Update on the Race and Faith Inquiry recommendations

Report: 7
Date: 18 April 2011
By: Director of Human Resources on behalf of the Commissioner

Summary

Building on the last update provided to the Authority in November 2010, the current report provides Members with an update on activity being undertaken and planned to address the MPS specific recommendations of the Race and Faith Inquiry.

A. Recommendations

That Members note the content of the report.

B. Supporting information

Context

1. Since the publication of the Race and Faith Inquiry report in September 2010 the MPS has made a commitment to learning from the Inquiry and to implementing its recommendations.

2. The Race and Faith Inquiry report contains 9 key Recommendations supported by 42 sub-recommendations. The commissioning brief issued by the Authority specifically requests that the current report focus on the recommendations that were targeted at the MPS as distinct from the specific recommendations focused on the Authority.

These recommendations are as follows:

• Recommendation 1: The culture and values of the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) must shift to become more recognisable to minority members of staff;
• Recommendation 2: The senior leadership of the MPS should review their commitment to ensuring that officers and staff are fairly treated
• Recommendation 5: Working practices within the MPS that inhibit confidence in HR policies should be revised;
• Recommendation 6: Disproportionately high black and minority ethnic (BME) resignation rates must reduce;
• Recommendation 7: Within the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), the transparency and fairness of internal promotion processes needs to improve.

3. Although we acknowledge that much remains to be done to progress the various MPS specific recommendations, a huge amount of work has been undertaken and in many areas there has been significant progress. Building on the report presented to the Full Authority in November 2010, this further report updates on key developments.

Progress Against Specific Recommendations

Recommendation 1

4. The culture and values of the MPS must shift to become more recognisable to minority members of staff. Specifically the commissioning brief has requested details on;

• linking staff survey findings and management action more explicitly and transparently;
• ensuring that the process by which lessons relating to race and faith issues (including employment tribunals) are learnt and applied, is clearly set out and understood.

Linking staff survey findings and management action more explicitly and transparently

5. Results of the MPS staff survey ‘Your Views Count’ are reported to Management Board on a quarterly basis at the corporate and Business Group levels. Specific items from the survey are also now embedded within the MPS corporate health indicators and formally reviewed at Performance Board, chaired by the Deputy Commissioner. In addition, any arising areas of disproportionality are contained within the management information pack presented to the Diversity Executive Board for review and action.

6. Each Business Group has an Action Plan to respond to the key staff experience issues raised within their business area. At the corporate level, these are coordinated by the HR Organisational Development (OD) Team. The HR OD Team also looks at cross cutting themes that, for example, may impact upon a specific group of staff and lead on the response to these.

7. The most consistent finding in relation to diversity relates to disability. Results from 2009-10 Quarter 4 and 2010-11 Quarters 1 and 2 show a disproportionate difference in the agreement levels of our disabled and non-disabled staff, in that disabled staff feel less satisfied, motivated and engaged at work than non-disabled staff. To respond, the HR OD team are working in partnership with the Disabled Staff Association (DSA) and the Diversity and Citizen Focus Directorate (DCFD) to further explore the main areas of concern amongst disabled staff and managers, using Your Views Count data, existing DSA research, focus groups and 10,000v methodology. Interventions are also being developed to support managers around Deployment, Attendance Management, Progression, Development and Reasonable Adjustments, and FAQ’s for PeoplePages, SOP reviews and other targeted activity. Differences amongst groups within this diversity strand will continue to be monitored as these interventions are rolled out across the MPS.

8. Positively, no such trends have been observed within the other strands. Due to low base sizes for minority groups, the ethnicity strand is analysed in terms of White and BME respondents. Significantly more White respondents agreed that they were satisfied with their current job (64% in comparison to 60%). However, this was the only statement of the fifteen engagement items where BME respondents showed statistically significantly lower results. For nine of the remaining statements BME respondents reported higher satisfaction levels. The largest difference between the two groups was shown for the statement ‘the organisation will be successful in the future’ where 43% of BME respondents agreed compared with 34% of White respondents. Remaining findings of note are that Female members of staff have significantly higher agreement levels than male colleagues in respect of feeling that they are treated with fairness and respect, having a healthy work-life balance, feeling consulted on management decisions and feeling encouraged to share their ideas and suggestions, whereas male staff demonstrate higher overall job satisfaction when compared to women.

9. For the year 2009-2010, agreement rating in relation to ‘I am treated with fairness and respect’ was 55%, 4% below the public sector norm group. However, business groups responded immediately to improve results. HR have held focus groups with OCU’s with the lowest agreement levels to explore issues in greater depth, and also with the highest to capture good practice, and SO are monitoring areas for improvement as part of the SO Leadership project. Expectations of conduct are being disseminated across all business groups in support of the Professionalism agenda and issues regarding improving the management of equality and diversity issues are fundamental to the Workforce and Working Culture strand of the MPS Equality and Diversity Strategy. Agreement with ‘I am treated with fairness and respect’ rose by seven percentage points to 62% in Quarters 1 and 2 of 2010-11, and progress will continue to be monitored in this way.

10. Respondents to the survey are invited to give their demographic information to enable issues of potential disproportionality to be explored where the sample size permits us to. Data is collected in relation to gender, ethnicity, religion, age, disability and sexual orientation. Employee type and business group details are also asked for. This data is monitored by the HR OD Team. Disclosure of this demographic data is voluntary and results are not reported when there is any risk that individuals may be identified. Staff are also given the option of ‘prefer not to say’. These rates are monitored as a helpful indication of staff confidence in disclosure and how this data will be managed by the organisation.

11. Results from 2010-11 Quarters 1 and 2 showed that respondents who selected the ‘prefer not to answer’ option reported significantly lower agreement levels than all other groups. The probable reason for this is that, despite assurances, individuals are concerned that any negative feedback they provide could be traced back to them on the basis of any personal information they disclose. On a practical note, it also makes any investigation into the effect of any demographics difficult if the least satisfied members of staff do not indicate the groups to which they consider they belong. Currently Sexual Orientation has the largest non- disclosure rate at 20%, followed by Religion at 18%, Ethnicity at 16%, Disability at 11%, and Gender and Age both at 8%. In some cases, size of the group who prefer not to disclose their demographic details is larger in size than the minority group. This needs to be addressed to provide reassurance that any differences seen between groups are real and not just due to the fact that we only know the demographics of a proportion of the sample.

12. Ongoing work led by HR OD is focused on increasing the number of staff who choose to share personal data with the organisation in order to help us better understand our workforce, the presence of any disproportionality and deal proactively with any issues highlighted. This has seen use of the confidential screen rise from approximately 2200 in 2008 to approximately 9900 in 2010.

13. Disabled colleagues have reported concerns about disclosing disability in particular, and this is in many cases exacerbated by the feelings of vulnerability that are being experienced in relation to the Service Improvement Programme (SIP). Activity is being undertaken to provide reassurance that organisational change processes will be demonstrably fair, such as the introduction of a survey to better understand the staff experience of navigating reasonable adjustments requests.
Ensuring that the process by which lessons relating to race and faith issues (including employment tribunals) are learnt and applied, is clearly set out and understood.

14. Effective organisational learning is predicated on a robust, accountable process for specific lessons supported by a mechanism to identify and address broader, cross-cutting factors. Only by tackling learning on both fronts can real, enduring progress be made.

15. A process exists where Employment Tribunal case managers capture learning points. Structured debriefing of witnesses, senior managers and claimants enriches the learning material leading to a range of interventions including input to training events, seminars and policy review. Data is also provided to Business Groups or OCU’s if trends or issues are apparent. Learning activity has recently been expanded to include lessons from misconduct hearings and appeals (for both police officers and staff). Policy issues are also followed up with the relevant policy portfolio holder and the ET Unit is regularly consulted for input during reviews and the revision of MPS HR policies and Standard Operating Procedures. In addition, data is also provided to Business Groups or OCUs if trends or issues relating to their area of business are identified. In key cases, structured debriefing of the Commissioner's witnesses and senior managers are also arranged to help identify any potential organisational learning and claimants may be invited to identify any learning issues from their perspective.

16. Corporately, the inception of an Organisational Learning Team with HR (Organisational Development) has advanced the MPS’s capability to learn lessons in two critical aspects. It provides governance, ensuring functionality in all business groups at all levels to capture, analyse and share organisational learning. Secondly, harvesting learning across the complete range of policing activity, including staff issues, allows for the causal factors to be identified strategically. By delineating lessons into key themes, smarter intervention is possible. This avoids the various MPS functions continuing to tackle learning in isolation. By way of example, the lessons captured from Employment Tribunals and FAW’s relating to disability are also apparent in operational arenas such as policing protest, supporting vulnerable victims / witnesses and the investigation of hate crime.

17. Work is in train with all business groups to analyse the generic factors that underpin lessons across the MPS in order to stimulate long-term change activity and sustain improvement. It is entirely appropriate that Race and Faith is recognised as one such critical theme.

Recommendation 2

18. The senior leadership of the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) should review their commitment to ensuring that officers and staff are fairly treated. Specifically the commissioning brief has requested details on;

• developing a robust internal inspection model within the Diversity and Citizen Focus Directorate (DCFD) which can be applied to any part of the organisation. Its remit should encompass investigating those parts of the organisation which give rise to concerns

19. A number of elements are now in place to support this recommendation. The Diversity and Citizen Focus Directorate (DCFD) sits within the Deputy Commissioner’s portfolio. The Deputy Commissioner holds the corporate lead for diversity and, in this role, chairs the Diversity Executive Board. This provides clear governance and accountability for the deliver of the MPS equality and diversity strategy. Regular board meetings provide a corporate overview on progress being made with the four corporate diversity themes. A regular performance report has been developed and is presented to each of these meetings, which examines performance across a wide range of diversity and equality issues across all MPS Business Groups. It includes a number of indicators relating to the fair treatment of officers and staff, for example results from the Your Views Count survey, information on fairness at work reports and employment tribunals and service delivery matters. Wherever possible, data are provided at corporate and OCU level and statistically significant exceptions are highlighted to ensure that appropriate action is taken as necessary.

20. During 2010-11 the Diversity and Citizen Focus Directorate successfully introduced the Equality Standard for the Police Service (ESPS) across the MPS. This provides a framework for assessing performance against a baseline of indicators. All (B)OCUs and Business Groups have completed their assessments against the Standard’s baseline indicators, and evidence and results have been validated by DCFD and results reported to the Diversity Executive Board. The presentation of the results to the Board has led to improvement action being undertaken by any Business Group not achieving the baseline standard. As Business Groups have provided the additional evidence required, results have been revised and the MPS has been able to demonstrate a high level of compliance with the Standard.

21. Based on information from the Diversity Executive Board performance reports, the ESPS and intelligence from DCFD Advisors, the Director of DCFD has initiated a programme of performance visits to (B)OCUs and Business Groups. These are designed to challenge performance, stimulate improvement, identify where support and assistance is required and recognise good practice. To support, DCFD Advisors are available to every Business and Operational Command Unit and DCFD holds representation on key boards across the organisation e.g. Performance, TP Change Board.

Recommendation 5

22. Working practices within the MPS that inhibit confidence in HR policies should be revised. Specifically the commissioning brief has asked for detail on:

• managing temporary and acting promotions centrally

23. Temporary promotions for police officers of Chief Inspector and above are managed centrally through Workforce Deployment. Any Business Group or OCU wishing to use a temporary promotion must submit a business case to Workforce Deployment. All those of Superintendent rank and above require the personal authorisation from the DAC HR. The Superintendents’ Association are fully engaged in this process.

24. A significant amount of work has been invested in this area to ensure the appropriate and robust management of temporary promotions. This has seen temporary promotions of police officers reduce from 85 at the time of the race and faith investigation to 17. Table 1 provides detail on this 17 according to rank, Business Group, gender and ethnicity. The specified dates of the temporary promotion arrangements are also included.

Table 1: Police Officer Temporary Promotions

Recommendation 6

25. Disproportionately high black and minority ethnic (BME) resignation rates must reduce. Specifically the commissioning brief has requested details on;

• Establishing a more sophisticated use of the Personal Development Review (PDR) system to give early warning of dissatisfaction for individual BME officers, allowing for intervention
• Identifying key points on the promotion ladder at which BME officers disproportionately leave, and setting retention targets at these points
• Reviewing and improving the exit interview process
• Clarifying the respective roles of senior officer and lawyers dealing with employment tribunals (ETs) and grievances

Personal Development Review (PDRs)

26. With effect from 1 April 2011, a new Met Performance Framework (MPF) is being introduced for all staff across the MPS in replacement for the Integrated Competency Framework (ICF). Issues pertaining to equality and diversity are inherent in the new framework. To coincide with the introduction of the MPF, a new PDR process is being introduced. Accompanying guidance will emphasise the responsibility of line managers in ensuring appropriate coverage of individual performance in relation to equality and diversity within the PDR process. Line managers also have responsibility for ensuring that members of staff are feeling motivated and satisfied in relation to their working experience within the MPS, and should deal with any early warning signals of dissatisfaction as appropriate. Work is also being progressed by the Leadership Academy to incorporate skills based modules around managing difference into all of its management programmes. This will emphasise the importance of utilising PDRs as a mechanism to identify staff dissatisfaction, particularly from a diversity perspective.

Identifying key points on the promotion ladder at which BME officers disproportionately leave, and setting retention targets at these points

27. Monthly Workforce Data Reports and the Annual Duty of Employment Report help ensure that effective reporting mechanisms are in place in terms of the overall BME composition of the MPS by rank and grade, and further work is being undertaken by HR Directorate to develop workforce data to inform interventions where disproportionality becomes evident. High level diversity recruitment targets for the MPS are already in place, and discussions are ongoing regarding how retention or progression targets may helpfully be incorporated into the HR performance management process however the current backdrop of a limited recruitment and promotion must be noted here.

28. The Promoting Difference (PD) Team, who lead on the progression of BME officers, has a distinct role in relation to retention. Analysis of wastage since 2009 showed that sample sizes were too small to establish meaningful trends in relation to rank (in total an average of 30 officers per year resigned). The majority were at the rank of Constable which supports the focus of Promoting Difference interventions at this rank. A similar analysis of early departures (i.e. voluntary resignation, dismissed, required to resign and services dispensed with) will be completed annually by the PD team going forward. Any trends requiring intervention will be fed into the annual workforce and culture action plan. A suggested target that is currently being worked to is that resignation rates do not differ across protected characteristics.

Reviewing and improving the exit interview process

29. Responsibility for the corporate Exit process moved to the HR OD Team in June 2009. It should be noted however that MSC leavers are managed separately through the MSC OCU in Territorial Policing. At the current time, HR OD is undertaking a full review of the content and format of the exit survey. A separate report on this issue is being presented to the HR Remuneration Sub-Committee in April.

Clarifying the respective roles of senior officer and lawyers dealing with employment tribunals (ETs) and grievances

30. Greater clarity in relation to the role of senior clients in ET and grievance cases has now been established with these roles sitting within the ACPO and Senior Director positions within HR Directorate.

Recommendation 7

31. Within the MPS the transparency and fairness of internal promotion processes needs to improve. Specifically the commissioning brief has requested details on;

• setting overall Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) progression targets
• developing a strategy and supporting action plan to increase the representation of MPS assessors to include more BME and female staff; and agree development in progress

BME Progression Targets

32. The setting of progression targets is being led by the MPS Police Promotions Team which has established a programme board consisting of key stakeholders. This work is currently at a very early stage of development and progress will be reported to a future meeting of REMCO at the earliest opportunity.

33. Targets currently being worked to by the Promoting Difference team are that every BME officer eligible for promotion will be invited to take part in a promotion study group (this has been achieved for every process since January 2009). Study groups will continue to take place during 2011- 2012 despite uncertainty about the specific promotion processes that will be run over the period up to the Olympics as this will ensure that under- represented officers are given all the proactive support possible to enable them to be fully prepared to maximise on the opportunities for promotion as they arise.

34. HR also work to a target that success rates are proportionate across protected characteristics. The Police Promotions team onduct a thorough equalities analysis after each process to check for disproportionality in success rates and pass any issues to the PD team for intervention. Due to the impact of the Promoting Difference study groups, BME officers have been more successful at each rank since 2009 however there was a slight disproportionality in relation to Disability at the most recent Sergeants’ process. HR are working closely with the chair of the Disabilities Staff Association to address this e.g. setting up study groups and providing careers information and advice at the Managing Disability event on 31st March 2011.

Developing a strategy and supporting action plan to increase the representation of MPS assessors to include more BME and female staff; and agree development in progress

34. The utilisation of assessors in internal promotion processes is currently under review due to the introduction of the MPS Performance Framework (MPF) from 1 April 2011 (highlighted in paragraph 26).

35. Prior to the introduction of the MPF, a police promotions assessor pool managed by the Career Management Unit (CMU) was in place for all centrally run police officer promotion centres. All assessors in this pool are required to undertake general and process specific assessor training to ensure that they are meeting relevant performance standards. There are currently 209 assessors in the trained assessor pool, of which 78.5% are Male and 21.5% female. BME males represent 5.3% and BME females represent 1.5%.

36. The most recent Chief Superintendent promotion process undertaken in October 2010 utilised the new MPF model. In order to ensure increased objectivity of assessment, this process saw the introduction of a standard 3 individual panel with all panels chaired by an Assistant Commissioner supported by a DAC and an HR Director.

37. Whilst acknowledging that in the current climate opportunities for internal promotion within the MPS are limited, HR are currently exploring the most appropriate assessment model for future centralised promotion processes that will appropriately factor in considerations of equality and diversity.

C. Other organisational and community implications

Equality and Diversity Impact

1. The key equality and diversity considerations are detailed within the body of this report. The action being undertaken, both as part of the MPS Equality and Diversity Strategy, and in response to the race and faith inquiry, is all targeted at improving the experience of minority groups working within the MPS and in turn improve service delivery to the people of London.

Financial Implications

2. The costs associated with the activity being progressed in response to the race and faith recommendations are being met from within existing approved business group budgets.

Legal Implications

3. There are no direct legal implications arising from this report, which is for information only. The continued implementation of the Race and Faith Inquiry recommendations will help meet the general duty of the Equality Act 2010 and the Public Sector Duty which will come into force in April 2011.

Environmental Implications

4. There are no specific environmental implications to note.

Risk (including Health and Safety) Implications

5. There are no specific risk implications to note.

Consideration of Met Forward

6. The implementation of the MPS specific Race and Faith Inquiry Recommendations actively contributes to the Met People strand MetForward.

D. Background papers

None

E. Contact details

Report author: Alex Walsh, HR Strategic Director, Organisational Development, MPS

For more information contact:

MPA general: 020 7202 0202
Media enquiries: 020 7202 0217/18

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