Corporate report

HMRC: Public Sector Equality Duty compliance 2020 to 2021

Updated 22 March 2022

About this report

It’s our vision to be a trusted, modern tax and customs department.

Our vision is supported by our values, strategic objectives and the HMRC Charter. Our equality objectives also help us achieve this.

This report has equality information that’s required by Regulation 2 of the Equality Act Specific Duty Regulations (SI 2011/2260). It:

• shows how the department complies with the Public Sector Equality Duty in section 149 of the Equality Act 2010
• covers the period 1 April 2020 to 31 March 2021
• summarises our progress against our Equality Objectives 2020 to 2024

HMRC’s Equality Objectives 2020 to 2024 and Action Plan

HMRC has three equality objectives and an action plan that shows how we meet our objectives each year.

Objective 1: Inclusive

To be a great place to work for all our colleagues. To have a safe physical and digital environment with a culture where we can be authentic, have a voice and feel that we belong. To provide products and services that are designed around what customers need to do, are accessible, easy and quick to use.

Objective 2: Respectful

For every colleague to treat each other and our customers with respect every day. We will work together to achieve our common goals and have honest conversations with respect when we do not live up to our standards. We will always treat customers fairly, in line with our Charter standards. We will be mindful of customers’ personal situations and provide extra support where required.

Objective 3: Representative

For the diversity of our colleagues to reflect the diversity of our customers. We will improve the health of the tax system by building trust and increasing fairness to improve our customer and colleague experience.

The action plan details the activities we will undertake under the following sub-headings:

• for customers:

  • system improvement
  • accountability and governance
  • raising awareness

• for colleagues:

  • process improvement
  • accountability and governance
  • learning and development
  • communicating our inclusive culture

HMRC is a large and complex organisation with around 63,000 employees working across different customer groups, directorates, professions and locations. Inevitably, we reflect some of the inequalities experienced by wider society. Embedding a consistently fair approach to equality, diversity and inclusion for our colleagues and customers is ongoing work that continues to require every colleague to play their part every day.

We know the reality is we will not get it right for every person every time. What we can do and have done is to be honest about our challenges and to publicly commit to do more than meet our minimum statutory responsibilities under the Equality Act 2010. One of our strategic objectives is to make HMRC a great place to work for all our colleagues and the HMRC Charter commits to giving you a service that is even-handed, accurate and based on mutual trust and respect.

This report summarises the actions we have taken this year. We started laying the foundations on which we can continue to build sustainable positive changes into our business as usual; the structures, systems, resources, support and measures that support equality, diversity and inclusion.

This is the first year in the four-year period covered by our equality objectives. We have made good progress, particularly in the context of responding to EU Exit and a global pandemic which you can read more about in HMRC’s 2020 to 2021 Annual Report and Accounts, but we are not complacent. There will always be more to do.

Becoming more inclusive, respectful and representative is not achieved with a quick fix and our work in this area is long-term and ongoing.

Customer-focused activities that show progress against our equality objectives

We strive to be an inclusive organisation through:

• impacting our policies and projects
• offering alternative languages
• research
• Customer Immersion Programme
• digital accessibility
• targeted communication

Impacting our policies and projects

In HMRC we ensure every new policy is looked at from an equality perspective. And we publish this information in the tax information and impact notes (TIINs). In 2020 to 2021 we’ve published 84 tax information and impact notes which include equality impacts.

We also complete and publish Equality Impact Assessments (EQIAs). These help to ensure that we build new services or changes to existing systems, around customer needs, and that they’re inclusive for all.

We’ve published 10 EQIAs for service delivery programmes. We remind colleagues throughout HMRC about our Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) obligations. This helps to identify and mitigate potential equality impacts where possible, at the earliest opportunity.

Offering alternative languages

As an inclusive and representative organisation, we have well-established alternative language services and resources.

Our Welsh language service is delivered by two teams:

• Welsh Language Customer Service team
• Welsh Language Unit

These teams support our Welsh Language commitment and define clear referral processes for our Welsh language customers.

This year, we undertook extensive user research, and further developed our Welsh language customer profiles and behaviours. These have helped us to understand our Welsh language customers’ expectations and demands. We’ve shared these profiles across HMRC and are using them in our digital centres to help our design and development teams understand Welsh users’ needs and behaviours.

During the COVID-19 pandemic we ensured that all our services were delivered for our Welsh language customers through designated Welsh language helplines, online services, web content, letters and emails as well as digital and paper forms.

From April 2020 to March 2021 the Welsh Language Unit translated over 2.4 million words into Welsh. Our customer service teams responded to over 20,000 phone calls, 1,200 emails and 3,800 pieces of post in Welsh. We also received over one million views of our online Welsh language services.

We have dedicated providers to translate and interpret in other languages. We give all our customer-facing colleagues guidance on how to access these services. Where possible, we encourage customers to ask a family member or friend to support them when they contact HMRC, as part of the Trusted Helper Scheme.

Research

To ensure that HMRC is an inclusive organisation, we’re keen to develop our understanding of customers within protected characteristic groups, so that their needs and views are represented throughout the stages of service delivery, from concept to implementation.

We’ll continue to commission research and develop our data-gathering capability. The insight that we gain from our customers, stakeholder groups and complaints analysis will help us improve our customer service offering.

In October 2020 HMRC published an Assisted Digital and Digitally Excluded Support Needs research report.

The aim of the study was to obtain updated information on the prevalence, characteristics and support needs of adults in the UK who are digitally excluded or need assisted digital support. These findings helped us to understand how to increase usage of our digital services and provide better support to our customers. We’ll use this research to enforce our digital accessibility action plan and focus on the needs of specific groups of customers.

In February 2021, we published research to improve understanding of customer perceptions of HMRC communications.

The purpose of this research was to understand how customers perceive the communications they receive about their tax obligations. It focused on the overall tone, clarity, key messages to prompt action, and how well we explain the consequences of not responding. This helped us to understand the best way to communicate with customers and how to improve their overall experience. Using these findings, we’ve begun to review all customer letters.

In 2019 we also commissioned research to improve our understanding of the support needs of customers who use the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS).

More details of our research programmes are also available on GOV.UK.

Customer Immersion Programme

We run customer immersion sessions to better understand our customers. These sessions give colleagues a unique opportunity to put themselves in the customers’ shoes and develop a first-hand understanding of customers’ attitudes and behaviours. The sessions help to support HMRC’s Charter standards and strengthen our respectful and inclusive culture.

During 2020 to 2021, HMRC ran 29 sessions which explored customers’ views on areas such as:

• the HMRC Charter
• Childcare Vouchers
• Tax-Free Childcare
• Blind Person’s Allowance
• COVID-19 support schemes
• additional support

Example: Blind Person’s Allowance Immersion Session

In December 2020 a customer immersion session was held with blind customers to find out:

• what issues they were having in accessing Blind Person’s Allowance
• what they think of the guidance
• their experiences in contacting HMRC to find out about the allowance

Feedback identified a need for guidance to be clearer and better promoted. Using employers and social media channels to do this, would potentially encourage uptake. As a result, HMRC has worked with the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) to raise awareness of this allowance.

Colleagues’ feedback included:

The customers’ personal stories stood out for me because I reflected on their real-life experience which we, as policy makers, don’t often get to hear about.

I found the session so informative as to why we really need to engage with the stakeholders at the earliest possible point to ensure a policy delivery is effective as possible.

Digital accessibility

HMRC is committed to ensuring that everyone can use its digital services. In 2020, in compliance with the Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations (2018), we published accessibility statements for over 150 public digital services. This explained:

• any known accessibility issues
• the support that’s available if needed
• who to contact if you have a problem or want to make a complaint

We regularly test our existing services, including our mobile applications, to review their compliance.

To ensure our services are usable, accessible and inclusive as possible, we conduct regular research with customers who will use them throughout the delivery of products. In 2020, we spoke to 200 individuals who use assistive technology, and we continue to look for ways to make the sign-up process for our customers more inclusive.

We’re also working with third party software developers to help them make their products more accessible. We provide a list of compatible third party software packages for Making Tax Digital for VAT on GOV.UK. We’ll provide a list for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax Self-Assessment as compatible software becomes available.

Targeted communication

During the pandemic, HMRC used a range of communication channels to reach as many customers as possible. For example, for the Self-Employment Income Support Scheme we:

• targeted communication and mass marketing campaigns – to make those, that we didn’t have contact details for, aware of the financial support that they may be eligible for
• invited customers to check their eligibility and claim their Self-Employment Income Support Scheme grant
• contacted around 3.5 million self-employed customers (by email, SMS or letter), who may have been eligible for the grant, based on the information they provided in their 2018 to 2019 tax return
• worked with stakeholders and agents to cascade the messages on eligibility and how to apply to their customers

Specific actions to reach vulnerable customers included:

• inviting digitally excluded customers to phone us, so that a HMRC adviser could make the claim on their behalf
• working with voluntary sector groups, trusted partners and agents, to encourage them to support their clients through the claim process
• modifying our internal processes and guidance, so that our advisers could take customers’ claims over the phone
• contacting 400 customers, by phone or email, who were eligible for Self-Employment Income Support Scheme and who had the ‘extra support’ marker on their Self Assessment record

We treat our customers with respect through:

• HMRC’s Charter
• Charter learning products
• our Extra Support Team
• improving the experience of compliance checks
• providing support for our compliance officers
• ‘Breathing Space’

HMRC’s Charter

In November 2020, we published a new version of HMRC’s Charter, which sets out the behaviours and standards our customers can expect from us. This followed a public consultation between February and August 2020. Our values of respect, professionalism and integrity are a core thread within the Charter.

We’re working to embed these Charter standards in our day-to-day activity by:

• building the Charter into our standard skills and ways of working - from policy design, to delivery and operations
• making clear links between our internal values and the principles behind the Charter – so that our values are reflected in our customers’ experience
• developing measures that incorporate the customer experience into our performance management framework

In addition to the Charter, we published HMRC’s principles of support for customers who need extra help. This explains our commitment to provide tailored support, including reasonable adjustments, at the earliest opportunity for any customers who need extra help.

Charter learning products

We want everyone in HMRC to have the skills they need to deliver the expectations set out in the Charter. We’ve developed an internal charter learning tool that signposts colleagues to relevant training to fit their role. Relevant skills include:

• empathy training
• writing for the customer
• customer impacting

Our Extra Support Team

Our Extra Support Team has continued to provide support and guidance to those who need extra help, including customers in vulnerable circumstances. This service helps people according to their needs. It supported 97,162 customers in 2020 to 2021. The team is fundamental to our inclusive and respectful support offering.

Types of support include:

• specialist help from our phone or webchat service, including developing a bespoke telephone authorisation service for digitally excluded customers during the pandemic
• investigating and calling customers back about more complex queries
• support for customers in debt
• continued partnership with the Royal Association for Deaf people (RAD) to offer British Sign Language (BSL) translation services through live conversations - this helped 1,018 deaf customers with their tax affairs during 2020 to 2021
• providing alternative formats for 25,981 customers during 2020 to 2021, which included large print, Braille, audio and plain text on CD
• introducing, in January 2020, a dedicated Compliance Extra Support Team to provide advice to compliance colleagues to help them support customers who require extra help

Improving the experience of compliance checks

We want to make sure that we treat people with empathy and respect during compliance checks. We also want them to know what they need to do in the future.

Following feedback, we’ve been improving our standard letters, factsheets and forms, to address concerns about language and tone. We’re also improving the guidance available to customers about what to expect in a compliance check. We’ve worked with external customer groups and professional bodies, to develop a series of YouTube videos that explain the compliance check process, and what to expect from us.

Providing support for our compliance officers

The Customer Compliance Group Extra Support Team provides additional guidance and advice to colleagues while they’re dealing with customers who need extra support during a compliance check.

The team has delivered extra support awareness sessions to more than 9,000 Customer Compliance Group colleagues, outlining:

• the service they offer
• what extra support looks like
• a new learning product to help caseworkers identify and support customers who need extra support

They’ll continue to deliver these sessions over the coming year. They’ve received excellent feedback, with some colleagues making referrals to the team immediately. At April 2021 just under 15,000 colleagues had completed the training. From May 2021, this training will become mandatory in Customer Compliance Group.

The Customer Compliance Group Extra Support Team handled 1,443 referrals in the 12 months to 31 March 2021.

Caseworkers have access to a suite of guidance, which includes topic-specific help cards, to support them in managing a range of difficult and often challenging situations.

‘Breathing Space’

HMRC has put in place processes that support the new HM Treasury’s Debt Respite Scheme ‘Breathing Space’.

From May 2021, customers that are identified with having debt problems, will be given a 60-day period where enforcement action from creditors and interest is frozen. This will give customers more time to get the support they need. Customers who receive mental health crisis treatment will also given the same protection until their treatment is complete.

Customer-facing colleagues have received new learning and guidance to take the appropriate actions as customers enter and exit the scheme.

We will be a representative organisation by:

• working with external stakeholders and customers
• working with Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) organisations

Working with external stakeholders and customers

A vital part of our work, is to be both inclusive and representative. We include external stakeholders in every aspect of our service delivery. We’re working with over 100 stakeholder groups, to:

• build supportive, trusting and professional relationships
• ensure that we apply their knowledge and expertise across HMRC to drive continuous improvement

HMRC is very grateful for the continued support from all our stakeholders.

Our Individual Stakeholder Forum and the ANWG continue as consultation groups. They represent a wide range of customers who need extra support, and they provide us with invaluable insight.

The Individual Stakeholder Forum

The Individual Stakeholder Forum is our main external consultation forum for the VCS organisations that represent individual customers. They help us to understand our diverse customer base. Meetings feature a mix of presentations from HMRC policy and operational colleagues and discussions on topical issues, changes in policy or process, or topics raised by members.

During the pandemic, the Individual Stakeholder Forum increased the frequency of its meetings to enable more responsive consultation.

The Additional Needs Working Group

The ANWG supports and challenges planned changes, to ensure that we consider any impacts on customers with additional needs. They also provide HMRC with a forum to constructively exchange ideas about the requirements and concerns of customers who need additional support.

The ANWG supported HMRC to frame its customer-focused equality objectives 2020 to 2024 action plan. This was published in January 2021. The group will continue to provide a critical eye on HMRC’s progress against the action plan and challenge, where needed.

Working with Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) organisations

Our work with our VCS organisations will continue throughout 2020 to 2021, providing funding to 15 organisations during this period to help them support HMRC customers.

In 2020 to 2021, the 15 funded VCS organisations assisted 37,990 vulnerable customers across a range of channels, including 52,000 phone calls, 7,400 emails and 2,200 face-to-face advice sessions.

During the year, we reviewed applications and assigned a further 3 years’ funding to 12 organisations for 2021 to 2024, totalling £4.98 million. We’ll continue to work closely with these organisations to help reach those customers who need support and extra help with HMRC services.

Colleague-focused activities that show progress against our action plan

The colleague-focused actions we have taken this year are presented across the same four areas set out in our equality objectives:

1. process improvements
2. learning and development
3. accountability and governance
4. communicating our inclusive culture

Process improvements

Accessible and fair recruitment processes

One of our equality objectives is to be representative – for the diversity of our colleagues to reflect the diversity of our customers. To understand how near or far we are from achieving this, we monitor the diversity of applicants through each stage of our recruitment and selection processes on aggregate and we listened to colleagues’ feedback on their experiences of our recruitment process.

From our aggregated and anonymised diversity data we identified and prioritised two key challenges:

1. the ethnic diversity of our applicants was broadly representative of the general working age population, but the proportion of ethnic minority applicants (as an aggregated group) decreased from application to appointment
2. the proportion of disabled candidates from application to appointment was static but we were attracting fewer disabled candidates than we would expect, compared to the proportion of disabled people in the UK working age population

From our qualitative insight from diversity networks and candidate feedback, we heard that candidates did not always feel that selection decisions were fair. Recruiting teams were aware of selection decisions in their area but not always sighted on disparities that the HMRC aggregate data identified.

During the year 2020 to 2021 we designed and implemented a number of actions aimed at improving the degree of representation at all levels of our workforce and ensuring our recruitment processes are fair and accessible:

• internally we published our recruitment diversity data to raise awareness of potential disparities and support evidence-based interventions across the department to promote equality
• we introduced regional ethnicity benchmarks to better identify geographic areas of under-representation and support evidence-based interventions
• we established a pool of 1,200 diverse and independent volunteers, drawn from all over the department, to sit on recruitment panels and support sifting and interviewing in order to build confidence that selection decisions are fair and inclusive
• we developed a suite of guidance and support for recruitment panellists, to ensure all panellists have the relevant knowledge, skills and support to make fair and inclusive selection decisions
• we reviewed internal recruitment processes, identified and made improvements to ensure name blind applications and enhance diversity data collection
• we identified and made improvements to HMRC job adverts, such as including our commitment to creating a great place to work, our values and inclusive working environment, trialling alternative language and developing new guidance for vacancy holders
• we identified and made improvements to attract more disabled applicants, such as improving the visibility and availability of reasonable adjustments to the recruitment process

Collectively these improvement actions are making a positive difference. For example, as provided at Table 1, our equality analysis of our recruitment process data between March 2020 and March 2021 showed:

• applications from ethnic minority candidates rose by 2% from 32% to 34% and offers made also increased, from 20% to 23%
• applications from disabled candidates rose by 2% from 6% to 8% and offers made to disabled candidates also increased from 5% to 8% during the same period

Ensuring our recruitment processes are as fair as possible helps to make our workforce more representative overall. On rounded figures we have achieved our overall target for 15% ethnic minority representation and although disability representation is still lower than our target of 15%, these improvements are a step in the right direction. For more detailed workforce representation rates please see Table 3, and the annex for declaration and representation rates for all protected characteristics.

Table 1: Applicant and job offer rates for the years 2019 to 2020 and 2020 to 2021, split by disability, ethnicity, sex and sexual orientation, alongside actual and target representation rounded to the nearest percentage

Applicants by characteristic group	2019 to 2020 applicants	2020 to 2021 applicants	2019 to 2020 offers	2020 to 2021 offers	HMRC representation as at March 2021	HMRC target representation
Female	45%	45%	50%	50%	53%	50%
Ethnic minority	32%	34%	20%	23%	15%	15%
Disabled	6%	8%	5%	8%	14%	15%
Lesbian, gay, bisexual and other	5%	7%	6%	7%	6%	6%

Note on Table 1: ‘Lesbian, gay, bisexual and other’ is an aggregate group which combines colleagues who categorised their sexual orientation as gay man, gay woman/lesbian, bisexual or ‘other’.

At the start of 2021, we achieved a renewed level 3 accreditation (Leader) in the government’s voluntary Disability Confident employer scheme. This means we have involved disabled people in evidencing how our processes support us to recruit and retain disabled people. The accreditation was validated by an external organisation, Business Disability Forum, ahead of final accreditation by the Department for Work and Pensions.

We continue to monitor our recruitment and selection processes to check for fairness across all equality groups and are using our diversity data to support recruitment teams across the department to make evidence-based improvements. For example, using our data to identify the grade, location and/or profession where diversity in the pipeline to Senior Civil Service roles reduces. We can then target and evaluate actions aimed at making our workforce representative of the working age population at all levels of the department.

Workplace adjustments process

We started a workplace adjustments project in April 2020 to improve support to disabled colleagues, colleagues with caring responsibilities and their managers. Taking a user-centred design approach, we involved more than 2,000 colleagues through surveys, training sessions and user research to gather, understand, develop and test user-needs in a safe environment.

We gained valuable insight into the range of challenges which informed our improvement actions. We used the insight to streamline the adjustment process to make it easier to follow and quicker to make adjustments.

Since November 2020 we have:

• delivered over 90 workplace adjustments awareness sessions to over 2,600 managers in all regions, building capability to support colleagues requiring workplace adjustments
• developed a SharePoint portal, a streamlined process and toolkit to better support managers with the resources and confidence to make any reasonable adjustments required, ensuring HMRC is a great place to work for disabled colleagues
• run educational sessions on IT accessibility in the workplace including how to make online documents accessible for all, using assisted technology, and how to order IT software and hardware equipment

We have embedded our workplace adjustment processes into our future locations programme, in which HMRC is bringing colleagues together into 18 regional centres and specialist sites. We created a dedicated adjustments team to support colleagues and managers moving location to ensure workplace and reasonable adjustments are considered in the design.

An inclusive design plan was co-developed with disabled colleagues and networks, which took our new building design beyond legal requirements to become inclusive, accessible and usable for all. Our case workers are now ensuring adjustments for disabled colleagues are delivered.

In addition, we introduced a contribution towards additional care costs incurred as a result of a location change, to support our colleagues with caring commitments to stay with HMRC.

IT system accessibility

We have undertaken an audit of our most used internal services to check for compliance with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 legislation. This is the start of a long-term and large-scale project to continuously improve the accessibility of our services. This year we have secured a project team to resource the work and create a roadmap for ongoing improvements.

Reward and recognition

HMRC transformed its pay structure and contract arrangements in February 2021 for our colleagues working in roles graded at Administrative Assistant (AA) grade to Grade 6. These reforms brought in more flexible and modern terms and conditions, so we can better respond to the needs of our customers and give our colleagues more flexibility to support their work-life balance.

The changes increase consistency and fairness across our pay and working arrangements and help us to address long-standing differences in pay levels, which should contribute to reducing pay gaps across different groups in our workforce over time. We publish gender pay gap information in a separate report each year, our most recent report covers data from 2021.

Family-friendly leave

In 2020 to 2021 we conducted a review of our parental policies to ensure they are as inclusive and accessible as possible. We know that family friendly leave can build greater inclusion particularly in terms of sex, sexual orientation, pregnancy or maternity, marriage and civil partnership equality and HMRC offers a generous package which is well above our statutory requirements.

Our approach has been to focus on the role the new parent will play caring for their child in the initial phase, and to use language that applies to new parents regardless of their personal characteristics, family structure or how they have become a parent.

Our work during 2020 to 2021 to agree new pay and contract arrangements included proposed changes that would be beneficial to the majority of colleagues, and colleagues with dependants in particular. For example, in our reforms we agreed the opportunity to work from home for 2 days per week and to open up our flexible working hours scheme to more colleagues.

We also agreed to make improvements to our paternity leave offer and to extend access to reasonable paid time off to attend ante-natal, pre-adoption, and pre-surrogacy appointments to all new parents, regardless of their role in caring for their child or the way in which they have become a parent.

Respect at Work

In 2019, HMRC published its Respect at Work Review, an independent review into what it is like to work at HMRC. This recommended we make improvements to our policies and processes to create a respectful and inclusive workplace – two of the objectives we have since prioritised in our Equality Objectives 2020 to 2024.

Analysis of our aggregated diversity data in 2019 identified that the level of concerns raised and received varied by equality group. Disabled colleagues, for example, were more likely to raise a concern than non-disabled colleagues and ethnic minority colleagues were more likely to have a concern raised about them than white colleagues.

We prioritised improving policies on grievance, discipline and attendance management as they were identified as causing the most negative experiences for our colleagues. Our new policies ‘Raising and Resolving Concerns’, ‘Upholding Our Standards of Conduct’ and ‘Supporting Your Attendance’ focus on supporting colleagues and managers through simpler, outcome-focused processes that have respect and wellbeing at their heart.

During the summer of 2019 we also co-created ‘Our Commitments’ with 17,000 colleagues across HMRC. Our Commitments are a behavioural guide that reflect how colleagues want to and should strive to treat each other every day at HMRC and have inclusion at their core. Since 2019, we have systematically worked to embed Our Commitments throughout our policy/process development and internal communications.

Raising and resolving concerns policy

We launched a new raising and resolving concerns policy in February 2020, to make it easier to raise and resolve concerns in a fair, kind and human way. It emphasised HMRC’s Values, Our Commitments and behaviours, and swifter resolution of issues, underpinned by comprehensive casework support for everyone involved in a concern. The policy change clearly outlines HMRC’s approach that when something is not right, we want all our colleagues to feel comfortable to raise a concern, and to have confidence that it will be dealt with appropriately.

To embed the new policy, during financial year 2020 to 2021 we provided support, such as training, toolkits, live question and answer sessions, learning materials and communications campaigns to build capability to nip issues in the bud, and to encourage and support colleagues to be an ‘active bystander’ and step in if they see or hear behaviour that concerns them and is not aligned with HMRC’s clear standards.

We take an evidence-based approach to actions to promote equality but transforming our policies has reset the baseline measures. We continue to monitor the impact of our policies and will establish new baseline measures from which we can measure year-on-year progress.

Expert Advice Service

We also created a new Mediation and Resolution Support Service within our Expert Advice Service (EAS) in the Human Resource function in early 2020. The service emphasises a restorative approach, aligned with ACAS and CIPD best practice on managing conflict.

The focus is on mediation, coaching and early resolution to provide a proactive and accessible service for colleagues and managers to resolve workplace concerns on a more personal level. We have increased the number of trained mediators three-fold since 2019, delivered communications campaigns to raise awareness of the service to colleagues and reduced the average time it takes to resolve cases.

As colleague confidence to report inappropriate behaviours increases, we anticipate the number of cases raised formally through EAS will increase initially. This should be followed by a decline in cases as the working environment becomes more inclusive and colleagues are more confident to address poor behaviour and nip issues in the bud. We will continue to monitor trends and improve our data quality to provide a robust measure of the equality impact of our services.

Managing the equality impact of COVID-19

Due to COVID-19, approximately 50,000 HMRC colleagues were asked to work from home in March 2020. At pace, we put in place a range of new policies and products to support colleagues to work safely and balance health, home and work responsibilities through these unprecedented times. We provided learning resources and live question and answer sessions to support colleagues, managers and senior leaders to use all available technology to remain connected and work inclusively.

As we progressed through the pandemic, we worked with our diversity networks to review the resources, which led to a redesign of the resource site, a streamlining of the content, and a standardisation of layout and design to maximise accessibility.

Our policy responses to COVID-19 have included consideration of the equality impact on particular groups. For example, following the Public Health England COVID-19: review of disparities in risks and outcomes report we ran awareness sessions to help colleagues understand the specific impacts of COVID-19 on Black, Asian and ethnic minority communities.

Our processes are centred on good quality conversations between colleagues and their managers to understand the impact of the pandemic on individuals working remotely or in the office, and the flexibilities and support available. This included making specialist office equipment for disabled colleagues available for working at home and special leave arrangements for colleagues with caring responsibilities impacted by the pandemic.

Our managers and colleagues continued to be supported by comprehensive health and safety arrangements and guidance, including access to third-party clinical professional advice.

During 2020 to 2021 we increased measures to support the physical and mental health of our people. These included providing COVID-19 safe workplaces for colleagues who needed to continue working from the office. We moved health, safety and wellbeing support from face-to-face to virtual to make it accessible for colleagues working at home and in the office.

We developed new services such as a remote workstation assessment to assess home working set up and a vulnerability screening questionnaire to access occupational health advice on a colleague’s vulnerability to COVID-19. These new processes helped managers to identify any additional requirements to support colleagues to continue working safely.

Learning and development

HMRC Values created with colleagues in 2017 describe the things that we all hold dear:

• we are professional
• we act with integrity
• we show respect
• we are innovative

During summer 2019, we involved 17,000 colleagues in developing ‘Our Commitments’ – a set of principles that guide how we treat one another to help us make HMRC a great place to work. It’s how we’re building the kind of HMRC that we can be proud to work for.

Our Commitments are the 5 things that were most important to us when we spoke about what our values really meant to us in our everyday interactions. Our Commitments go hand in hand with one another; we need to try to be all of these things, all the time.

We will:

• be fair, kind and human
• not create fear in others
• include people regardless of difference
• work together, recognising our common goal
• have honest conversations, with respect

High quality and tailored learning supports the development of inclusive and respectful behaviours that underpin Our Commitments.

During 2020 we introduced interactive scenario-based learning titled ‘Choose Your Own Path’, which builds understanding of Our Commitments. We also designed and rolled out learning to support colleagues to recognise and supportively challenge racism and discriminatory behaviours and language.

Race equality and inclusion workshops

All HMRC colleagues have been encouraged to participate in race equality and inclusion learning. Developed in-house, the learning is comprised of an e-learning session followed by a virtual workshop.

More than 350 HMRC colleagues from across the department volunteered to be trained as workshop facilitators and the learning content provides insight into the real experiences of our Black, Asian and ethnic minority colleagues with time for conversations to explore the issues raised. This approach allows colleagues to learn from each other and contributes to building a respectful and inclusive culture at HMRC. It also reinforces the expectation that colleagues should step in and challenge if they witness racist or inappropriate behaviours in the workplace.

Between November 2020 and March 2021, approximately 17,000 colleagues had participated in the race equality learning. Our target is for 50,000 colleagues to participate by June 2022. Fuller evaluation is planned but initial feedback is positive, with 89% of participants reporting that they either learned about new concepts or found it useful to revisit them and discuss them with others.

In addition, experiences shared by colleagues during the workshops were viewed as powerful, insightful or useful by 84% of attendees and colleagues reported feeling more confident to recognise and challenge inappropriate behaviours.

Active bystander learning and podcast

Being an active bystander means intervening when you hear or see inappropriate behaviour or language. We developed learning content to support individuals and teams to build their confidence and skills to be active bystanders in the workplace. We layered active bystander content into existing learning products, such as the race equality workshops, and ‘finding your voice’ a learning product to build psychological safety.

We developed a new podcast featuring a facilitated conversation between HMRC colleagues sharing their experiences of the difference it makes when colleagues do or don’t step in to support them when colleagues fall short of our behavioural expectations.

The podcast includes moments where the listener is invited to pause and reflect. Reflection comments are delivered by our Chief Executive, Jim Harra, highlighting our top-level commitment and support to colleagues to speak up and call out inappropriate behaviour. The podcast can be used alone, or in a team to generate discussion in a group setting.

Race equality and inclusion podcasts

In summer 2020 we held eight listening events across the country where some of our ethnic minority colleagues shared their lived experiences with our senior managers and leaders. Feedback was positive and we developed three race and inclusion podcasts to share the learning with all colleagues without placing an onus on our ethnic minority colleagues to keep telling their stories.

The podcasts told the personal experiences of colleagues who had faced prejudice and discrimination, both inside and outside of work, and emphasise the importance of our continued efforts to combat racism.

Talent schemes

This year we started reviewing the effectiveness of our accelerated development strategy. We have been carrying out a range of insight gathering activity and benchmarking across other government departments, public and private sector organisations.

Our workforce representation data tells us that diversity reduces as seniority of role increases so we are taking a range of actions to build a diverse pool of future leaders to address this. For example, we invited alumni from the Civil Service Future Leaders Scheme and Senior Leaders Scheme to share their tips with our disabled and ethnic minority colleagues on how to strengthen applications for talent programmes. We also publicised the entry route for Civil Service Positive Action Pathway scheme graduates.

Working closely with our staff Race Equality Network, in addition, we piloted new virtual career development programmes for ethnic minority colleagues. We are evaluating the potential for these programmes to be rolled out across the department.

Reviewing inclusive learning

We want all our learning and development opportunities, including those related to equality, diversity and inclusion, to be accessible, fit for purpose and effective at delivering value for money and the desired learning outcomes.

During 2020 to 2021 we supported Cabinet Office and other government departments to evaluate the effectiveness of equality, diversity and inclusion related Civil Service Learning products. We also began the process of assessing all our equality, diversity and inclusion learning products, with a view to integrating inclusion into our core learning offer for all colleagues.

We used our annual People Survey to understand experiences of learning in HMRC, broken down by diversity characteristics. For example, female colleagues reported more favourable experiences of learning than male colleagues; ethnic minority colleagues reported more favourable experiences of learning than white colleagues; and jobsharers reported more favourable experiences of learning than full-time or part-time colleagues.

There were less favourable scores amongst those at lower grades (compared to higher grades) and carers (compared to non-carers).

We also regularly monitor participation in essential Civil Service equality, diversity and inclusion training, using data broken down by location, group and manager status. This helps us to target and promote campaigns to increase participation.

We will continue to use our diversity data to embed inclusion into our broader learning provision and strategies, as part of our business as usual.

Accountability and governance

Embedding consideration of equality into our business as usual is crucial to achieving our equality objectives and we have taken actions to improve the accountability for and governance of equality, diversity and inclusion across the department.

Inclusive decision making

During 2020 to 2021, we refreshed our approach to equality impact assessments and updated our guidance to include inclusive decision-making principles. We used a principles-based approach to encourage all colleagues to consider inclusion in day-to-day activities and to simplify the technical considerations of impact assessment of large change processes.

We consulted and tested this approach with various business areas at key stages of the refresh, including other government departments and HMRC programme leads, change and strategy designers, and equality specialists.

We embedded the principles and guidance into our end-to-end change lifecycle programme, which is used by around 500 change designers across the department and includes a change tool that can be used by all colleagues.

This makes it easier to evidence consideration of equality impact. User testing of the tools has been positive with users reporting that equality is being more robustly considered and evidenced. We are continuing to develop learning to build the ability and confidence of our colleagues to make inclusive decisions and to build equality consideration into existing governance structures.

HMRC Executive Committee (ExCom)

ExCom members are accountable for ensuring HMRC meets its legal and strategic objectives. ExCom members show visible top level leadership and commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion by agreeing priorities each year and by being HMRC and or cross-government diversity champions.

During 2020 to 2021, we had ExCom Champions for age, carers, disability, gender, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and related communities (LGBT+), race, religion or belief, social mobility and wellbeing. They helped to progress the diversity agenda by providing visible leadership, embedding diversity and inclusion in departmental planning and processes, supporting our staff networks and consultation groups, and encouraging the sharing of best practice across HMRC.

In early 2021, ExCom appointed an SCS-level Race Equality Delivery Director to help HMRC build local accountability for delivering race equality across the department.

Advisory boards

During 2020 to 2021 we supported business groups within HMRC to establish advisory boards. These are comprised of colleagues at all levels who offer their expertise or experience to increase the diversity of voices heard in decision-making.

This intervention targets two consequences of our senior leadership not being as diverse as we want it to be:

1. it supports inclusive decision-making while we build diversity throughout all levels of the organisation, and
2. it provides development opportunities for colleagues in under-represented groups to build decision-making skills and experience which in turn builds the diversity of our senior leader pipeline

As our senior leadership becomes more representative, the need for standalone advisory boards to increase the diversity of decision-making voices will reduce.

Staff networks and consultation groups

HMRC supports nine department-wide colleague diversity networks and consultation groups, each focusing on a single characteristic, and some have sub-groups:

• age
• carers
• disability
• EU nationals
• gender
• LGBT+,
• race
• religion or belief
• social mobility

Networks provide a forum for colleagues to discuss personal experiences of equality, diversity and inclusion at HMRC and provide insight to help identify barriers, understand the impact of changes on particular equality groups and to co-develop solutions to promote equality. During 2020 to 2021 our networks organised and delivered numerous voluntary events and communications to raise awareness, build allyship, educate and celebrate equality, diversity and inclusion.

During the coming year, we plan to co-develop a consistent framework with our networks to build governance and enhance our ability to work together across networks on shared initiatives.

Data quality and transparency

We want our workforce to reflect the diversity of our customers. To support an evidence-based approach to achieving this across the department, we use our workforce diversity data to check for fairness across employee experience and outcomes.

Workforce diversity data is voluntarily self-recorded by colleagues in our online HR system, except for male/female which HMRC records at the point of employment for statutory purposes. We aggregate and anonymise the information provided by colleagues to identify under-representation and possible inequalities.

Improving data quality

Declaration rates tell us what proportion of our workforce have recorded their diversity information. Higher rates equate to better quality data and enable more robust equality analysis. Good quality data is important in understanding how well we are meeting our equality objectives and we work continually to increase declaration rates. By the end of March 2024, we aim to achieve an 85% declaration rate for all equality characteristics.

Declaration rates currently vary by equality characteristic and fluctuate as new colleagues join the department who have not recorded their data, and longer established colleagues who had recorded their data leave. Our declaration rates as at March 2020 and 2021, and the percentage change between the two years, rounded to the nearest percentage, are shown in Table 2 below.

Table 2: HMRC diversity declaration rates at March 2020 and March 2021

	Declaration rate at March 2020	Declaration rate at March 2021	Percentage change 2020 to 2021
Care for child	26%	31%	5%
Care for disabled	27%	31%	5%
Disability	70%	69%	-1%
Ethnicity	78%	76%	-2%
Gender identity	29%	35%	6%
Religion	59%	59%	1%
Sexual orientation	66%	66%	0%

Actions taken to encourage declaration include running communication campaigns to build trust by explaining why we collect the information, how it is aggregated, anonymised and suppressed so that it cannot identify any individuals. We have refreshed and simplified guidance on how to record personal data on our system to make it easier for users and built declaration into business-as-usual processes. This includes our induction for new starters and personal development conversations, creating multiple opportunities and nudges to declare.

We use our diversity data to target campaigns to particular areas where declaration is low, our diversity champions to lead messaging and role modelling from the top and we engage with other government departments to share best practice.

Currently, we have to ask colleagues to record their diversity data multiple times, such as when applying for a job, when offered a job, when completing surveys and when participating in learning opportunities. This causes confusion and frustration because they each use different systems.

Longer term, we are seeking digital solutions to enable colleagues to provide their information once and for systems to use that information for the purposes agreed by each colleague, in line with data protection requirements. In the interim, we have been working with internal stakeholders to identify where our data quality needs improvement and actions we can take until we have system fixes in place.

Improving transparency

Increasing the transparency of our diversity data enables colleagues and groups across the department to take an evidence-based approach to identifying equality issues, setting inclusion objectives, targeting interventions and evaluating impact.

During 2020 to 2021, we started publishing quarterly diversity data packs on our intranet. Diversity data packs provide aggregated and anonymised diversity data for our workforce cut by region, directorate, job grade and diversity characteristics. It supports accountability and responsibility for equality, diversity and inclusion across the department.

We introduced specific consideration of equality analysis into our People Analytics and Insight Directorate’s (our in-house people data analysts) project scoping requirements. This means that where equality is relevant, our people analysts will routinely include a breakdown by diversity characteristics, allowing for more comprehensive equality analysis of our functions.

Some equality, diversity and inclusion progress can be difficult to measure but we will continue to improve the quality of our data, share and use our data and insight with colleagues, and co-develop success measures for our equality objectives with stakeholders across the department (inclusive, respectful and representative).

Workforce diversity data

We use our diversity data to understand how well the diversity of our colleagues reflects the diversity of our customers. Internally we set workforce representation targets to achieve by the end of this public sector equality duty period (end March 2024) of: 15% ethnic minority, 15% disabled and 6% lesbian, gay bisexual and ‘other’ (aggregated data categories). We review our targets when new population data becomes available, such as new census population data, and are working to set more specific targets to address localised under-representation.

Table 3 below shows the progress we have made towards reaching these targets over the past four years.

Table 3: Workforce representation rates for disability, ethnicity and sexual orientation, 2018 to 2021

Note: these data exclude colleagues who did not provide their diversity data and colleagues who recorded ‘choose not to say’.

	March 2018	March 2019	March 2020	March 2021
Disability	14.0%	13.9%	13.8%	13.5%
Black, Asian and ethnic minority	11.9%	12.9%	13.8%	14.7%
Lesbian, gay, bisexual or ‘other’	4.7%	4.9%	5.3%	5.7%

There has been a consistent increase in the proportion of colleagues known to be from a Black, Asian and ethnic minority background (14.7% at end March 2021). We have seen a similar trajectory in the proportion of colleagues reporting their sexual orientation as lesbian, gay, bisexual or ‘other’ (5.7% at end March 2021). In both cases, this brings us very close to meeting our targets of (15% and 6% respectively).

Disability representation however showed a small decline in the proportion of colleagues known to be disabled (13.5% at end March 2021) which takes us slightly further from our target (15%). We are targeting work to attract more disabled candidates, and to increase understanding of why the data is collected and how it is used to build trust and encourage declarations.

We also analyse our diversity data by grade, region and business group to understand statistically significant trends and target our interventions, and have developed regional benchmarks for ethnicity, to reflect local working age populations. For example, we are working to provide more detailed data breakdowns, such as the categories of ethnicity within ‘ethnic minority’, and to run representation targets at specific job grades, to address a general pattern of workforce diversity decreasing as seniority increases.

More data on representation and declaration rates is provided in the annex.

Using our diversity data

We also gather and use diversity data beyond representation and declaration rates where available. For example, our data and insight showed our biggest challenges were around race and disability equality, so this year we audited all the data we had on race and disability at each stage of the employee lifecycle. This identified some disparities in employee experiences and outcomes for ethnic minority and disabled colleagues.

We shared the findings with all colleagues and used the data analysis to inform improvement actions which were co-developed with our diversity networks and trade union colleagues. Our race equality actions focus on addressing unacceptable behaviour, to create a workplace where everyone feels valued, and diversifying the next generation of HMRC leaders.

Disability actions focus on improving our workplace adjustment processes, attracting more disabled candidates into HMRC, making our IT more accessible and improving learning opportunities for disabled colleagues.

Some of our improvement actions are specific to race or disability equality but mostly our actions make our workplace more inclusive and respectful for all colleagues, and more representative of all our communities. We are supporting HMRC-level actions with evidence-based local action plans to create positive change and build accountability for achieving our equality objectives across the department.

Communicating our inclusive culture

Inclusion has been a consistent thread throughout all our colleague communications. We have continued to raise awareness of our equality objectives, of where we have areas for improvement and our expectations of all HMRC colleagues to contribute positively to making HMRC a great place to work. We have done this by:

• running regular communication campaigns to encourage inclusion, raise awareness of our challenges, and to celebrate our diversity
• visibly celebrating diversity through embedding equality consideration into our estates, events and communications
• creating opportunities for the department to listen to and understand the personal impact of inequalities on people different from themselves, to reduce barriers and inspire allyship

Campaigns

Our communications emphasise the importance of building an inclusive, respectful culture in HMRC. For example, we developed an internal communication campaign using the phrase ‘count me in’ to encourage colleagues to share the actions they have taken to promote equality, diversity and inclusion. This phrase has become widely recognised by colleagues and has remained one of the top trending topics on our internal social media platform, Yammer, throughout the year.

Role modelling and allyship

Our senior leadership and ExCom diversity champions have been highly visible across our internal communication channels, fronting campaigns, providing progress updates and encouraging colleagues to participate. They have shared their personal stories in vlogs and blogs and led online broadcasts and listening sessions internally, in addition to championing HMRC’s inclusion agenda across government and more widely.

‘Our Conversation’

We have created opportunities to listen and understand each other’s experiences, for example through an organisation-wide approach known as ‘Our Conversation’. We ask managers to facilitate a discussion with their team to talk openly and honestly about the ‘big things’ that are happening in our organisation, what it feels like to work here, and what we can all do to help make HMRC a great place to work.

In 2020, ‘Our Conversation’ focused on race equality and inclusion. We shared the findings of our diversity data audit and developed learning materials to support all HMRC managers to talk about and facilitate discussions about race equality and inclusion. Over 37,300 colleagues took part in Our Conversation during autumn 2020.

Accessibility

To maintain support for colleagues using Assisted Technology (AT) during the COVID-19 pandemic, we provided new and upgraded mobile devices, alongside specialised equipment to support working from home. We have continued to provide specialised guidance and one-to-one support in a virtual setting while face to face visits have not been possible.

This year, we made accessibility functions in our software available to all users. For example, we enabled captions and transcription in Microsoft packages, previously blocked for security reasons, which has improved colleague experience, confidence and wellbeing by making team calls more accessible for everyone.

We also delivered education and awareness sessions to over 5,500 HMRC colleagues, to promote the importance of accessibility in enabling colleagues to do their best work and to remain connected. We have supported and hosted external events such as Global Accessibility Awareness to ensure a diverse range of voices were heard, and fed in valuable user insight into assistive technology solutions for future deployment.

Celebrating equality, diversity and inclusion

We have looked for ways to embed a celebration of inclusion into all our structures and functions. For example, we updated our guidance on room naming policies so that we can celebrate local figures in our regional centres, such as the Betty Campbell room in our Cardiff centre.

Our staff diversity networks lead on celebrating the occasions that are most important to each group. They run a range of awareness raising events, using our internal social media platform to share personal stories and drawing in colleagues across the department to learn about our communities, cultures, lived experiences and histories.

We use national events, such as National Inclusion Week, as a platform for highlighting how all the work that we do across particular equality characteristics contributes to making HMRC a great place to work for all colleagues.

Annex: Additional colleague declaration and representation rates

The following tables provide HMRC workforce representation rates by each protected characteristic, as at March 2021.

Declaration rates include colleagues that selected the ‘choose not to declare’ option.

The known representation rate reflects the proportion of colleagues identifying as having a particular diversity characteristic, as a proportion of all colleagues who have declared their diversity data in this category.

We use data labels that reflect self-reported diversity characteristics, grouped into administrative categories of employees:

• ‘Ethnic minority’ includes Black, Asian, Chinese and mixed ethnic background categories. White ethnic minority backgrounds are not included in this data category
• ‘White’ includes any white background, including white ethnic minority groups
• ‘Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Other’ includes people who categorised their sexual orientation as gay man, gay woman/lesbian, bisexual or ‘other’
• ‘Gender different at birth’ is a yes/no question about gender identity

Data marked with an asterisk (*) instead of a number or percentage has been suppressed for data protection.

All numbers are also rounded to the nearest 5 to conform with data protection standards.

Representation rate by disability, ethnicity and sexual orientation

Representation rate by disability

	Disabled	Non-disabled	Chose not to declare	Not known	% Known disabled (Target 15%)
HMRC overall	8.7%	55.8%	4.7%	30.8%	13.5%
1 – SCS	5.0%	79.0%	3.0%	14.0%	5.6%
2 – Gr 6	8.0%	69.0%	6.0%	17.0%	9.8%
3 – Gr 7	9.0%	66.0%	6.0%	19.0%	11.6%
4 – FS	8.0%	58.0%	5.0%	29.0%	11.8%
5 – SO	9.0%	66.0%	6.0%	20.0%	11.8%
6 – HO	9.0%	61.0%	6.0%	25.0%	12.7%
7 – O	8.0%	56.0%	5.0%	31.0%	13.1%
8 – AO	9.0%	46.0%	4.0%	42.0%	16.3%
9 – AA	13.0%	45.0%	4.0%	39.0%	22.1%

Representation rate by ethnicity

	Ethnic minority	White	Chose not to declare	Not known	% Known ethnic minority (Target 15%)
HMRC overall	10.6%	61.6%	3.9%	23.8%	14.7%
1 – SCS	9.0%	77.0%	*	12.0%	10.6%
2 – Gr 6	7.0%	75.0%	6.0%	13.0%	8.5%
3 – Gr 7	10.0%	72.0%	5.0%	14.0%	12.0%
4 – FS	12.0%	58.0%	4.0%	26.0%	17.3%
5 – SO	9.0%	72.0%	5.0%	14.0%	11.7%
6 – HO	13.0%	64.0%	5.0%	19.0%	16.5%
7 – O	12.0%	61.0%	4.0%	24.0%	16.0%
8 – AO	10.0%	54.0%	3.0%	34.0%	15.5%
9 – AA	4.0%	65.0%	3.0%	27.0%	6.3%

Representation rate by sexual orientation

	Lesbian, gay, bisexual and ‘other’	Heterosexual	Chose not to declare	Not known	% Known lesbian, gay, bisexual and other (target 6%)
HMRC overall	3.3%	55.0%	7.3%	34.4%	5.7%
1 – SCS	5.0%	71.0%	6.0%	17.0%	6.7%
2 – Gr 6	4.0%	66.0%	10.0%	20.0%	5.3%
3 – Gr 7	4.0%	66.0%	9.0%	21.0%	5.5%
4 – FS	7.0%	56.0%	8.0%	29.0%	10.5%
5 – SO	3.0%	66.0%	9.0%	22.0%	4.5%
6 – HO	4.0%	60.0%	8.0%	28.0%	5.7%
7 – O	3.0%	55.0%	7.0%	34.0%	5.9%
8 – AO	3.0%	45.0%	6.0%	47.0%	6.1%
9 – AA	2.0%	37.0%	5.0%	56.0%	5.5%

Declaration and representation rates by religion or belief

Declaration rates for religion and belief

	Known religion or belief declaration rate (target 50%)	Specific religion or belief declared	Chose not to declare	Not known
HMRC overall	59.3%	52.0%	7.0%	41.0%
1 – SCS	80.8%	74.0%	7.0%	19.0%
2 – Gr 6	73.7%	64.0%	10.0%	26.0%
3 – Gr 7	73.1%	65.0%	8.0%	27.0%
4 – FS	69.1%	59.0%	10.0%	31.0%
5 – SO	71.7%	63.0%	9.0%	28.0%
6 – HO	65.4%	58.0%	8.0%	35.0%
7 – O	59.3%	53.0%	7.0%	41.0%
8 – AO	47.2%	42.0%	5.0%	53.0%
9 – AA	36.7%	33.0%	3.0%	63.0%

Representation rates for religion and belief, of those that declared a religion or belief

	Buddhist	Christian	Hindu	Jewish	Muslim	Sikh	Other	None
HMRC overall	0.3%	48.0%	2.1%	0.2%	6.5%	1.4%	2.8%	38.7%

Representation rate of colleagues caring for a disabled person

	Yes	No	Not known	% care for a disabled person declaration (target 30%)
HMRC overall	6.8%	24.5%	68.7%	31.3%
1 – SCS	11.0%	44.0%	45.0%	55.0%
2 – Gr 6	9.0%	34.0%	57.0%	43.1%
3 – Gr 7	8.0%	33.0%	59.0%	41.0%
4 – FS	4.0%	44.0%	52.0%	48.0%
5 – SO	8.0%	29.0%	62.0%	37.6%
6 – HO	8.0%	27.0%	66.0%	34.1%
7 – O	7.0%	24.0%	70.0%	30.4%
8 – AO	5.0%	19.0%	76.0%	24.5%
9 – AA	4.0%	10.0%	85.0%	14.8%

Representation rate of colleagues caring for a school aged child

	Yes	No	Not known	% care for a school ahead child declaration (target 30%)
HMRC overall	8.9%	22.4%	68.7%	31.3%
1 – SCS	25.0%	31.0%	44.0%	56.4%
2 – Gr 6	18.0%	26.0%	56.0%	43.6%
3 – Gr 7	14.0%	27.0%	59.0%	41.4%
4 – FS	8.0%	41.0%	51.0%	49.4%
5 – SO	13.0%	25.0%	62.0%	37.8%
6 – HO	10.0%	24.0%	66.0%	34.5%
7 – O	8.0%	23.0%	70.0%	30.3%
8 – AO	5.0%	19.0%	76.0%	24.1%
9 – AA	3.0%	11.0%	86.0%	13.7%

Representation rate by sex

	Female	Male
HMRC overall	52.8%	47.2%
1 – SCS	45.0%	55.0%
2 – Gr 6	44.0%	56.0%
3 – Gr 7	44.0%	56.0%
4 – FS	45.0%	55.0%
5 – SO	49.0%	51.0%
6 – HO	49.0%	51.0%
7 – O	54.0%	46.0%
8 – AO	59.0%	41.0%
9 – AA	62.0%	38.0%

Representation rate by working pattern

	Full time	Part time
HMRC overall	73.5%	26.5%
1 – SCS	92.0%	8.0%
2 – Gr 6	85.0%	15.0%
3 – Gr 7	87.0%	13.0%
4 – FS	95.0%	5.0%
5 – SO	85.0%	15.0%
6 – HO	82.0%	18.0%
7 – O	75.0%	25.0%
8 – AO	60.0%	40.0%
9 – AA	39.0%	61.0%

Representation rate by age group

	16-29	30-39	40-49	50-59	60+
HMRC overall	16.0%	21.2%	22.1%	30.0%	10.8%
1 – SCS	*	12.0%	32.0%	48.0%	7.0%
2 – Gr 6	1.0%	16.0%	31.0%	42.0%	10.0%
3 – Gr 7	9.0%	25.0%	26.0%	33.0%	7.0%
4 – FS	47.0%	41.0%	10.0%	3.0%	*
5 – SO	6.0%	19.0%	27.0%	39.0%	9.0%
6 – HO	13.0%	26.0%	24.0%	29.0%	9.0%
7 – O	20.0%	23.0%	20.0%	26.0%	11.0%
8 – AO	21.0%	18.0%	20.0%	28.0%	13.0%
9 – AA	2.0%	5.0%	16.0%	41.0%	35.0%

Representation rate by gender

Question	Overall declaration rate	Non-binary	Self-describe	Female	Male	Prefer not to say	Not known
How do you identify?	34.9%	0.1%	0.1%	17.9%	15.6%	1.2%	65.1%

Question	Overall declaration rate	Yes	No	Prefer not to say	Not known
Are you intending to undergo, are you undergoing or have undergone any form of gender reassignment/affirmation?	32.4%	0.1%	31.1%	1.3%	67.6%