How the Home Office’s comms team have built EDI into their ways of working
The Home Office Communications Directorate Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) strategy is grounded in insight and is regularly reviewed and refreshed. We want our Comms team to be inclusive and welcome talent from a variety of backgrounds and experiences; we know that if people feel included, they are more likely to feel encouraged to excel and to develop, and resilience increases. When you feel like you belong, it’s much easier to find the courage to stand out.
Our most recent refresh was in early 2022, when we surveyed of the directorate (c80% response rate), which showed clear opportunities for developing the Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) strategy, focusing on the following:
- Representation – improve the representation of the directorate in a number of ways, including recruitment, retention, reward and progression, across a range of protected characteristics
- Inclusion – opportunities to improve working practices within the directorate, including hybrid working and making a more conscious effort to include colleagues on parental leave and those not based in London to support the Places for Growth strategy
- Engagement – maximising the already strong delivery of the Diversity & Inclusion working group to focus efforts on engaging the wider directorate in EDI issues.
Across all of our objectives, we also consider our communications practice – how do we better understand, reach and influence our key audiences.
These themes are largely delivered through our champions for D&I, who represent a range of characteristics and, in addition to their day-to-day roles, organise events and knowledge-sharing to improve understanding of our audiences and under-represented groups.
For example, the Race Champions for the directorate ran a series of events for Black History Month in October 2022 including lunch-and-learn talks from a Black police officer and a Black Border Force officer, giving an opportunity to share lived experiences and reflect on how these impact our key priorities as a department – specifically, confidence in the Police, and recruitment programmes across Police and Border Force. The evaluation of these events showed a high degree of engagement from colleagues across the directorate.
We have also held optional learning sessions on mental health and resilience, helping people to understand how best to handle high levels of demand and know how to spot signs of burnout. We’re a high performing team and we have a supportive culture, but this activity equipped managers to better support their teams in what is often a high-pressure and fast-paced working environment, and has increased our overall resilience.
Finally, we’re committed to inclusive recruitment and diverse panels in particular. This can be hard to deliver in practice but it means candidates have a better experience and we make better decisions. If you’d like to join one of our recruitment panels please do let us know!