Guidance

DIT voluntary reporting on disability, mental health, and wellbeing 2020

Published 3 February 2021

Introduction from Oriel Petry (DIT Health and Wellbeing Champion) and Marian Sudbury (DIT Disability Champion)

We are pleased to share the department’s second voluntary report on disability, mental health, and wellbeing.

The independent Thriving at Work review, published in October 2017, recommended that employers report more information about their actions on workplace mental health on a voluntary basis. In 2018, the government published a framework to support organisations to record and report information on disability, mental health, and wellbeing in the workplace. We published our first report in 2019.

This second report follows the framework. It aims to describe how we are seeking to support our employees to create an open and supportive culture around managing health at work. We believe that transparent information and data on our achievements and where we can continue to improve supports cultural change.

The Department for International Trade (DIT) is committed to supporting our colleagues with disabilities and long-term health conditions and ensuring that our employees’ health and wellbeing are at the heart of our business. DIT promotes an environment that welcomes and values diverse backgrounds, thinking, skills and experience. We want to be open to all so that we can attract and support the broadest range of talent and skills and ensure that everyone can fulfil their potential.

All of this supports the delivery of our priority outcomes through our people to:

• secure world-class free trade agreements and reduce market access barriers, ensuring that consumers and businesses can benefit from both
• deliver economic growth to all the nations and regions of the UK through attracting and retaining inward investment
• support UK business to take full advantage of trade opportunities, including those arising from delivering FTAs, facilitating UK exports
• champion the rules-based international trading system and operate the UK’s new trading system, including protecting UK businesses from unfair trade practices
• create and support jobs across the UK

For many of us, the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has produced challenging shifts in our personal and working lives. To support our people during these unprecedented changes, we have focused on 3 priority areas:

• health and wellbeing
• learning and development
• ways of working

We launched a new health and wellbeing resource library and have delivered a range of learning and support during this period. We aim to ensure that those staff with a disability or long-term health condition have access to the adjustments they need. We are proud of how our department has adapted collectively to the new priorities and environment.

Disability

This section sets out how we work with our employee disability network, cross-governmental groups, and internal and external stakeholders to improve representation and inclusion for employees with disabilities or long-term health conditions. DIT also proactively engages across the Civil Service to embed good disability practice.

DIT Disability Network

DIT’s Disability Network provides invaluable peer support and signposting to those with a disability or long-term health condition. It is an active network with over 300 members and encompasses 10 subgroups, such as the:

• Epilepsy Group
• Hearing Impairment Group
• Neurodiversity Network
• Visual Impairment Group

DIT Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Action Plan

Our Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Action Plan includes a range of activities that aim to drive inclusion for all staff.

Over the past year, we have made progress in many essential areas related to disability and long-term health conditions. Progress includes:

• moving to a centralised budget for workplace adjustments following feedback from employees. We continue to review and improve our workplace adjustment offer to ensure all colleagues have the tools and support they need to do their jobs
• publishing new guidance on our intranet to inform line managers and employees about flexible job design and improve understanding of the process. Flexible job design involves redesigning an existing job or creating a new role around an individual employee’s needs. It can be used in various circumstances by line managers, including as a formal workplace adjustment
• appointing 2 new Respect at Work Champions to support our inclusion agenda for the UK and overseas staff. Their focus is on ensuring positive behaviours across our global organisation.
• sponsoring a cohort of colleagues who self-identify as having a disability or long-term health condition to participate in the Civil Service Learning ‘Stepping into Leadership’ Programme. This has been developed to support managers taking on broader leadership roles, starting to manage larger teams, or leading across teams or departments
• providing all DIT staff with guidance on a range of topics related to disability. These factsheets and toolkits include advice running accessible meetings, delivering inclusive communications, and making workplace adjustments
• upskilling colleagues on digital accessibility. We aim to ensure that everyone in our department can access the information they need to do their jobs and comply with new accessibility legislation. We also completed a review of the documents on our staff intranet and other DIT websites to ensure that these are compliant with the latest digital accessibility regulations that came into force in September 2020

Business Disability Forum

DIT remains an active member of the Business Disability Forum (BDF), a not for profit membership organisation that aims to work through and with businesses to create a disability-smart world. Membership allows the department to access expertise, advice, training, and networking opportunities.

Disability Confident Level 3

DIT secured Disability Confident Level 3 status in November 2017, which is the highest level of accreditation available. This scheme is run by the Department for Work and Pensions and encourages employers to improve how they recruit, retain, and develop people with disabilities. We are currently preparing to renew our accreditation.

DIT data on disability

As of 31 March 2020, 11% of DIT employees self-reported that they had a disability. As of 31 March 2020, the average across the Civil Service was 12.8%, as reported by the Civil Service Statistics Bulletin 2020.

Across DIT, we are making a continued effort to improve self-reporting on diversity. As of March 2020, the average self-reporting rate for all protected characteristics at DIT was 65%.

Note

The above data includes domestic payroll staff and overseas UK based staff only. UK Export Finance, overseas locally engaged staff, as well as contractors, are excluded.

The representation data for DIT has been calculated in line with the methodology used to calculate the Civil Service data. This supports comparability and is as a proportion of all those with a known disability status.

Next steps on disability

Our focus over the next 6 months will be to:

• continue to build the disability confidence of our leaders and managers. We aim to ensure that they have the skills and knowledge to effectively support individuals with disabilities or long-term health conditions and embed an inclusive culture
• review key HR policies to ensure that disability is reflected appropriately
• embed inclusive behaviours across our organisation with robust strategic success measures agreed with key stakeholders.
• review our recruitment practices and entry routes to ensure they are fully inclusive and that we are attracting individuals with disabilities and long-term health conditions
• continue in our efforts to ensure all employees know where to find, engage with, and adhere to accessibility regulations and guidance.

Mental health and wellbeing

DIT Health and Wellbeing Plan

By March 2020 DIT successfully implemented its first Health and Wellbeing Plan, working in partnership with UK Export Finance (UKEF) and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) to deliver a plan that reaches across our global footprint. Implementation supported DIT to meet both the core and enhanced standards as set out in the Thriving at Work (Farmer/Stevenson) review of mental health.

DIT Health and Wellbeing Network

Our Mental Health First Aiders, together with our advocates, form an active DIT Health and Wellbeing Network of 120. The network proactively supports employee wellbeing and provides insights that contribute to building a wellbeing confident organisation.

Information, support and services

It is important that our staff have a route to talk about concerns relating to mental health. The department has over 50 Mental Health First Aiders within the UK, and we work in partnership with FCDO to support staff overseas. This is an important role which DIT has supported through continued professional development in line with the latest best practice.

Employees are also supported through 1:1 coaching provision. Our Employee Assistance Provider (EAP) offers the opportunity of resolving issues or more serious problems whether these are personal, or work related, including confidential counselling and support for work and career, bullying and harassment, family and relationships, money information and retirement information.

DIT has also been piloting a new wellbeing check-in service which helps employees identify the most relevant support for their needs.

Training and raising awareness

We have developed an online wellbeing resource library packed with relevant reading, videos, and top tips on a full range of health and wellbeing topics, including mental health. DIT has delivered a range of workshops and webinars on wellbeing related topics throughout the year, including building personal and team resilience, combatting anxiety, managing stress, adjusting to new financial situations, tools, information and training in personal and team resilience.

DIT strives towards a wellbeing confident organisation, launching new products to embed wellbeing at a team level.

1. A line manager checklist providing signposting to guidance and support to help line managers to manage their team’s wellbeing and mental health proactively.
2. A line manager workshop was launched in October 2020 to support the implementation of the line managers checklist.
3. Health and Wellbeing Vivid Vision – sets out what good looks like for DIT, developed from the People Survey and Pulse Survey results in collaboration with employee groups and networks.

During 2020 DIT increased efforts to raise awareness about the importance of health and wellbeing. Internal communications have promoted 12 national campaigns, including mental health awareness week and World Mental Health Day. Events have seen increased attendance levels and have included personal blog posts and live sessions from staff and senior leaders on the importance of speaking up about mental health.

Other events included continued professional development for mental health first aiders, health and wellbeing roundtables, and wellbeing check-ins for senior leaders. Training and raising awareness have been vital as we have reacted to the impact of COVID-19 on our workforce.

DIT data on mental health and wellbeing

The Civil Service annual People Survey takes place in October and provides us with a measure of personal wellbeing levels and uses the same questions that the Office for National Statistics use to measure wellbeing for the UK population.

Several statistically significant differences were observed between the 2018 and 2019 People Surveys in relation to mental health data showing that 2 indicators of wellbeing have improved whilst anxiety levels have increased and the extent to which employees are ‘flourishing’ has reduced slightly. In response, DIT has built stronger health and wellbeing networks and increased health and wellbeing training and support.

Specifically, in the 2019 survey:

• a significantly higher percentage of respondents (70.9%) answered positively when asked about how satisfied they are with life nowadays, compared to the 2018 survey (68.2%)
• the proportion of respondents answering favourably to the question ‘W02. Overall, to what extent do you feel that the things that you do in your life are worthwhile?’ has increased since 2018 (73.5% to 74.1%), albeit not significantly
• a significantly higher percentage of respondents (66.6%) answered positively when asked how happy they felt on the day before completing the survey, compared to the 2018 survey (65.4%)
• a significantly higher percentage of respondents (34.4%) reported experiencing high levels of anxiety on the day before completing the survey, compared to the 2018 survey (33.6%)
• the HSE stress index has remained at the same level (28.9%) since 2018
• the average PERMA index was 74.1%, which was lower than in the 2018 survey (74.5%), whilst the difference was statistically significant, it decreased by a relatively negligible amount. The PERMA index measures the extent to which employees are ‘flourishing’, where a higher score corresponds to a greater degree of ‘flourishing’

Figure 1: DIT results on questions related to wellbeing in the Civil Service People Survey in 2018 (dashed bars) and 2019 (solid bars)

Data source: Civil Service People Survey 2019.

Note

Standard error bars are shown to display the amount of uncertainty associated with the results. This uncertainty exists due to variability within the sample and because not everyone responded to the survey.

The 4 wellbeing questions (W01 to W04) use an 11-point scale (from 0 to 10), where 0 is equivalent to ‘not at all’ (for example ‘not at all satisfied’ or ‘not at all worthwhile’) and 10 is equivalent to ‘completely’ (for example. ‘completely satisfied’ or ‘completely anxious’). For questions W01, W02 and W03 the chart displays the proportion answering between 7 and 10 to each question. For question W04 the chart shows the proportion answering between 6 and 10 to the question.

Personal Wellbeing

The Office for National Statistics measures and publishes data on personal wellbeing across the UK on a quarterly basis. The statistics relate to 3 positive wellbeing measures – life satisfaction, sense of purpose ‘activities in life are worthwhile’, and happiness, along with one negative measure – ‘anxiety’.

PERMA Index

The PERMA index measures the extent to which employees are ‘flourishing’ by combining 5 Civil Service People Survey questions relating to the 5 dimensions: Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning and Accomplishment. A higher score corresponds to a greater degree of ‘flourishing’. The PERMA index has been monitored since 2016.

HSE Proxy Stress Index

The Proxy Stress Index aligns to the Health and Safety Executive’s (HSE) stress management tool, using a combination of 8 Civil Service People Survey questions to give a measure of the conditions which can impact stress in the workplace. A higher index score represents a more stressful environment. The first results were published in 2018.

Next steps on mental health and wellbeing

We remain committed to becoming a leading employer on health and wellbeing and mental health. This year DIT has signed up to the Mental Health at Work Commitment. The underpinning standards of this commitment provide the roadmap to achieving better mental health outcomes for employees. It is a set of actions we are following to improve and support the mental health of our employees.

Our second Health and Wellbeing Plan will set out what this means for DIT and reinforce DIT’s commitment to take the wellbeing of employees seriously.

Our aim is to:

• continue to build wellbeing confident leaders and managers, to create an environment where employees feel supported and able to discuss issues affecting their wellbeing; more so in the current environment as we respond to the impact of COVID-19 on our workforce
• support leaders to build their resilience and support their well-being, but also giving them the tools to do the same for their teams in DIT
• continue to build resilience at the team and individual levels
• hold open conversations about health and wellbeing, embedding the Health and Wellbeing Vivid Vision to create the right environment for employees to thrive
• provide more targeted support at individual and team level to those teams facing high levels of change

This is the second voluntary report for DIT. The COVID-19 pandemic has produced shifts in our personal and working lives which will affect employee wellbeing. We anticipate having more data to measure from this period and will report again in late 2021.