Contents
- Executive summary
- Background
- WDES in 2022 and 2023
- Consultation
- Conclusion
- Recommendations
- WDES data table
1 Executive summary
This report provides an overview of the work required for RDaSH to meet its contractual requirements of the workforce disability equality standard (WDES) by promoting equality, diversity and inclusion for its disabled colleagues, gathering data from the electronic staff records system (ESR), recruitment, disciplinary and training datasets and the national staff survey as of 31 March 2023.
The data and statistics used in this report reflect workforce metrics, NHS staff survey metrics and a board re-presentation metric for the past three years.
It is evident from the data collected that there are disparities in the experience of disabled colleagues compared with non-disabled colleagues.
Comparing the 2023 WDES data against the data collected in 2022 has highlighted several areas which have improved and likewise deterioration in several areas which are a cause for concern which indicates that we still have a long way to go to eliminate the stigma and improve and enhance the experience of disabled colleagues within our workforce.
The EDI workstream and DAWN will co-produce an action plan that addresses areas of the WDES that require further improvement and submitted to the Executive Management team (EMT) and the board of directors for approval and support for implementation.
2 Background
This report states the process followed for data collection, analysis, and co-production of the action plan and highlights the areas of focus for 2023. This will enable RDaSH to demonstrate progress against the metrics of disability equality and introduce new measures and practices, which will help, improve workforce disability equality.
The WDES has been designed to improve the representation and experience of our disabled colleagues or colleagues who have a long-term health condition.
Since 2013, the earliest comparable year, up to the start of the pandemic (March 2020) the general trend in disability employment had been positive. There had been strong growth in the number and rate of disabled people in employment and a narrowing of the gap between the rate of disabled and non-disabled people in employment (the disability employment gap).
The pandemic initially reversed these trends with year-on-year changes showing a fall in the disability employment rate and a widening of the disability employment gap in 2020. During 2021 and the first half of 2022 the rate and gap started to return to near pre-pandemic levels.
However, the latest data for July to September 2022 shows the disability employment rate has fallen on the year with the non-disabled employment rate rising. This means that the disability employment gap is now at its widest point since 2018.
There were 4.9m disabled people in employment in the UK in July to September 2022. This is an increase of 240,000 on the year and an overall increase of 2.0m since the same quarter in 2013. The disability employment rate was 52.6% in July to September 2022, compared to 82.5% for non-disabled people.
The NHS constitution has a specific section that refers to the rights of colleagues. It recognised that it is the commitment, professionalism and dedication of colleagues working for the benefit of the people the NHS serves which really make the difference. High quality care requires high quality workplaces, with commissioners and providers aiming to be employers of choice. The workforce disability equality standard (WDES) is important because research shows that a motivated, included and valued workforce helps to deliver high quality patient care, increased patient satisfaction and improved patient safety.
The implementation of the WDES enables the trust to better understand the experiences of its disabled colleagues. It supports positive change for existing employees and enables a more inclusive environment for disabled people working in the trust, it also allows us to identify good practice and compare performance regionally and by type of trust.
Over the past three years it has been exceedingly challenging for all colleagues having to work through the pandemic and adjusting to new ways of working and finding a new normal post pandemic. Acknowledging this is important to fully appreciate the hard work and dedication of those committed to drive this agenda forward which has influenced the improvements made during unusual and challenging circumstances.
Whilst there are still areas which the trust need to focus on it is now more than ever that we need to embed disability equality into the trust to support our colleagues who are disproportionately impacted by the challenges post pandemic.
3 WDES in 2022 and 2023
Please note, for all metrics we have highlighted both positive and negative trends that are statistically significant plus or minus 0.3%, anything below 0.3% is considered static, denoted by positive, negative, and static respectively.
Metric 1, percentage of disabled colleagues in the workforce broken down by AFC band
Pay bands | 2021 total disabled |
2022 total disabled |
2023 total disabled |
---|---|---|---|
bands 1 to 4 | 5.6% static | 6% positive | 6.5% positive |
bands 5 to 7 | 3.8% positive | 4.7% positive | 6.7% positive |
bands 8a to 8b | 5.3% static | 2.4% negative | 3.4% positive |
8c to 9 and VSM | 10% positive | 12.5% positive | 16.7% positive |