GLA Pay Gap Action Plan 2021

• The introduction of Diversity and Inclusion objectives for all staff. These have been embedded as part of our performance review process.
• The revision and updating of five policies within our Work Life Balance and Family policy group to better support working families (maternity; adoption, shared parental leave and pay; birth/adoption support leave and pay; and premature birth and neonatal care).
• Commissioning an independent review to identify and tackle any barriers to career progression for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (but particularly Black) staff.

• Setting new targets to meet the working-age population (16-64) of London by 2024, which is 37 per cent Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic; 49.5 per cent female; and 16 per cent disabled. We benchmark against these targets in our workforce report every six months. We will update them as the population data changes.
• Updating our employee data system so colleagues can self-identify if they consider themselves trans or to have a non-binary gender identity.
• Introducing the monitoring of caring and parenting responsibilities.

• Giving priority consideration to residents of Newham for jobs that are anchored at new City Hall (a commitment made under section 106 of the planning agreement). Roles are advertised via Newham’s Job Shop – ‘Our Newham Work’ – to all of Newham’s residents.
• We are using our levy transfer allowance (25 per cent) to fund apprentices in London SMEs linked to London’s recovery work.
• We are employing Kickstart work placements to support unemployed young people (aged 16-24) into work. We are also offering supported internships to disabled young people through TfL’s Steps into Work programme.

• Reviewing and updating our Learning and Organisational Development framework, as well as expanding our online learning options to give all staff more freedom to independently pursue personal and career development goals through learning.
• Reviewing and relaunching our mentoring scheme, and recruiting and training additional mentors. There is a corporate expectation that all Grade 10+ staff (salary circa £55k+) are available to mentor junior colleagues.
• Sponsoring GLA participants on external development programmes, such as the London Leadership Programme and Leaders Plus, a development programme to help working parents of babies and young children to accelerate their careers.

• Launching the new workplace adjustments policy, with the aim of promoting greater awareness for staff; and providing additional support and guidance to disabled colleagues and their managers. The policy aims to be as inclusive as possible, removing barriers for any employee to support their health and wellbeing in work. This has been supported by new disability equality e-learning for all staff.
• The corporate roll-out of the Let’s Talk About Race initiative. All senior leaders, and half our people managers, have attended. We will continue to deliver this throughout 2022.
• Delivering Trans Awareness training in partnership with our LGBTQ+ network.

Progressing our cross-cutting actions should have a positive impact across the ethnicity, disability and gender pay gaps. The priorities are as follows:

We appreciate Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic staff are under-represented at middle and senior management levels in our organisation (salary circa £55k+). We will take positive action to address this, including ensuring that 30 - 50 per cent of interview candidates are people from Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic backgrounds for all Grade 8+ (salary circa £45k+) recruitment.

We will introduce a talent development programme targeted at Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic staff. We will use this programme to prepare Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic staff to take up middle and senior management positions.

There will also be a targeted intervention to support our Black male staff between Grades 3 and 5 (salary circa £28-35k).

We want to ensure that our Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic staff are supported at this time of pivotal organisational change. We will work with our Staff Networks, Black Thrive and our Employee Assistance Programme to provide safe spaces for support.

In September 2021, the GLA launched a new Workplace Adjustment Policy following support from Goss Consultancy and in consultation with the Staff Network for Disability and UNISON.

This policy is integral to removing barriers for staff and new employees to GLA. We need to take on board the questions and experiences of disabled staff and managers who use the policy.

As we implement the policy there will be an emphasis on monitoring its effectiveness, which will be captured through staff feedback and team briefings, prior to its annual review in October 2022.

The new Workplace Adjustment Policy and our external Occupational Health service are important mechanisms that we can use to help remove barriers for our staff and new joiners to the organisation.

We will review our Occupational Health provision in 2022, to ensure recognition of, and support for, how workplace barriers can adversely impact disabled staff. We will also ensure staff have a good understanding of the service offer.

In September 2021, we launched the GLA’s first disability awareness e-learning module, designed to support all staff to better understand disability and to work in inclusive ways. We will now expand this learning offer and give managers the knowledge, skills and confidence to lead by example; implement effective workplace adjustments; and provide more accessible and inclusive work opportunities.

Working with Inclusion London, we will develop disability training for managers, to be piloted in Spring 2022. Following a pilot phase, we will roll out training across the GLA’s management community – reaching 90 per cent of managers by 2025.

To support all GLA staff to work in more inclusive ways, we will collaborate with our Staff Network for Disability on an internal communications campaign. The campaign will focus on raising awareness of disability, including non-visible disabilities, embedding inclusive working into everyday practice, and implementing workplace adjustments.

We will also work with the Staff Network for Disability and Executive Sponsor to share staff experiences throughout our work and ensure all staff understand the positive impact we can have by removing barriers for staff.

Currently, 7 per cent of our workforce have told us they have a disability. It is likely there are more staff with a disability than is reported and as the GLA have an ambition for our workforce to represent the demographics of the working age population of London. People with a disability are currently 16 per London’s population.

We hope to create a culture in which more employees are confident sharing information with us and understand our reasons for collecting this data. We also want managers and their teams to feel confident in discussing disability and workplace adjustments.

We will run an internal awareness campaign, focusing on staff stories, our rationale for collecting data and how it is used. This will help to highlight the importance of diversity and inclusion in our workplace.

Currently, our analysis is only based on 91 per cent of staff as 9 per cent of have not chosen to share disability information with us. We want to ensure that our data is as accurate as possible to help us understand our pay gaps.

To support staff that experience menopause and their managers, we will implement our new Menopause Policy. Our approach has been shaped by feedback from our Women’s Network and Unison colleagues on the need to better support those experiencing the menopause, which can adversely impact older women. We will engage the Women’s Network, Unison and HR Policy colleagues to ensure clear guidance is available to enable effective and consistent implementation. We will also work with GLA colleagues to roll out and monitor completion rates for a new menopause e-learning offer.

Data is key to understanding our workforce and helps us to develop the right policies to support staff. We already provide caring and dependency leave; and are now asking staff to share if they have caring and/or parenting responsibilities via our HR system. This will help us identify and respond to any barriers encountered by working parents and carers of any gender.

We will attend team and Unit meetings to highlight the importance of sharing and collecting this data and ensure caring and parenting responsibilities are highlighted within our staff storytelling campaigns.

We aim to achieve an 80 per cent sharing rate by 2024.

We want to promote a supportive environment where those experiencing fertility treatment feel supported and included by the organisation and their managers. The GLA’s family policies do not currently reference fertility treatment and/or IVF. Our approach will be gender-inclusive, recognising and supporting different models of family.

Working in partnership with the Carers and Parents Network, Women’s Network and LGBTQ+ Network, we will consider our approach to fertility treatment and provide resources and signposting. This will include developing a Managers’ guide to supporting someone undertaking IVF.

Those who identify as women disproportionately face violence. We have a duty to support and engage with Londoners and our employees to tackle this.

The Mayor’s Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy is a key mayoral commitment. We will ensure staff are engaged with this, building on their own experiences to support them through challenging or distressing circumstances and to enable them to keep well at work.

Our Time: Supporting Future Leaders is a mayoral initiative to support more women in the GLA Group into leadership positions, and to help close the gender pay gap. The third cohort of the programme was put on hold due to the pandemic.

We aim to provide opportunities for women who face multiple barriers (e.g., Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic women; disabled women; and LGBT+ women) to progress through Our Time. We will reserve 50 per cent of the places for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic women. Disabled women who express interest and meet the minimum criteria for participation will also be fast-tracked to the interview stage of the application.