Supporting our diverse membership
A profession where everybody’s science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) talent is nurtured and celebrated, delivering world‑class science and engineering.
The Government Science and Engineering (GSE) profession is focused on delivering world class science and engineering in an environment where we achieve success. We recognise that our understanding and ability to serve the needs of society is strengthened through the profession’s membership being as diverse as the community we represent. We are working hard to ensure that we hear from a wide range of voices with different backgrounds, contributing their thoughts and expertise in a meaningful way to influence the decision-making. We engage members in our organisations across all grades, encouraging participation to help improve the work experience of profession members, offering opportunities to be involved in time limited opportunities like focus groups or longer-term activity such as the GSE Shadow Board.
The new GSE profession strategy places inclusion at the core, empowering members to be active participants and help shape the direction for the profession. The strategy outlines our commitments and ambitions to supporting our diverse membership. One initiative outlined is the summer launch of our returners’ pack, which is a supporting tool to assist our recruiting managers develop programmes to attract mid-career skilled individuals. Increased diversity via career progression is targeted through greater sponsorship of cross departmental development programme initiatives such as Beyond Boundaries aimed at increasing the talent pool and is accessible for participation across all grades below senior civil servants (SCS).
Another programme of work that is underway is the GSE Diversity and Inclusion Action Group (DIAG). This group is championed by volunteers from across the profession and acknowledges the challenges experienced by those in certain characteristic groups, attempting to address them by encouraging greater inclusion. The group’s successes include establishing wider links across the profession and civil service wide networks, such as the CS Disability Network and Cross Government Gender Network. Connecting up common interest areas results in greater sharing of best practice and increased impact by providing greater leverage and consistency. DIAG’s programme of work also includes celebrating key dates in the inclusion calendar on a rolling basis, and sharing stories and publication of member and role model blogs, features and hosted events. Recent events involving keynote speaker participation were hosted for International Women in Engineering Day and International Day of Women and Girls in Science. A pilot peer-peer mentoring scheme for women, GSE Connect, was launched to coincide with this event and was developed in response to feedback from members requesting this type of targeted characteristic support to help achieve their potential. DIAG plans to introduce two additional schemes in 2022 to follow on from evaluation of the GSE Connect pilot.
Our revised GSE Strategy outlines numerous initiatives which will support our commitment to diversity. In our aim to make equality of opportunity a reality we are inviting you to get involved; become a champion, join DIAG or offer your assistance/agree to sponsor an event/activity and/or participate in one of the upcoming mentoring schemes. Make your GSE membership purposeful! Get in touch with us at gse@go-science.gov.uk.
