What is HSE doing about diversity?

HSE is committed to the health and safety at work of all people in Britain. We embrace the diversity of Britain's workforce and appreciate the roles we can play in eliminating discrimination and promoting equality of opportunity.

All people's health and safety in the workplace must be protected, whatever their race, gender, disability, age, religion or sexual orientation. It must be protected whatever their background and outlook on life.

To be successful, therefore, HSE needs to be an organisation which really understands the diverse society in which it operates, which is clear about the impact of its policies and operations on that diverse society, and which confidently conducts its business with sensitivity and respect for people's different needs, vulnerabilities and perspectives on life.

To do this HSE will promote equality and tackle discrimination by:

• designing our interventions through an equality impact assessment tool;
• improve communications when reaching out to the diverse range of people and organisations we serve by:
  • providing a communication tool that helps HSE staff to understand the importance of the diverse audiences they are working with and the potential barriers to communication;
  • Responding positively to requests for alternative formats.
• building and making better use of research to provide information about diversity issues;
• where necessary, improving the diversity of our advisory bodies and our stakeholder networking.

HSE will do this best if we ourselves reflect that diverse society - if the make-up of our staff at all levels reflects the society in which it operates. Encouraging and valuing diversity amongst our own staff is therefore key to our success and effectiveness, and one of our core values. We want to be a fair and inclusive organisation, respecting what each person brings to our business and recognising the value it adds.

To promote this, HSE has a series of staff network groups for age, disability, gender, race and sexual orientation. Each network has a senior manager as its champion.

To aid staff in their work, HSE has put in place an equality impact assessment tool to raise awareness of diversity issues and we are seeing the integration of equality considerations in our day-to-day business.

HSE has a Diversity Steering Group, chaired at Senior Management Team level, to steer and drive diversity in HSE. The steering group includes our diversity champions (for race, gender, disability and sexual orientation), representatives of our staff networks and Trade Unions.

The Diversity Steering Group also monitors HSE's progress on agreed diversity priorities.

• HSE's diversity priorities for 2009-2010

As a Public Authority and service provider, HSE has a duty to prepare and publish equality schemes for disability, gender and race showing how it intends to fulfil the general and specific duties and setting out its equality objectives. Details of HSE's equality schemes can be accessed using the links below:

• Disability & Gender Equality Scheme [189KB]
• Race Equality Scheme [115KB]
• Examples of outreach work