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Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Annual Report 2021-2022

Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Annual Report 2021-2022

Contents 

Foreword

Welcome to our inaugural Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Annual Report.

The Met Office published our first Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy in January 2021 which included our four equality objectives and this report provides you with an insight into what we have been doing to put those words into action.

Our Met Office purpose is to help you make better decisions to stay safe and thrive. If we are going to do that, we need to understand who “you” are, we need to understand “how” we can keep you safe and make you thrive and the “why” behind the decisions you make. In a year of much global uncertainty, we as an organisation stand together committed to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion and making the world a better place for future generations.

Introduction 

The Met Office is fully committed to the vision, values, and ethos of the Equality Act 2010 and to fulfilling the three elements of the general equality duty as defined in the Act:

1. Elimination of unlawful discrimination, harassment, and victimisation

2. Advancing equality of opportunity between people who share a relevant protected characteristic and those who do not

3. Fostering good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not.

The protected characteristics are:

  • Age
  • Disability
  • Gender reassignment
  • Pregnancy, maternity, and breastfeeding
  • Race
  • Religion and belief
  • Sex
  • Sexual orientation
  • Marriage/civil partnership, but only in respect of the requirement to have due regards to the need to eliminate discrimination

This report provides detail of the following:

  • key achievements and mainstreaming progress since January 2021
  • progress in relation to our Equality Objectives 2021/2022 and work with our staff and those whom we serve
  • how our approach aligns to new Equality, Diversity and Inclusion is aligned to the Government's Diversity and Inclusion Strategy 2022 - 2025

Legal context that applies to the Met Office

The Equality Act 2010 applies to all staff working in England, Wales, and Scotland. Our staff in Northern Ireland are covered by separate legislation, which is similar, but equality law in Northern Ireland is not consolidated into one single act.

Mainstreaming Equality, Diversity and Inclusion is a specific requirement for public bodies in relation to implementing the Equality Duty. In simple terms, it means integrating equality into the day to day working of the organisation, considering equality as part of everything we do.

Mainstreaming the Equality Duty has a number of benefits including:

  • Equality becomes part of the structures, behaviours, and culture of the organisation
  • The Met Office knows, and can demonstrate, how in carrying out its functions, it is promoting equality
  • Mainstreaming equality contributes to continuous improvement and improved performance

In line with specific duty requirements and best practice, the Met Office will provide:

  • An annual report on our progress to make the general Equality Duty integral to what we do
  • A range of employment monitoring information consistent with the Civil Service employment returns
  • Details of the progress made in gathering and using employment monitoring information to perform the general Equality Duty.

Why equality, diversity, and inclusion matters

Equality, diversity, and inclusion as we note in our strategy is not about legal compliance. It is about ensuring we remain an inclusive organisation with a diversity of staff and thought. We believe that when people feel accepted, included, and valued, they are more engaged, work more collaboratively with others and deliver better outcomes.

We have traditionally attracted around 10% non-UK nationals to work for us in our science profession and the ability to attract the best ideas from across the world has contributed to our award-winning success.

This diversity of thought has enabled us to be creative and develop bespoke solutions to complex real-world problems we face across the world. This has ranged from the use of novel observations from aircraft to utilising machine learning to make our weather forecasts more accurate.

Research by various organisations has revealed that:

  • Employing and engaging with people who have a range of different backgrounds and experiences increases creativity and leads to better problem solving and decision making
  • Diverse teams bring increased customer insight
  • Companies with diverse management teams have higher revenue
  • Gender diverse companies outperform their peers and can support better processing of data
  • Inclusive teams also outperform their peers in team based assessments and have improved performance

The Met Office aspires to be an industry leader in our behaviours and attitudes to equality, diversity, and inclusion.

Our Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Strategy

In January 2021, we launched our first Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (ED&I) Strategy, committing resources to ensure change would happen.

ED&I is beginning to be embedded into many of our business-as-usual processes but there will always be more we can do. In January 2022, we refreshed our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (ED&I) Strategy to reflect this and a change to one of our equality objectives.

Our ED&I governance structure

During 2021, we finalised our governance structures to support the delivery of our ED&I strategy and action plan.

  • The Met Office Board have oversight that ED&I activity is aligned to their strategic intent and meets their expectations.
  • The People Committee review and sign off proposed updates to the ED&I Strategy, ED&I action plan and policies.
  • The ED&I Committee meets monthly and has representation from all our directorates. It provides oversight on the delivery of the ED&I action plan; it is also a forum for information exchange on ED&I across the organisation and reports to People Committee.
  • The ED&I Working Group supports and facilitates the delivery of multi-year ED&I action-plans.
  • A range of staff networks are sponsored by members of our Executive and the leads of the staff networks coordinate through the Diversity Council to collaborate and influence best practice across the Met Office.
  • Our experienced small ED&I team support the delivery of the ED&I Strategy and the smooth running and operating of the Diversity Council, ED&I Working Group and ED&I Committee.

Key achievements from 1 April 2021 to 31 March 2022

In the reporting period 2021-2022, the Met Office like many employers has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and national lockdowns. Despite this challenge the organisation has:

  • Been awarded Investors in Diversity by the National Centre for Diversity
  • Seen our staff networks increase and develop
  • Delivered a range of Ally events to increase our staff’s knowledge and awareness, enabling them to be advocates for diversity and inclusion
  • Developed and implemented an ED&I action plan to support us in delivering our equality objectives
  • Increased our staff diversity declaration rates to 91% in March 2022 from 69% in March 2021
  • Launched a Wellbeing Strategy and Wellbeing Champions
  • Rolled out new Equality, Diversity and Inclusion training which supports changes in behaviour and approach
  • Used Equality, Diversity and Inclusion tools and networks to reshape how we returned to the office and how we are transforming the office environment
  • Created staff and recruitment diversity dashboards enabling us to monitor our staff and applicant profile
  • Built a People Framework through which we can encourage a greater diversity of staff and ensure our professions are inclusive
  • Examined the impact of COVID on our staff and offered a range of wellbeing initiatives
  • Shared our ED&I journey with partners
  • Had over 1300 external views on LinkedIn of our revised ED&I Strategy

Our Equality Objectives 2021-2024

In line with the Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties) Regulations 2011, we created equality objectives. Our initial equality objectives were agreed in January 2020 following staff consultation. In 2021 as we moved ED&I into a business-as-usual approach, there was an acknowledgment that Objective 1 needed to reflect that we deliver services to a wide range of customers. We therefore changed this objective in October 2021 from: ‘Engaging with and understanding the diversity of our people’ to ‘Engaging with and understanding the diversity of our people and those we serve’.

Our equality objectives are:

Objective 1 - Engaging with and understanding the diversity of our people and those we serve

Objective 2 - Advancing equality of opportunity

Objective 3 - Increasing representation of under represented groups at all levels

Objective 4 - Zero tolerance to bullying, harassment and discrimination.

Each objective has a detailed action plan that describes what actions we will take to ensure we are making progress.

Our action plan for 2022-23 is located in Appendix 1. Our action plan is fluid and adjusts to internal and external events, so ensuring that we focus on customer delivery and staff wellbeing as well as linking to our key performance indicators (KPIs).

Objective 1 – Engaging with and understanding the diversity of our people and those we serve

We will achieve this by:

  • Providing public information in the most appropriate and accessible way
  • Supporting diversity and inclusion initiatives and events with a co-created ED&I calendar
  • Encouraging our employees to share their diversity data • Having robust and sustainable staff networks and sponsored groups that we engage and collaborate with
  • Collecting and analysing our recruitment data (including sharing with Government) to understand the diversity of our applicants and map against national and local demographics
  • Ensuring that every interview panel checks with candidates if reasonable adjustments are required, prior to interviews taking place
  • Improving our understanding of our customers both commercially and UK communities
  • Examining and acting on any insight from the annual Civil Service People Survey

How will we know that we are achieving?

  • Our public information meets the Public Sector Accessibility Regulations 2018
  • Our customer communications are clear and easy to understand, meeting the needs of all our customers as assessed by improved Public Perception Survey data
  • Our diversity and inclusion initiatives and events have tangible measurable outcomes and support both our ED&I strategy but also the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy
  • Staff are confident to share their diversity data, knowing that it is used only to inform future work plans/legal reporting
  • Survey random samples of interview candidates to demonstrate compliance with our recruitment processes
  • Regular listening and engagement opportunities with our customers

What did we deliver in terms of actions in 2021-2022:

  • Monthly reporting of protected characteristic data from staff and applicants
  • We supported our staff to physically return to the workplace
  • We updated our website career pages
  • We developed staff networks guidance
  • We reviewed the work of our staff networks
  • We internally published our Equality Impact Assessments
  • We increased staff diversity declaration rates beyond our 80% target
  • We improved the provision and quality of ED&I information for staff and managers on our intranet
  • We improved our understanding of the diversity of staff employed in Unified Model (UN) Partnerships and their local ED&I laws

Objective 2 - Advancing equality of opportunity

We will achieve it by:

  • Participating in equality benchmarking to assess our performance but also learn from other organisations
  • Rolling out a mentoring programme
  • Ensuring more colleagues have the tools and skills to undertake equality impact assessments when we change or introduce new policies, practices, and strategies
  • Utilising our brand and media channels to create awareness of issues both Civil Service and we are tackling around ED&I
  • Engaging with under-represented communities

How will we know that we are achieving?

  • Reduction of under representation of women and ethnic minorities within the Met Office particularly at senior levels
  • Gender pay gap continues to close year on year
  • Disability pay gap analysis is undertaken and actions developed
  • Ethnicity pay gap analysis is undertaken and actions developed
  • Equality impact assessments are evidence-based and inform decision making and we have an increase in their creation
  • Both Civil Service and Met Office ED&I actions are understood and widely discussed and acted upon

What did we deliver in terms of actions in 2021-2022:

  • We obtained Investors in Diversity accreditation
  • We launched a Career Returners Programme
  • Our post COVID return to the office approach considered ED&I extensively
  • We made staff aware of why people use pronouns and how they could use them
  • We improved visibility of our ED&I external accreditations and approaches
  • We ensured that those supporting mental health issues or those raising disputes (our Mental Health First Aiders and Dignity and Respect at Work Team) have appropriate access to support
  • We looked at the impact COVID had on our staff to produce research publications and how this impacted on different protected characteristics groups • We refined our Equality Impact Assessment process.
  • We encouraged our networks to look at events from an intersectional lens i.e., staff or people do not just fit one protected characteristic
  • We developed clearer career pathways and professional skills frameworks
  • We have engaged more with partners in the public sector especially those in the Southwest through networking and knowledge sharing
  • We joined the Exeter Community Safety Partnership and are working to raise awareness of hate crime and how staff can report hate crimes
  • We are working with our staff networks to improve our workplace reasonable adjustments guidance

Objective 3 - Increasing representation of under-represented groups at all levels

We will achieve it by:

  • Maintaining Disability Confident Level 2 status and work toward gaining level 3 leader status
  • Ensuring that our recruitment and selection processes are fully inclusive • Analysing our recruitment and staffing data and mapping against campaigns and national and local demographics
  • Mapping where our applicants are coming from and if these are areas of the country and/or communities which would not traditionally be represented by the Civil Service or STEM careers
  • Working with Civil Service, Industry and Profession partners to address under representation

How will we know that we are achieving?

  • Our workforce diversity reflects the UK working age population
  • Candidate data will show an improvement in the diversity of applicants
  • Our apprenticeship intake shows a diversity of applicants

What did we deliver in terms of actions in 2021-2022:

  • We started to compare our recruitment data to Civil Service and national statistics
  • We created a Recruitment Prospectus
  • We changed our software so we can advertise wider, faster and across more channels.
  • We adapted our flexible working policy to encourage applications from a wider geographical area
  • Our communications team expanded the range of diverse imagery for use by staff
  • We used gender coding software to check our adverts for gender bias, so to improve the diversity of applicants

Objective 4 - Zero tolerance to bullying, harassment and discrimination

We will achieve it by:

Tackling bullying, harassment, and discrimination

Building confidence in employees to challenge inappropriate behaviours

Raising awareness of what is inappropriate behaviour

How will we know that we are achieving?

  • Employees will be confident to speak out
  • Bullying, harassment, and discrimination related cases drop over time
  • Improvements in our discrimination and harassment scores in the annual people survey
  • That our approach is a zero tolerance to bullying, harassment and discrimination is known and understood by the public and partners

What did we deliver in terms of actions in 2021-2022:

  • As part of National Anti-Bullying Week in November, we started the week of internal communications and engagement with Odd Socks Day to raise awareness of bullying across the UK and the impact this can have on a person
  • We created new digital behaviour etiquette guidance
  • We shared stories about bullying, harassment, and discrimination with staff so they could understand issues and impacts

Our staff networks play a crucial role in our work to embed equality, diversity, and inclusion throughout the Met Office, working with us to:

  • create a healthy and inclusive workplace, where people feel like they belong
  • improve our working environment by providing advice and guidance especially in relation to equality impact assessments
  • raise awareness and understanding through activities, events, training, and sharing their stories through our ‘Walking in my Shoes’ articles on our intranet, which always receive in excess of 1000 views.

We have 13 staff networks representing a number of the protected characteristics. Each network is run by its members (‘bottom up’ organised), and they all work slightly differently. In 2021, we produced guidance for setting up and maintaining a staff network. We are currently reviewing how networks are supported by their network sponsor and how we can work to maximise their impact.

We also have a number of sponsored groups which support inclusion and wellbeing.

A representative from each network attends the Diversity Council, providing an update on network activities but also sharing network concerns and issues, any concerns and issues are fed up to the ED&I Committee.

Staff network highlights 

As part of developing this report, we are now asking staff networks to report annually about their activities. Some of their highlights from 2021 include:

  • 428 employees aee involved in the networks (this is 20% of all staff)
  • 2 new networks ADHD and a Women’s Network)
  • 80 colleagues attended a generic menopause workshop
  • 3 Network leads nominated for outstanding colleague in our Staff Awards for Excellence
  • Autism Network is a runner up in our Staff Awards for Excellence
  • 45 managers attended a line-managers menopause workshop
  • 1 Network lead is the winner of outstanding colleague in our Staff Awards for Excellence
  • #purplelightup to celebrate UN International Day of Persons with Disabilities, the Met Office HQ in Exeter was lit up purple
  • 931 people are members of staff network yammer pages

Other key activities the networks have undertaken:

  • Equality Impact Assessment for ‘Future Normal’ – how and where we work
  • Reviewing training pilots for Better Together (our new ED&I behavioural changing course) and Equality Impact Assessments
  • Regular network meetings and ‘Spotlight’ sessions on topics of choice
  • Testing the new intranet site to meet accessibility standards
  • Recruiting Wellbeing Champions
  • Providing support and advice to network members especially returning to the office but also working from home

Our staff networks have the opportunity to collaborate with other Civil Service Networks and staff are able to join wider networks, which is especially important for networks that we do not have internally such as the Civil Service Deaf and Hard of Hearing Network (CSDHHN) and Civil Service Eating Disorder Network (CSEDN).

Sponsored Groups

A number of our employees volunteer to be:

Mental Health First Aiders

We currently have 37 Mental Health First Aiders providing information and a signposting service for our staff and managers. Our first aiders are trained to recognise the signs and symptoms of common mental health issues, provide first aid support and signpost where necessary.

DRAW (Dignity and Respect at Work) Advisors

This is a long running scheme in the Met Office; our nine volunteers are trained to provide a confidential and informal service for any colleagues who are experiencing harassment or bullying, listening, and signposting to other sources of support and advice.

Wellbeing Champions

In launching our Wellbeing Strategy in late 2021, we have started to develop a network of Wellbeing Champions; this group of volunteers encourage colleagues’ conversations around the directorates on wellbeing. The champions also encourage participation in wellbeing initiatives and work with other networks to promote wellbeing campaigns.

Ally Community

Our Ally Community was launched in early 2021 and is steadily growing. It is a space where staff come together to learn and celebrate diversity but also understand some of the challenges other colleagues or communities may face and use their role as allies to challenge perceptions, stereotypes, and bias. In the last year, the Ally community have held 9 virtual events including:

  • We are what we eat: migration and food in Britain
  • Learn about ADHD
  • LGBT+ awareness
  • Internationals in the UK
  • cultural awareness
  • Autism Awareness

Returners Career Programme

Returning to work after a prolonged personal absence or life-shock can be incredibly hard. In the summer of 2021, the Returners Career Programme pilot was developed. The programme is designed to upskill and provide career boosting opportunities at a time when normal career paths are disrupted. Employees returning from a prolonged absence can access coaching and undertake a three-month internal placement with another Met Office Team or create a short-term project that has clear outcomes.

Case Study about returning to work

“I knew from my first maternity leave how difficult a return to work can be, so the second time around me and my partner shared our parental leave, I took 9 months, and he took 3 months. I applied to be a visiting scientist at Monash University. Writing a business case based on a science project that I knew could be productive in the 3-month period. I also had the opportunity to work at the Bureau of Meteorology, this boosted my links and gave me a greater understanding of their organisation. Being away from the normal office environment made the transition back to work much gentler. From a mental health perspective, it made the experience of returning from maternity leave much more positive and once back in Exeter, I could talk about my new work experience rather than feel I’d been out of the loop for a year.”

The programme is still in its infancy, but programme information has been viewed more than 260 times and two people have accessed the coaching element of this programme.

People Survey

The Met Office issues an annual People Survey, which is part of the wider Civil Service People Survey. Once survey results are known, our managers and leaders work within teams to build on what we are doing well, also to understand and improve those areas which aren’t as strong as we would like them to be. Action plans are developed and discussed regularly across the organisation.

The People Survey helps us to understand how we compare in key areas of employee experience against other Civil Service organisations.

327,388 people from 101 civil service organisations completed to the 2021 People Survey. In the Met Office, 1593 staff responded giving us a response rate of 71%, the Civil Service as a whole had a response rate of 62%.

Results from the 2021 People Survey are published on gov.uk The survey is designed to measure employee engagement via the following themes:

  • my work
  • organisational objectives and purpose
  • my manager
  • my team
  • learning and development
  • inclusion and fair treatment
  • resources and workload
  • pay and benefits
  • leadership and managing change

Inclusion and Fair Treatment

Our median score for this theme in 2021 was 83% slightly above the Civil Service as a whole (82%) but slightly lower than our score in 2020 (84%).

In 2021, 7% of Civil Servants indicated that they have been discriminated against at work in the past 12 months. In the Met Office, in the same period, 6% of our staff indicated that they had been discriminated against.

In 2021, 7% of Civil Servants indicated that they have been bullied and/or harassed at work in the past 12 months. In the Met Office, in the same period, 5% of our staff indicated that they had been discriminated against.

We are working with our Staff Networks, Trade Union and staff to address issues raised about discrimination and bullying. Our 4th equality objective; Zero tolerance to bullying, harassment and discrimination aligns with both the Declaration on Government Reform and the recently published Civil Service Diversity & Inclusion Strategy: 2022 to 2025 and we have set ourselves actions over the next year to reduce bullying, harassment and discrimination.

In addition, over the past year we have started to address working patterns and location concerns through our Future Normal project. Our People Directorate are also working to improve awareness and understanding around disability, mental health, and gender identity.

In relation to bullying concerns, work has been undertaken to emphasize our new Organisation Values and existing Civil Service Values and Standards of Behaviour to improve management capabilities and clarify communication expectations.

Recommendations from the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion team who are exploring wider Civil Service response to this issue, will be reviewed and actioned.

We recognise it is hard to totally remove all instances of bullying, harassment, and discrimination from the environment we operate in. For example, we interact with many customers, the public, staff travel and visit public places across the globe.

We will do all in our power to minimise exposure of our staff to such events and ensure staff feel confident to report such issues if they occur and that they will be addressed

Future Normal – our new way of working

As an organisation we were keen to look at the way we worked and ensure it aligned to best practice.

The Future Normal project team was created from stakeholders across the office in May 2020.

The disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic forced us to make rapid changes to the way we work, whilst continuing to be driven by our purpose. Keeping staff safe and able to thrive was at our core.

The aim has been to make the Met Office an even greater place to work, whilst working towards our Net Zero intentions. We’re committed to supporting each other and our differing needs.

We have engaged throughout the change process with our staff and networks to consider what the changes mean in practice for our staff. This included the production of a full Equality Impact Assessment which has been used to shape further Equality Impact Assessments on subsequent floorplate design work.

This impact assessment advances equality of opportunity between people who share a relevant protected characteristic and those who do not by making visible issues which previously had not been considered. It identified solutions for managers and those tasked with the change processes enabling changes to occur in a timely manner.

We are Equality Street

With a membership of just under 400 employees, our Equality Street yammer page encourages conversations on equality, diversity, and inclusion, in the last year, there has been a huge number of conversations, but some of the highlights include:

  • Sharing learning via podcasts, events, books, and TV programmes
  • Improving our interview process and how we can make it more inclusive
  • Exploring the experience of being a victim of hate crime and how to report
  • Impact of violence towards women and girls
  • Awareness days, weeks, and months
  • Religious events and celebrations
  • Say my name – pronouncing names correctly

Met Net 3 – our new intranet site

We are currently working towards launching our new intranet. Our Accessibility & Disability Staff Network have been pivotal in ensuring that this new site is fully accessible.

COP26

As well as supporting Government with our science to inform decision making around climate action, we hosted an ED&I focussed event ‘What women bring to climate science’ in our Science Pavilion at COP26 in a session co-designed and led by the chair of our ‘Women in Climate’ network. Our Chief Executive (Professor Penny Endersby) along with the IPCC (Ko Barrett) and WMO (Dr Elena Manaenkova), Fundación MERI (Agustina Lo Bianco) discussed what women bring to climate science and how we can reach gender equality and increase diversity in science leadership.

Better Together

In September, we launched ‘Better Together’ an interactive workshop. This training uses a series of short films to unravel individual stories about exclusion in the workplace which potentially, could happen to any of us. The design of this new workshop moves away from the traditional legal focus of equality to one focusing on building an inclusive culture. Since October, 235 employees have participated in the workshop and feedback is that the course is making people change their approach.

Wellbeing

In the autumn of 2021, we launched our Wellbeing Strategy, as we want to create an environment that supports and encourages a healthy balance between work and home life and develop a culture where we talk openly about our challenges and where we can find appropriate support. To deliver this we are:

  • Developing the skills of our Mental Health First Aiders who work alongside our new network of Wellbeing Champions
  • Developing wellbeing learning opportunities through self-help

As part of our wellbeing offer, we offer a range of resources including:

  • Connect 5 - a programme designed to increase confidence and skills of line managers in having conversations about mental health and wellbeing
  • An Employee Assistance Programme – which provides services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and we have commissioned an improved offering from 1st April 2022
  • Wellbeing workshop for all employees and an online mental wellbeing at Work course
  • Created a Wellbeing Hub

Our achievements

Mindful Employer

The Met Office signed the Charter for Employers positive about mental health in 2015 . The Mindful employer initiative is aimed at increasing awareness of mental health at work and providing support for businesses in recruiting and retaining staff.

Disability Confident Employer

We are proud to be a Disability Confident Employer . Disability Confident is a government scheme designed to help us recruit and retain disabled people for their skills and talents . The scheme ensures that those with disabilities and long-term health conditions are guaranteed an interview when applying for vacancies within our organisation when they meet the minimum skill criteria requirements for the role . We are soon to begin our journey to become a Disability Confident Leader, working with colleagues at Business Disability Forum . This reiterates our commitment to diversify our workforce and encourage and retain people with disabilities and/or long term health conditions within the Met Office .

Investors in Diversity

In October 2021, we were awarded an Investors in Diversity award by the National Centre for Diversity . The Investors in Diversity Award is a recognised national equality standard providing organisations in all sectors with a bespoke approach for improving Fairness, Respect, Equality, Diversity, Inclusion and Engagement (FREDIE) practices in the workplace . Integral to the award is feedback designed to help guide us so that we can continue to progress and improve our diversity and inclusion work . It was encouraging to see that a number of the recommendations in the feedback we received had already been identified internally as actions . We decided to use Investors in Diversity as they allowed us to focus on all protected characteristics and enabled us to look at all areas of the organisation.

Our diversity data

We encourage our employees to share their diversity data. This helps us understand the make-up of our organisation and how representative we are against the UK working age population and in the southwest where our headquarters is located.

Data is collected through self-declaration via our People Hub System, whilst we encourage employees to share their information, employees can use the ‘prefer not to say’ or leave blank. This does mean we do not have the whole story about our organisation’s make-up but will keep working hard in the year ahead to encourage more employees to share their data.

Diversity data headlines 

  • Increased our staff diversity declaration rates1 to 91% in March 2022 from 69% in March 2021
  • Directorate staff diversity data declaration rates range from 86 to 95%
  • Part Time Full Time split: 83% of our staff are full-time and 17% part-time
  • Sex at Birth: 62% of our staff are male and 38% female at birth (HMRC data)
  • Gender identity: 52% of our staff identify as male, 35% as female, 6% do not wish to declare or declare another gender identity and 7% are unknown
  • Religion and Belief: 50% of our staff have no religion, 25% are Christian, 14% do not want to declare, 2% are other religion and belief and 8% are unknown
  • Race/Ethnicity: 82% of our staff are white, 6% do not wish to declare and 4% are minority ethnicities with 6% unknown
  • Sexual orientation: 74% of are staff identify as straight/heterosexual, 12% do not wish to declare, 5% are LGBQ+ and 8% are unknown
  • Total number of employees is 2236 (as at 1 March 2022)

What does our data tell us? 

  • Our 2021 People Survey indicated that 20% of staff had a health condition or illness lasting or expected to last 12 months or more. This aligns to our Investors in Diversity 2021 survey which indicated around 19% of staff had had a disability or a long-term health condition
  • The largest grouping of conditions relates to mental health conditions or illness. This is supported by our employee relations data. 
  • In any year we have around 12% of female staff on maternity leave 
  • We have a strong community of neurodiverse staff, the proportion of which are estimated by some in this community to be as high as 20% in some areas.

Further work to do on our data

We know there is much more we can do with data about our staff including:

  • Improving our diversity data, so encouraging employees to feel confident about sharing their data rather than prefer not to say
  • Being able to track the proportion of staff who have workplace reasonable adjustments, our new guidance and processes being developed should help with this
  • Analysing end of year performance markings by protected characteristic
  • Publishing data on staff accessing learning and development opportunities We are now tracking (since October 2021) ED&I information in recruitment and will be in a better position next year to provide an accurate breakdown of applicants e.g. who apply, are short-listed, and appointed

Gender Pay Gap 2021

We are required by law to report annually on our gender pay gap. The gender pay gap shows the difference in the average pay between all men and women in a workforce and is different to equal pay which focuses on the pay differences between men and women who carry out the same jobs.

The 2021 gender pay gap figures show a mean gender pay gap of 6.5% and median gender pay gap of 4.0%. Our gender pay gap is reducing overall. The mean gender pay gap has consistently reduced each year from 11.7% in 2017 to 6.5% in 2021.

We have seen a decrease in the median gender pay gap following a slight increase in 2020, so from 9.9% in 2017 to 5.7% in 2020 to 4% in 2021. In addition, the median pay gap at Grade 6 and Grade 7 has now been closed (the median hourly rate is identical for both male and female staff, which shows we are progressing in the right direction).

The Met Office Board and our Executive Board

Our Met Office Board is led by an independent, non executive Chair. The Board’s primary responsibility is developing the long-term strategy of the Met Office.

The makeup of the board is 8 males and 6 females (43%) This meets and exceeds the Hampton-Alexander target of 33% female to 77% male for FTSE100 companies.

Our Executive Board provides day-to-day leadership, direction and management of the Met Office in order to ensure successful delivery of the aims, objectives and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). The makeup of our Executive Board is 7 males and 3 females.

 Appendix 1: ED&I Actions 2022 - 2023 

Objective 1 - Engaging with and understanding the diversity of our people and those we serve

  • Improving workplace adjustments guidance and processes to ensure that adjustments are made in a more timely way for all staff
  • Expanding the usage of our ED&I calendar so we can raise awareness both internally and externally of key diversity dates
  • Mapping our UK customers to identify any gaps in engagement
  • Reducing the number of staff who tick ‘prefer not to say’ on our diversity monitoring data by 10% through increased communication as to why the data matters, and improving trust in messages around anonymity

Objective 2 - Advancing equality of opportunity

  • Ensure our ED&I action plan aligns to actions identified in the Civil Service Diversity & Inclusion Strategy 2022-2025
  • Mapping equality charters and ED&I awards to enter, in line with new Civil Service D&I guidance
  • Reviewing our Science Progressions processes and talent management approaches ensuring they meet best practice and both the Met Office and Government Diversity & Inclusion Strategies
  • Increase understanding and awareness of gender identity with the development of guidance for supporting trans staff in the workplace
  • Supporting our managers’ understanding of disability through access to Business Disability Forum resources and services
  • Work with Business Disability Forum to achieve Disability Confident Leader award
  • Exploring participation in the Carer Confident benchmarking scheme • Providing information to our suppliers and partners to ensure they support our ED&I Strategy

Objective 3 - Increasing representation of under represented groups at all levels

  • Explore work experience opportunities for candidates with a disability or long term health condition
  • Analysing our staff and recruitment data against the UK working age population and identifying subsequent actions based on the data
  • Random sampling of recruitment interview panels to ensure diversity of panels
  • Work with Business Disability Forum to ensure up to 5 of our key policies and procedures are disability inclusive

Objective 4 - Zero tolerance to bullying, harassment and discrimination

  • Develop and implement a learning pathway for DRAW volunteers
  • Investigate a suitable ‘report and support’ tool to enable people to call out inappropriate behaviour
  • Use Anti-Bullying Week to highlight the work of DRAW and also promote zero-tolerance to bullying, harassment and discrimination
  • Review our Dignity at Work guidance to ensure that sexual harassment is included in-line with Equality & Human Rights Commission recommendations
  • Identify the actions to be taken to meet the new Civil Service Bullying and Harassment standard requirements
  • Explore if our website can be amended to direct victims of abuse to appropriate support pathways