Women’s Day, Pride, Diwali, Mental Health Awareness Week, Time to Talk Day), raising awareness via multiple communication channels and activities. We have continued work to support SLC’s equality staff networks such as Arcus, SLC’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, questioning, and non-binary (LGBTQ+) colleague-led network, which we continue to promote via our internal communication channels. SLC also celebrated and attended Pride marches in Glasgow (June 2022) and Darlington (August 2022), both of which were promoted to colleagues via our communication channels.
We are continuously reviewing usage of mental health first aid and employee assistance programme services and promoting these through multiple channels. Topical coaching circles for managers have been delivered to coincide with Mental Health Awareness Week 2022, with a focus on SLC’s wellbeing provisions. For instance, the January Wellbeing pack issued in early 2022 was designed in recognition of the external landscape and encouraged social connection at a time where most colleagues were working from home. Late 2022 saw the recruitment of additional mental health first aiders to support our colleagues, as well as the launch of our mental health first aid e-learning and e-book, to drive awareness and understanding of the service across the organisation. Most recently, we celebrated Time to Talk Day with a series of Tea and Talk events, providing an overview of the plethora of tools, resources, and e-learning available to support colleagues’ health and wellbeing.
Our 2022 Employee Engagement survey was reviewed to incorporate additional Inclusion and wellbeing questions. We are currently reviewing our wellbeing and inclusion engagement questions and disaggregating data by protected characteristic to identify differences in engagement between different groups. We will continue our work to build an inclusive culture where everyone can be their true selves, using high quality data to inform targeted action.
Staff Networks
ARCUS
Arcus, SLC’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, questioning and non-binary (LGBTQ+) Network, aims to support and encourage equality, diversity and inclusion within the organisation. Through education, support and role modelling our intention is to develop and nurture an inclusive network of both LGBTQ+ employees and allies.
Arcus led, celebrated and attended Pride marches in Glasgow (June 2022) and Darlington (August 2022), both of which involved senior leaders within the organisation, with events promoted to colleagues via our communication channels.
Colleague Representative Group (CRG)
Our Colleague Representative Group (CRG) is a key colleague-led network formed of around 16-18 Colleague Representatives, elected each year, from various grades, roles, directorates, and backgrounds from across SLC to be reflective of our diverse workforce.
Meeting every 6-8 weeks, the CRG act as a trusted sounding board, using colleague feedback to explore, discuss, and provide feedback on people policies, health and safety, organisational design, and employee engagement. They also get involved with individual projects such as the development of our
blended working approach. Colleagues can confidentially share their views and ideas with any of our CRG Colleague Representatives who use feedback to explore and discuss issues affecting employees across SLC.
Inclusive working practices
EDI and inclusivity are weaved through our policies which are reviewed on a regular basis to ensure they are still fit for purpose and reflect evolving best practice in the EDI space, including SLC’s Apprenticeships as a Development Opportunity, EDI, Employee Wellbeing, Family Leave, Flexible Working and Gender Identity and Transgender Equality Policies. We recognise the importance of providing flexible working for all colleagues and we are currently reviewing our Flexible Working policy as part of ‘Project Flex’ which aims to incorporate generous flexible working benefits based on colleague feedback and insights.
All colleagues who can work from home can adopt blended working. Blended working allows colleagues who can work from home the opportunity to split their time between home and the office. SLC will offer as many colleagues as possible the opportunity to adopt blended working, balancing business needs and colleague personal circumstances. Our commitment to facilitating blended ways of working will have a positive impact on workforce flexibility for women, people with a disability, working parents and carers as we continue to build on positive strides made in this area during the pandemic.
Objective 3: to work together towards an empowered and engaged workforce
Recognising and rewarding hard work
We have taken steps to fulfil our objective to review the current reward structure and develop a ‘fit for purpose’ pay and grading approach following the launch of our new pay and grading framework in late 2021. This will support SLC in achieving pay equality by reducing the width between pay bands and enabling a fairer process. These changes were thoroughly communicated via various internal communications channels and supported by drop-in workshops where colleagues could come along to ask questions and learn more about SLC’s pay and grading framework and how pay works for SLC as a non-departmental public body within the Civil Service Pay Remit guidance.
SLC’s annual recognition awards, the People Star Awards, this year included an Inclusive Champion category for the first time. This recognises colleagues who:
- visibly role model and advocate diversity and inclusion in the workplace
- start and encourage open conversations in relation to diversity and inclusion topics
- inspire and collaborate with others to make a positive difference in creating and sustaining an inclusive workplace
- have courage to speak up and challenge inappropriate behaviour and the status quo
- are authentic and empower colleagues to be themselves at work and show compassion and empathy towards others, or are leaders who also take a collaborative approach to decision making valuing diverse and unique perspectives, allowing everyone a voice; or
- show vulnerability and encourage psychological safety fostering a culture of learning through open and honest conversation and support everyone’s wellbeing, role modelling work/life balance and creating a positive work environment.
Promote, support and communicate our EDI commitment
Continued engagement with in-house communications teams to promote and share our EDI progress via internal and external channels to optimise reach, thus positioning SLC as an employer of choice with a focus on accessibility and inclusivity. We will continue to utilise our platform to celebrate key dates on the EDI calendar and highlight our Disability Confident Leader and Investors in Diversity statuses to demonstrate our commitment to EDI.
4. Gender Pay Gap
During FY2022-23, we analysed and reported on our gender pay gap which is published annually on gov.uk. Various stakeholders across the business were consulted to generate an action plan to ensure positive progress.
Our 2022 gender pay gap report saw a slight increase in both the mean and median gender pay gap from 2021. Our 2022 mean gender pay gap of 12.08% represents an increase of 0.62% (2021: 11.46%) and the median gap of 7.55% represents an increase of 2.62% (2021: 4.63%). We explain the detail behind these results in the report published at GOV.UK/SLC.
| 2021 Pay Gap | 2022 Pay Gap | Change between 2021 and 2022 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Median | 4.63% | 7.55% | +2.92% |
| Mean | 11.46% | 12.08% | +0.62% |
What are we doing to close the gender pay gap?
SLC continues to undertake number of activities with a focus on closing the gender pay gap, including:
- A People Strategy that focuses on the workforce and their rewards. A key element of this strategy is to recognise the strengths of, and our commitment to, a diverse workforce.
- Published a new three-year Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Strategy spanning 2020-23 which has gender equality as a core element and monitoring progress against specific EDI action plans.
- We will continue to use high quality data to understand the drivers of our gender pay gap to target actions to deliver the most effective results.
- We will continue to improve workforce flexibility for women building on positive strides made in this area as we embrace new ways of working.
- To ensure that there is a focus on attracting, retaining, and recruiting from the widest possible talent pools. We continue to promote diversity across our workforce, utilising recruitment platforms including Women in Tech Jobs, participating in various STEM events to address the gender imbalance, and pledging our support to the We Are Tech Women network to increase the number of women working in technology roles in SLC.
- There is a continued focus on our Emerging Talent programme: building apprenticeship, internship, and graduate programmes to enable better career paths for those starting their working lives.
- A suite of leadership development programmes will build the pipeline of senior talent in the organisation, deepening our leaders’ abilities to build and develop diverse teams, and to support resilience and wellbeing.
- We continue to invest in a total reward package for all employees with varied offerings including a range of employee benefits which can be tailored to personal choice to support a varied range of demographics and lifestyle choices reflective of our diverse workforce, such as civil service sports and leisure club, dental insurance, car lease scheme, buying/selling holidays, cycle to work, technology scheme (which supports digital inclusion initiatives), discounted bus travel, employee referral scheme, and the ‘mylifestyle’ portal which has discounts through our partnership with Edenred.
- We will introduce greater transparency regarding performance related reward processes to ensure managers understand that their decisions need to be objective, and evidence based.
- Our continued commitment to pay and recognition will enable a culture of reward for performance, skills and contribution, and in turn support our overall commitment to attract, recruit and retain from the widest possible talent pools.
- Work continues on our career pathways programme to further build colleague and manager awareness and skill in using the programme. This will enable colleagues to take ownership of their own professional development and provide flexible learning opportunities to support our existing and future female leaders and individual contributors at all levels to build a rewarding career at SLC.
- A commitment to share gender pay gap best practice using the SLC cross government and non-departmental public bodies networks and forge strong connections.
5. Equality Monitoring Data
The following information sets out the equality profile of the Student Loans Company as of 31 December 2022. This information is used to compare the profile with internal equality data from 31 December 2020, the Census from 2021 and other national statistical research. The purpose of this comparison is to measure our workforce profile with that of the local population to indicate how representative we are as an employer.
We have disaggregated the data across our three main locations of Glasgow, Darlington, and Llandudno Junction. This allows us to compare each local population base against the national data and that across the company. Improving our equality monitoring is one of the company’s equality outcomes and working with SLC colleagues and Business Disability Forum we are seeking to improve the data that will be collected at the end of 2023.
Our data is used to provide company employee information as part of the equality impact assessment process and contribute to company decision making.
5.1 Age
The number of employees across SLC has decreased from 3,317 to 3,294 since 2020. The age profile across SLC shows that we have people of all ages working at SLC. The average age is 39 years old, remaining consistent with previous years. The mean age of SLC colleagues in 2022 was 39; this shows that we continue to have a young workforce when compared to other public sector employers, where the median age was 45 years old in 2020.[1]
| Year | 2020 | 2022 |
|---|---|---|
| No of Employees | 3317 | 3294 |
| Average Age | 39 | 39 |
5.2 Gender
The company gender profile is consistent when compared with other public sector organisations. The percentage of men working at SLC is 46.75% and the percentage of women is 53.25%. The proportion of women employed by SLC is slightly lower than in the wider Civil Service, in which women represent 54.2% of employees. 1
The part time figures show a disparity remains between men and women working less than full time hours. The percentage of females working less than full time hours is 22.13% and the percentage of men is 5.72%. We are reviewing our Flexible Working proposition as part of the People Strategy and to encourage both men and women to take advantage of different working patterns that work for both SLC and the individual.
| 2020 | 2022 | % Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Men | 45.49% | 46.75% | +1.26% |
| Women | 54.5% | 53.25% | -1.25% |
5.3 Race/ethnicity
There has been an increase since 2020 from 60.78% to 65.83% of employees sharing their ethnicity as white. Also, from the data, there has been an increase from 3.08% to 3.98% of our employees sharing they are from each of the ethnic minority groups.
There has been a decrease of nil responses from 36.15% to 29.98% since 2020. This continued downwards trend reflects our progress in making employees feel comfortable in sharing their ethnic origin, but we are taking further steps to ensure we have high quality data, so we gain a better picture of our ethnicity profile at SLC.
| 2020 | 2022 | % Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Asian | 2.05% | 2.83% | +0.78% |
| Black | 0.45% | 0.58% | +0.13% |
| Mixed ethnicity | 0.42% | 0.58% | +0.16% |
| White | 60.78% | 65.83% | +5.05% |
| Other ethnic group | 0.15% | 0.21% | +0.06% |
| Not shared | 36.15% | 24.36% | - 11.79% |
| Blank | 0,00% | 5.62% | +5.62% |
5.4 Religion and Belief
This year we hold data for 73.59% of our employees, which is a slight decrease from 74.38% in 2020. The percentage of employees who prefer not to share their religion or belief has slightly increased from 2.77% in 2020 to 3.01% this year.
| 2020 | 2022 | % Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Christian | 28.76% | 27.22% | -1.54% |
| Buddhist | 0.12% | 0.09% | -0.03% |
| Muslim | 1.36% | 1.43% | +0.07% |
| Hindu | 0.51% | 0.88% | +0.37% |
| Sikh | 0.30% | 0.33% | +0.03% |
| Jewish | 0.03% | 0.03% | No change |
| No religion | 40.67% | 41.19% | +0.52% |
| Other religion | 2.62% | 2.43% | -0.19% |
| Prefer not to say | 2.77% | 3.01% | +0.24% |
| Blank | 22.85% | 23.39% | + 0.54% |
5.5 Disability
Section 6(1) of the Equality Act 2010 states that a person has a disability if: that person has a physical or mental impairment, and the impairment has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on that person’s ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities. Given this definition, 3.58% of employees have indicated that they have a disability. This is a decrease from 2020 where 4.58% of colleagues shared having a disability.
The percentage of employees sharing that they do not have a disability has decreased 89.24% in 2020 to 72.30% in 2022.
In recent findings, it has been found that 1 in 5 of the working age population, which is 16-64, have reported that they have a disability, and the Government in 2017 has set a target of 4.5 million people with disabilities to be in employment by 2027.[2]
We remain committed to break down employment barriers for people with disabilities and health conditions at SLC by our involvement in various initiatives, including our commitment to maintaining Disability Confident Leader status, which we achieved in 2022.
| 2020 | 2022 | % Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yes | 4.58% | 3.58% | -1.00% |
| No | 89.24% | 72.30% | -16.94% |
| Prefer not to say | 0.18% | 0.33% | +0.15% |
| Blank | 6.00% | 23.78% | +17.78% |
5.6 Sexual Orientation
In 2020, we had 71.66% of our employees sharing their sexual orientation, this year we can see a slight decrease to 69.38%. This year 4.65% of employees shared they are gay, lesbian, or bisexual (LGB), which is a slight increase from 4.24% last year. The most recent public data source (England and Wales Census, 2021) indicates that 3.2%[3] of the UK population are lesbian, gay, or bisexual. There has been an increase of employees choosing not to share their sexual orientation. We will continue to improve in enabling employees to feel they can be their true selves at work as part of our EDI objectives.
| 2020 | 2022 | % Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bisexual | 0.93% | 1.55% | +0.62% |
| Gay | 2.59% | 2.34% | -0.25% |
| Heterosexual | 66.90% | 64.31% | -2.59% |
| Lesbian | 0.72% | 0.76% | +0.04% |
| Other | 0.51% | 0.43% | -0.08% |
| Prefer not to say | 2.77% | 3.31% | +0.54% |
| Blank | 25.57% | 27.31% | +1.74% |
5.7 Gender Reassignment
We understand that monitoring numbers of transgender people is a very sensitive area and data is handled very carefully throughout the monitoring process. As the information points to only a small number of people within SLC who have shared being transgender, SLC reports the number as *.
We will continue to take further measures to provide support and guidance to employees who are or have gone through a gender transition process. This includes support from line managers to the individual, as well as developing and embedding our transgender inclusive policies and practices into SLC’s everyday working practices.
5.8 Marriage and Civil Partnership
We hold data about marriage and civil partnership for 92.8% of our people. 35.48% are married/civil partnerships; 9.26% are cohabiting; 5.59% are divorced/separated; 43.86% are single.
| 2020 | 2022 | % Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cohabiting | 8.47% | 9.26% | +0.79% |
| Divorced | 4.10% | 3.80% | -0.30% |
| Marriage/Civil Partnership | 36.30% | 35.48% | -0.82% |
| Separated | 1.48% | 1.79% | +0.31% |
| Single | 43.80% | 40.86% | -2.94% |
| Widowed | 0.48% | 0.46% | -0.02% |
| Prefer not to say | 1.12% | 1.48% | +0.36% |
| Blank | 4.07% | 6.87% | +2.80% |
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/civil-service-diversity-inclusion-dashboard/civil-service-diversity-and-inclusion-dashboard
[2] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/the-employment-of-disabled-people-2021/the-employment-of-disabled-people-2021#introduction
[3] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/sexuality/bulletins/sexualorientationenglandandwales/census2021