Transparency data

DWP voluntary 2023 report on disability, mental health and wellbeing

Published 5 January 2024

The Voluntary Reporting Framework was launched by the government to encourage businesses to report how many of their staff have a disability or health condition, and also to report on the health and wellbeing of staff. The framework was created in partnership with employers and charities. The Civil Service as a whole currently reports against the framework in full – this report provides progress in DWP as at September 2023 in accordance with the guidance for voluntary reporting.

1. Introduction from DWP

This year, our role in supporting people to find work and being there for our most vulnerable customers has never been more important. We understand it is important to make sure we continue to make our colleagues feel safe, well and included while at work so that they feel best able to support DWP’s diverse range of customers in unprecedented times. To enable us to do this, we have fundamentally changed how we work, with colleagues able to connect and collaborate remotely, in a workplace, or a mixture of the two.

Through DWP’s wellbeing and inclusion strategies and frameworks, we continue to create a safe, healthy and collaborative environment. By prioritising employee wellbeing, encouraging and supporting healthy behaviours, we are supporting all colleagues to stay and thrive in the workplace, helping to ensure DWP is a great place to work. This is enabling business delivery and serving our customers well.

Our overall objective is to promote and improve employee health outcomes by taking a proactive and preventative approach to good mental and physical health and wellbeing, and by doing this positively, contribute to the nation’s health goals.

DWP continue to be recognised as a thought-leader in workplace wellbeing, and our wellbeing approach, achievements, innovative ideas and solutions are regularly published by organisations such as the Reward and Employee Benefits Association (REBA) and Business in the Community (BITC).

2. Voluntary reporting on disability

DWP is proud to be a Disability Confident Leader demonstrating the departmental commitment to attracting, recruiting and retaining disabled people, and supporting them in achieving their full potential.

Achievements

DWP has established a centre of expertise for resourcing, within it, is a team focused on diversity and inclusion in recruitment – the team leads on ensuring our recruitment processes are inclusive and enable our drive for equitable representation across the workforce, thereby supporting DWP’s equality objectives.

DWP promotes the department’s Disability Confident status at the bottom of our job adverts, consistently across all vacancies.

DWP has been awarded the RNIB Visibly Better Employer (VBE) status. We are proudly promoting our status; including within our adverts and candidate pack, profile on diverse jobs boards, social media, and Civil Service Careers websites, including the badge to show that we are a VBE.

We have worked with the Government Recruitment Service to develop a recruitment adjustment passport, to lead the way for the Civil Service. The passport will gather a candidate’s adjustment requests for the end-to-end recruitment process to alleviate difficulties, repetition, and inconsistencies throughout.

We track how many candidates who utilise the Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) and are successfully appointed, versus how many disabled people who do not use the scheme are successfully appointed, and the number of disabled people who did not use the scheme. From 1 January 2021 to 20 September 2023 the number of candidates who applied for vacancies in DWP and shared that they had a disability was 45,509, of those 34,957 opted to use the DCS. Of the DCS candidates, 1,538 were posted into a role, of those who opted not to use DCS, 615 were appointed.

In DWP, workplace adjustments are considered as a matter of course for any colleague who experiences a barrier or difficulty at work including those with a health condition, enabling them to develop and fulfil their potential. We have a programme of activity in place to ensure that both line managers and employees understand the requirement to consider adjustments and the process for putting them in place.

As part of the national Movement to Work (MtW) Programme since January 2021 to December 2022 a total of 3973 placements have taken place in DWP with a further 393 placements being run across the Civil Service totalling 4,366 young people aged 16 to 30 through the scheme. In the so far in 2023, DWP have so far supported 1554 young people through the MtW Programme with the wider Civil Service supporting a further 114 young people.

The apprenticeship schemes are inclusive programmes for all. Since 2016, 14,604 people have commenced one of these apprenticeships, with 8,492 being retained in the department. Of the 14,604 apprentices, we have disability information recorded for 12,327 of them. 2031 have declared they are disabled, which equates to 14% of our apprentices.

The Summer Diversity Internship Programme was established over 15 years ago with the aim of providing high calibre undergraduates/graduates with 6‐9 weeks’ training work placements within government departments. This supports disabled people as a priority. In 2023 DWP submitted 41 bids for the programme.

In 2023 DWP placed a bid to support 52 interns on the Ambitious about Autism programme and they have successfully matched 25 interns who have started with DWP.

DWP ensures digital environments, as well as physical environments, are inclusive and accessible. A new accessibility practice SharePoint site was launched on 24 July 2023, which provides guidance on various aspects of accessibility. We have accessibility standard leads throughout our corporate functions.

A new DWP Digital Accessibility Policy was approved and published in June 2023 which sets out the responsibilities of product teams and individuals in creating accessible products and internal communications. It explains in detail how to comply with the Equality Act 2010, the Public Sector Equality Duty 2011 and the Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations 2018 and 2022.

During 2022 DWP introduced a structured approach to improving accessibility and inclusion in the design of DWP buildings.

Our DWP Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Approach has a long-term strategic intent that our products, services, and environment are ‘inclusive by design’ to ensure that as many people as possible, particularly groups who are traditionally excluded from being able to use an interface or navigate an environment, can access these. We use this to support our Disability Inclusion Action Plan.

DWP’s internal and external communications team collaborate with our Disability Network colleagues (THRIVE) to deliver whole DWP communications throughout the year – linking to specific events such as Neurodiversity Week or International Day of Persons with Disabilities.

Our Disability and Mental Health Champion works closely with our disability networks and sponsors the Civil Service Deaf and Hard of Hearing Network, spearheading communication campaigns, publishing blogs and working with her Senior Civil Service colleagues to highlight challenges and promote learning.

DWP provides employees with several resources to help them understand and manage their disabilities and health conditions via on-line content, and our employee assistance programme (EAP) the Disability and Mental Health hub, THRIVE Disability Network intranet page, Workplace Adjustment Hub, Customer Accessibility Experience Hub, accessibility standards, learning portal. We have a workplace adjustments process designed to support colleagues to remove barriers to enable them to thrive and be their best at work.

DWP recommends colleagues with a health condition use the Civil Service workplace adjustment passport. The aim of a single workplace adjustment passport for all departments is to improve the ease with which employees with a disability, health condition or those who are undergoing gender reassignment can move jobs in the Civil Service.

In 2023, a new development scheme ‘Leaders Like You’ was launched which is available to disabled colleagues. This talent scheme is part of a bigger programme of activity designed to make DWP more representative of the communities we serve, build stronger teams, and diversify talent within DWP. Beyond Boundaries is a 12-month cross-government development programme designed to help participants develop the knowledge, skills and networks required to build a satisfying and effective career in the Civil Service.

In October 2023, 22.39% of DWP staff indicated that they had a disability (an increase of 4% compared to June 2021) and 14.01% of Senior Civil Servants in the department declared a disability (an increase of 2% compared to June 2021).

We are committed in DWP to ensure that our workforce is representative of the communities it serves. In August 2022 19.34% disabled colleagues and 71.89% non-disabled colleagues were promoted. This is an increase from August 2020 where 11.84% disabled colleagues and 76.75% non-disabled colleagues were promoted.

3. Voluntary reporting on mental health and wellbeing

In DWP our wellbeing framework is universal, offering something for everyone. It has been built on 4 pillars - ‘my body’, ‘my mind’, ‘my finances’, ‘my community’. It recognises the importance of all of these factors on our people’s mental and emotional wellbeing. Our strategy aims are to:

• educate and raise awareness through our topical health and inclusion campaigns, helping colleagues to look after themselves and others to remain at work and return to work more quickly with access to the right support
• build a culture and environment where people are at the centre of everything we do
• inspire and empower our people to make healthy personal choices about their own wellbeing and access the tools and specialist support provided by DWP

Mental health vision

We will help make DWP a place where everyone’s mental health is taken seriously and every person feels safe and supported in the workplace.

We will offer a first class suite of support to colleagues that is well communicated and easily accessible.

We will help break down mental health taboos and stigma and help create a culture that is inclusive compassionate and kind.

Wellbeing vision

Putting our people first by focusing on the health and wellbeing of our employees to create a safe, healthy and collaborative environment whilst supporting people to stay and thrive in the workplace. ​ 

Empowering employees to lead on their mental and physical wellbeing and work well together to enhance the excellent customer service that we provide.

To deliver our vision, we will focus on five core objectives: 

• promote
• detect
• prevent
• support
• advise

The wellbeing strategy will promote good mental and physical health and wellbeing, by taking steps to detect ill health and prevent early sickness absence, support employees to seek help where needed and provide professional advice and services relating to ill health by taking a preventative approach to support the wellbeing of our colleagues. 

A key addition to our refreshed strategy is the new health and wellbeing standards that have been issued to government departments from Sarah Healey, Permanent Secretary, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and Civil Service Wellbeing Champion.

The standards help to drive consistency of approach across Government and provide a clear benchmark for departments to self-assess progress. There is also a section on ‘Thriving through Crisis’, to support leaders where teams may be facing periods of intense work or pressure, increased public/media scrutiny or work-related trauma.

A snapshot of wellbeing in DWP

Through our wellbeing and inclusion strategies we are empowering all our people to feel confident to talk about mental health and access mental health and wellbeing support.

Our first-class EAP service offers a range of psychological support including:

• structured telephonic support and face-to-face counselling
• CBT - cognitive behavioural therapy
• EMDR - eye movement de-sensitisation reprogramming

In addition, our new wellness platform gives colleagues real-time access to coaches, including mind coaches, who can provide colleagues with techniques to build resilience and reduce stress levels for example.

Our achievements

We have a network of 1500 mental health first aid colleagues as of October 2023 who provide signposting to our EAP and other health and wellbeing services, including NHS primary care.

We have embedded Mental Health Civil Service learning into DWP’s Leadership Essentials Programme.

We ran regular Wellbeing Pulse Surveys, gathering valuable insight that has informed a vast range of health and wellbeing support, helped identify our more vulnerable demographic groups and very effectively target support at these.

We have launched an innovative burnout video, to help colleagues spot the signs that may lead to burnout, offering helpful advice on how to prevent it and where to go for help and support.

We have fatigue assessments, available via our occupational health service. This involves a 30-minute confidential call with an expert who works with colleagues on a one-to-one basis to help nip signs of stress and fatigue in the bud before deep-rooted problems develop and set in follow up wellness checks are available 2 to 3 weeks later, ensuring colleague wellbeing is fully supported.

We have a new long COVID and post COVID syndrome case managed service for colleagues who have a GP or NHS diagnosis of these conditions. This structured support helps colleagues with either of these conditions to overcome barriers and enable appropriate adjustments to be put in place during the recovery period.

We have delivered high impact wellbeing programmes, reaching more than 10,000 DWP colleagues so far in 2023 and this has been achieved through delivering popular large scale Virtual Wellbeing webinars and smaller more interactive events. Larger events are also recorded and added to our DWP TV channel.

Our active Wellbeing Network of over 1,100 advocates has been instrumental in embedding working well together consistently across DWP’s 800+ sites. Our volunteers are responsible for implementing DWP’s wellbeing activity locally and sign-posting colleagues into our vast range of wellbeing services. We are implementing a network of regional Wellbeing Leads to offer strategic guidance to our established Advocates Network, bringing greater consistency across our sites.

Our DWP wellbeing buddies offer a friendly listening ear, regularly reaching out to and supporting colleagues who have been feeling lonely or isolated.

Our wellness contracts are delivering sound return on investment with excellent clinical outcomes following treatment, and high levels of user satisfaction, approximately 90% across all service lines.

We have impressive clinical outcomes following counselling, including an 100% improvement in mental health scores.

Our new interactive wellbeing app and real-time wellbeing coaches are helping colleagues and teams to set goals and take small steps with expert advice to improve their wellbeing together and encouraging local ownership and empowerment to lead wellbeing improvement through positive team behaviours.

Our Wellbeing Confident Leaders workshop, DWP’s ‘go to’ wellbeing workshop, helps brings teams together, helping them get to know each other better and fully support each other’s wellbeing. The mental health learning (MHL) has been reviewed and refreshed, following engagement with internal and external expertise. The refreshed learning is now being delivered across service delivery to capture existing customer contact colleagues, who have not previously completed the learning, and new entrants to these roles. 38,601 colleagues have now completed the MHL since original rollout.

In DWP we have a range of metrics in place to measure workplace wellbeing. These include our regular pulse survey and wellness dashboard in addition to the Thriving at Work Standards and people survey indicators, which include Office for National Statistics (ONS), PERMA (Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Accomplishments) Index and Stress Proxy Index.

The launch of the Department’s ‘My Wellbeing’ button in March 23 enables easier access and a more streamlined user journey to our DWP Wellbeing support offer from everyone’s desktop, helping colleagues navigate to sources of help, support and information much quicker than before. Intranet analytics has shown a 600% increase in page views with over 108,000 views by 25,000 colleagues in October 23.

People survey

Between 2021 and 2022 wellbeing levels in DWP remained constant. Scores for colleagues’ personal wellbeing decreased slightly in 2022 showing signs of improvement towards pre-pandemic levels with scores generally aligned to the median score for the Civil Service as a whole, with levels of life satisfaction at 6% happiness at 61% and sense that activities in life are worthwhile at 69%. The proportion of employees rating their anxiety has seen an increase. These increases are relatively small and overall, the picture is of general stability.

Stress Proxy Index

We calculate a stress index score using the Civil Service people survey questions aligned to the Health and Safety Executive’s Stress Management Standards. The higher the index, the more challenging the workplace environment is for stress. Factors include higher workloads, lower control over how work is done, and poor support from team and manager. The stress index in 2021 to 2022 remained at 29% and is consistent with the median score for the Civil Service.

PERMA Index

Since 2016 we have been monitoring an index of ‘flourishing’ by combining five Civil Service People Survey questions related to five dimensions of flourishing - Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning and Accomplishment. In 2022 DWP employees had a PERMA index score of 74%, consistent with the median score for the Civil Service as a whole. Our work-related wellbeing (our PERMA index) has measured 74% since 2018.

4. Our key priorities

In DWP we’ve made excellent progress over the last 12 months, which has been achieved against a backdrop of unprecedented change and uncertainty. We recognise there is a critical need to sustain this focus over the coming months and years and to continue to invest in the development of positive mental health, wellbeing and disability inclusion for our people and teams.

Our Strategy outlines our key strategic priority areas:

1. Encouraging good physical health and a healthy lifestyle
2. Mental wellbeing and resilience
3. DWP workplace transformation and service modernisation
4. Financial wellbeing
5. Sickness absence prevention
6. Delivery of the new EAP and occupational health contracts, driving innovation and best in class service and support
7. Preventing stress and burnout

We are currently developing a DWP disability inclusion strategic action plan, aiming to increase trust, encourage proactive support and empower disabled colleagues. To be launched late October 2022 focusing on:

• responsible, inclusive leadership practice that is the expectation not the exception
• anti-discrimination organisation
• inclusive by design (flexibility)

We will continue to work with our national disability colleague network, THRIVE, to gather further insight – qualitative and quantitative - into people’s lived experience to support better decision-making across the department.

We will continue to encourage more colleagues to share personal diversity information data on SOP (the Department’s single operating platform), with the aim to improve on declaration levels at 92.0% at October 2023.

We will continue to work with our national disability colleague network, THRIVE, to gather further insight – qualitative and quantitative – into people’s lived experience to support better decision-making across the department.

We are developing an overarching communications strategy that nudges colleagues into taking pro-active action to improve their wellbeing and into the support available.

DWP will continue to raise mental health and disability issues through our internal blogging and colleague events, highlighting inspiring personal stories which enable conversations to take place and reduce the stigma around these topics.

We will continue to directly target new and exclusive wellbeing support and communications at groups at risk.

We will work in collaboration with resourcing colleagues and Business Disability Forum to review perceived barriers to progressions for disabled colleagues. Focus groups and interviews will be held to understand the experiences of successful and unsuccessful disabled candidates.

We will continue to monitor progress of new entrants against SCS on-flow targets - 12% by 2025.

We will implement a new suite of wellbeing support and interventions for colleagues facing wellbeing challenges that have emerged (for example, mental wellbeing assessments, enhance financial wellbeing toolkits, produce additional support for those facing anxiety).

We will build Wellbeing Confidence at every level, through a Wellbeing Confidence educational tool.

We will continue to tackle mental health taboos, reducing reports of Bullying, Harassment and Discrimination relating to Mental Health. We will next provide a report in October 2023.

Our immediate priorities over the next 12 months:

• we will lead a full review of the end-to-end process of getting workplace adjustments and make changes to ensure the process is more effective and efficient
• we will update our Disability Inclusion Strategic objectives to:
  • support colleagues’ needs - we recognise that all colleagues will have unique needs and may require different types of support to achieve equally positive outcomes​
  • provide opportunities for all - we ensure all colleagues can access the same opportunities that support their advancement and development within DWP
  • adapt policies - we support managers to apply DWP policies to support individual needs and circumstances