Mahere Kanorau, Ōritetanga me te Whai Wāhitanga Diversity, equity, and inclusion plan 2024 and 2025 (2-year)

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is about reflecting and valuing the communities that Te Kawa Mataaho | Public Service Commission is here to serve, to build trust and confidence and improve services and outcomes for New Zealanders.

When we attract, retain, recognise, value, and develop the skills and experiences of people across all dimensions of diversity (e.g., gender, ethnicity, disability, rainbow, age), there are multiple benefits, including:

• Diversity of thought to better reflect, understand and contribute to policy, services and outcomes for New Zealand communities.
• Improved ability to engage with stakeholders, Iwi leaders, civil society and community leaders to reflect their perspectives into our work and advice.
• More diverse and inclusive leadership which leads to better quality decision-making, influence and leadership of the public sector, and strengthening organisational performance.
• A good employer and work environment which is fair, equitable and inclusive and enables our people to thrive and perform at their best.
• Lower gender and ethnic pay gaps.

The foundations for our 2022-2023 DEI plan were based on commitments and work that were already underway, and from engagement with target representative groups, people leaders and employees.

From 2024 onwards we will be building on our learning and achievement to consolidate and progress our DEI aspirations.

We will continue to:

• Support our leaders to develop inclusive practice and build overall DEI capability
• Work with others across the system to meet the wider system priorities
• Publish our current state with clear targets and actions
• Improve data collection and transparent, regular reporting and analysis
• Engage with people regularly and listening to feedback along the way
• Review regularly and evolving our plans based on quality data, lessons learned and people’s feedback

Our plan is to become more:

1. Diverse: A more diverse workforce and leadership that reflects, values and understands New Zealand society.
2. Equitable: A fairer workplace with equitable pay and people practices.
3. Inclusive: A workplace culture where everyone feels included, valued and comfortable being themselves at work.

There are several internal and system-wide DEI goals and commitments for us to track and meet. Our DEI plan brings together all our DEI activities and commitments into one easy-to-follow plan, for everyone to see and track.

• The Public Service Act 2020 (specifically sections 73 and 75) which covers promoting diversity and inclusiveness and good employer requirements
• Our vision of a leading edge, unified Public Service that serves Aotearoa New Zealand and its people
• Mahere Tāngata | People Plan 2022-25 for Te Kawa Mataaho | Public Service Commission which has a focus area to promote diversity, equity and inclusiveness
• Te Angitū, our Māori Capability Strategy for the Commission
• Papa Pounamu, the work programme that brings together diversity and inclusion initatives across the Public Service
• Kia Toipoto, the Public Service pay gaps action plan

• Achievements and learning from our 2022-23 DEI Plan.
• Information from focus groups and individual submissions from people across the
  Commission.
• Information from other data sources e.g., Te Taunaki, and workforce data.

During 2022-23 we:

• Supported capability development, career progression and promotion by refreshing our performance, development and progression policy and enhancing our core development offerings.
• Improved our processes to support recruitment, onboarding and offboarding.
• Enhanced our reporting to provide improved workforce data to decision-makers.
• Established a Leaders’ Community of Practice to connect leaders with our strategy, strengthen leadership practices and share learning on applied people leadership skills.
• Ran in-house training sessions on technology and tools which provided employees with resources for collaboration that supports flexible and hybrid working.
• Increased the diversity in the Commission’s workforce with increases in Pacific, Asian and other ethnicities since 2019.
• Reduced our average Pacific people’s pay gap from 14.6 percent at 30 June 2022 to 10.5 percent at 30 June 2023.
• Confirmed that we do not have a pay gap for Māori employees.
• Embedded Mana Aki cultural competence training, attaining a completion rate of over 90 percent.
• Te Rōpū Angitū helped champion the strategy, organise cultural events, celebrate good practice and support wider culture change across all our teams.
• Built our foundational Māori cultural competency with 40 percent of employees having completed level one and two training and the introduction of level three.
• Embedded the Wall Walk® education programme to raise our people’s awareness of Aotearoa New Zealand’s unique history of Māori Crown relations. Seventy five percent of our people, including fifty percent of our leaders have now completed a Wall Walk® workshop.
• Strengthened our support for our Employee led Networks (ELNs) through executive sponsorship and access to organisational funding and supporting ELN-hosted events such as Pink Shirt Day, Intersex Awareness Day and the International Transgender Day of Visibility, Eid, and Pacific language weeks.
• Participated in the Women in Public Service Summit and the Cross Agency Rainbow Conference.