Some thoughts on Diversity in Public Service Leadership

It will come as no great surprise that the NLC team spends a lot of time thinking about the diversity of public sector leaders. When we look at the statistics it’s clear that there’s a problem, and it’s leading us to consider the practical ways we can help address it. We think we can make a difference, but we can’t do it alone and there are no quick fixes.

Let’s take a moment to consider the evidence around two elements of diversity — racial and gender representation. Around 13% of the country’s population comes from a minority ethnic background, and just over half are women. Sadly this reality is not yet mirrored in the diversity of our senior workforce. In the private sector, just 3.3% of the FTSE 100’s top leaders come from a minority ethnic background. Indeed, a year ago The Independent announced that there are more FTSE CEOs called Steve than there are ethnic minority CEOs. Women fare little better, with just six of them among the FTSE 100’s CEOs. The public sector’s performance on these measures is mixed. Just 2–6% of public service senior leaders (variation exists between sectors) are from ethnic minorities, a worrying figure when we consider how vital it is that our workforces reflect the societies we serve. The picture appears to be improving for female representation, although it is hard to find reliable, up to date data that applies across all sectors. There’s clearly much work to do and it will need a lot more than everyone nodding sagely and agreeing that it’s a problem.

So far so preachy — but how does the NLC stack up against these facts? What are we doing about this issue and what are we planning to do? The short answer is that we’re doing ok in comparison with these disappointing wider stats and we intend to do better. Of the top-level public service leaders nominated by their sectors to attend the first flagship NLC programme in 2019/20, 7% are from an ethnic minority and 45% are women. Our aim is to work towards proper representation among public service leaders across all protected characteristics. Not only do we want to see these figures improve, we also hope to see meaningful change across the public sector more widely.

We want to help the public sector understand why women and ethnic minorities are so underrepresented in the top jobs. We will commission research that will develop a robust picture of diversity in senior public service leadership, and assess the current provision of support for senior leaders from under-represented groups. We want to understand more about our most senior leaders, their backgrounds, their unique journeys into leadership and the barriers they’ve faced. Once we understand the issues in more detail, we can work with sector groups to co-develop some practical solutions. In the meantime, we will continue to work with our partners across the public sector to ensure that our programme cohorts reflect diversity in all its forms, across all protected characteristics, not just gender and ethnicity. This needs your help — if you know some talented CEOs from under-represented groups then please introduce them to us. We will continue to invite diverse speakers to our events and the programme and to crowdsource the reading material we recommend to make sure it reflects the diversity of the populations we serve. We will continue to make every effort to challenge our own biases in delivering the NLC’s objectives through seeking feedback from a wide range of people. And we will ensure that the NLC team remains as diverse as possible, in every respect. We need our people to think laterally and we know from experience that diverse teams always find better solutions.

On another important diversity criterion — cognitive diversity — it’s what we’re all about. Cognitive diversity is achieved by bringing together people with diverse perspectives, experiences and skills who approach complex issues from different paradigms. People that share some characteristics but who operate in different contexts. The NLC is helping to foster greater cognitive diversity in decision-making by connecting top leaders from different sectors, professions and regions, who often work in wildly different cultures and contexts. We create the conditions that enable them to address some of society’s most complex and difficult problems together, bringing their diverse backgrounds, perspectives and thinking styles to bear on these knotty, often intractable issues.

We’re a very new organisation and our thinking on these matters is continually evolving. We want our ideas to come from a wide range of sources as possible, so we’d love to hear your thoughts. If you have a suggestion on how we might take this critical agenda forward, please do let us know at NLC@CabinetOffice.gov.uk