The BEIS D&I Team have demonstrated excellent departmental leadership on mainstreaming D&I not just across HR functions, but across departmental policy making. Their skill and expertise as D&I practitioners is well recognised – by Cabinet Office senior leaders such as Rupert McNeil and Alex Chisholm, in addition by across the HR profession – and their work has had an immense positive impact on the department’s culture, processes and D&I outcomes. 

The BEIS D&I team are evidence driven, and recently worked with Ernst & Young to facilitate a D&I maturity assessment, consulting staff across the organisation to understand areas of strength and improvement. This led to the development of the department’s new and ambitious new D&I Strategy which was launched in April.

Having recognised the stark outcomes facing BAME and disabled groups in BEIS, they convinced the Permanent Secretary to focus D&I priorities on these areas, leading to publication of the department’s first Race and Disability Action Plans: two comprehensive and ambitious strategies containing wide-ranging and targeted actions to tackle systemic and individual barriers.

The team have worked to embed D&I across the organisation, securing resource to appoint 0.5 FTE D&I leads in each Group, who advise DGs and drive D&I outcomes at Group level through local level action plans. One to one conversations with SCS has supported the development and KPI-setting for their D&I objectives. 

The team have also done an extensive campaign to embed Public Sector Equality Duty across all BEIS policy making, through training, blogs and a dedicated toolkit. This has led to an exponential increase in BEIS teams considering equalities impact during the policy-making process.

Overall, their commitment, skill and value add has led the D&I team to be recognised across the organisation by colleagues from all grades, including the Permanent Secretary.