FOI reference: FOI-2024-2361
You asked
Please provide the following information. The purpose of this is to understand how well your organisation is compliant with the principles of the Equality Act. For each question, please provide the data for the past 5 years. If that is too onerous, please provide it for the last 3 years.
What is the staff turnover rate for all staff and then for each protected characteristic. For example 11% staff turnover generally, 12% for staff with disabilities, and so on for all of the protected characteristics.
How many grievances were raised by employees which alleged discrimination against any of the protected characteristics. Please provide the number of upheld/not upheld/withdrawn per characteristic. If that would make the data too identifiable, please provide an overview of “non-discrimination” versus “discrimination”.
How many Employment Tribunal claims were made — regardless of outcome — which alleged discrimination against any of the protected characteristics. I would expect this request to include instances where a form was filed and ACAS early conciliation engaged.
How many Employment Tribunal claims alleging discrimination were successfully finalised during ACAS early conciliation.
How many Employment Tribunal claims — regardless of whether they proceeded to Tribunal — resulted in financial remuneration being paid to the claimant/employee. Please break this down by protected characteristic per year if that does not make the claimant/employee identifiable.
How much money was spent on obtaining or securing legal advice in defence of either grievances or Employment Tribunal claims which involved discrimination against a protected characteristic. If legal counsel operates on a retainer, please indicate how many cases (per year per characteristic) required legal advice. The purpose of this is to understand how much of the public purse is being spent defending your organisation from claims that it discriminates against its own employees.
How many Equality Impact Assessments were completed per fiscal year
How many policies were changed as a result of having given due regard to the Equality Impact Assessment.
How many exit interviews (or similar) indicate discrimination was a factor in leaving the organisation.
How many applications for flexible working were made on the basis of a protected characteristic, what type and how many were successful. Please provide comparator data for applications for flexible working made not on the basis of a protected characteristic. If you do not hold this data, volume of flexible working applications, type and success rate per year will suffice.
We said
Thank you for your request.
The time required to locate, extract, and collate the information for your requests would considerably exceed the cost limit for Freedom of Information requests, which is £600. This equates to 24 working hours for 1 member of staff (3 days' work). Therefore, Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) applies.
To collate the information requested in Question 2, grievances raised by employees which allege discrimination including the outcome (upheld/not upheld/withdrawn) by protected characteristic, we would need to individually interrogate the case notes and outcome letters of c.100 cases (covering the period from 6th April 2021 to 5th April 2024).
Further to Question 10, flexible working requests are not tracked centrally, actioning this request would require us to contact each line manager in the organisation to check if they hold a request from a staff member and collate the requested information.
We would therefore recommend narrowing the scope of your request so we may answer within the cost limit.
For Question 2:
We are able to provide the total number of complaints raised under our Speaking Up Framework as an alternative to the requested information.
For context, the Office for National Statistics uses a case management system to record employment case data. There are over 30 opening reasons to choose from when a Speaking Up case is created, these reasons are listed below:
- Age
- Breach of contract
- Bullying
- Constructive dismissal
- Disability
- Equal pay
- Fixed term employee regulations
- Flexible working regulations
- Gender
- General advice
- Grievance
- Guaranteed payment (assertion of statutory right)
- Harassment
- Health and Safety (assertion of statutory right)
- Holiday pay
- Industrial action
- Information and consultation (assertion of statutory right)
- Itemised pay statement (assertion of statutory right)
- Marriage or civil partnership
- Maternity and parental leave regulations
- Mediation
- Minimum wage (assertion of statutory right)
- Other
- Part time worker regulations
- Pay
- Performance management
- Political opinion – NI only
- Pre-claim conciliation
- Protected disclosure or whistleblowing (assertion of statutory rights)
- Race
- Recruitment process
- Redundancy payment (assertion of statutory rights)
- Religion or belief
- Right to be accompanied (assertion of statutory rights)
- Sexual harassment
- Sexual orientation
- Sunday working (assertion of statutory rights)
- Suspension on medical grounds (assertion of statutory rights)
- Tax credits (assertion of statutory rights)
- Time off work (assertion of statutory rights)
- Transgender
- TUPE
- Unfair dismissal
- Unlawful deduction from wages
- Unlawful detriment – H&S rep
- Unlawful detriment – Jury service
- Unlawful detriment – TU rep
- Unlawful detriment – Working time directive
- Victimisation and bullying
- Whistleblowing
- Working time regulations
- Written reasons for dismissal (assertion of statutory rights)
- Wrongful dismissal
When a caseworker creates a case in the case management system, the employee will provide a brief context about their concern which they have raised under the Speaking Up framework. This initial information dictates the opening reason however as the case progresses an investigation could identify additional opening reasons which are added to the case notes and opening reason selection.
Unfortunately, we cannot identify a way to narrow the scope of Question 10 (flexible working requests) to enable us to action. Therefore, a fresh request would need to exclude this question.
We would be happy to action the remainder of the questions (questions 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9) and Question 2 with narrower parameters. Please get back in touch if you would like to submit a refined request.
Please note regarding questions 1 and 9:
Question 1: Our overall turnover figures, for the last 3 fiscal years, are published in our Annual Report and Accounts, and these are available via the UK Statistics Authority website.
In terms of turnover rates for colleagues with protected characteristics, should you wish to make a new request under the Freedom of Information Act, we would only be able to provide turnover rates for female, declared ethnic minority, declared disabled or declared non-heterosexual colleagues. In terms of other protected characteristics:
- Age: We do not produce or analyse a turnover rate
- Gender reassignment: We do not produce or analyse a turnover rate
- Marriage or Civil Partnership: We do not produce or analyse a turnover rate
- Pregnancy and maternity: We do not produce or analyse a turnover rate, and we only have data on colleagues on parental leave, we do not centrally hold data on pregnant colleagues who have yet to start their leave
- Religion or belief: We do not produce or analyse a turnover rate
Question 9: Our exit survey, which we invite leavers to complete on a voluntary basis, is made up of both fixed, multiple choice-based questions and free text questions. With the fixed, multiple choice-based questions, we cannot isolate "discrimination" as the sole factor for somebody choosing to leave. Should you wish to make a new request under the Freedom of Information Act, we would base a response on the appearance of the word 'discrimination' in any free text responses. Please note, however that we only have data for April 2023 to March 2024.