Diversity and Inclusion

Improving Diversity and Inclusion has multiple societal and financial benefits, through improving attraction of new talent, to retaining our in house talent, and developing an inclusive culture where everyone feels safe, visible and can bring their best selves to work. A diverse workforce will ensure the decisions we make are considerate of the many different perspectives and lived experiences of both our staff and the general public. Therefore, our D&I work threads through all of the Government Security Profession workstrands to ensure we create the right working environment.

Our Strategy 

The profession published its D&I Strategy in 2020 founded on the following key principles to:

Design every aspect of security policy to be diverse and inclusive by default. We will challenge ourselves and our peers with any assumption to the contrary.

Ensure our processes are fair, transparent and inclusive. We will encourage feedback, enable challenge and respond to our users and customers.

Continue to innovate and amend our strategy and D&I actions based on what does and doesn’t work for the wider security profession.

Build a brilliant place to work by ensuring that everyone can bring their whole self to work everyday.

Enable the free flow of ideas across the Function that drive forward innovation through building strong networks, championing ideas and working collaboratively.

The Strategy is supported by action plans, the latest of which was published in 2023.

Challenge Forum

Diversity and inclusion is an ongoing commitment for the Government Security Profession. The Challenge Forum has been developed to bring the challenge that we need to our profession, bringing together a dynamic group of talented and engaged security professionals who are committed to supporting the transformation of the Government Security Function.

As Government security professionals we have a responsibility to ensure that our work embraces diversity; our policies, practices and procedures must be considerate of the people we work for and with. Inclusion elevates us all, and the Challenge Forum is an essential resource to help teams achieve this. The Challenge Forum brings together a dynamic group of talented and engaged security individuals with a variety of backgrounds and experience who are committed to supporting the transformation of the Government Security Profession. Challenge Forum members can bring new perspectives, diversity of thought and challenge into work carried out across the security function. In addition, they can be used to evaluate policies and programmes with a clear eye on diversity impacts. 

There are 4 ways you can use the Challenge Forum to support your work;

1. Bring pieces of work to the Challenge Forum to be discussed in one or multiple meetings
2. Invite a select number of Challenge Forum members into your teams and working groups to provide input into an area or piece of work
3. Invite Challenge Forum members to form part of a decision making body or leadership meeting
4. Consult with Challenge Forum members to support completion of Equality Impact Assessments (required as part of the Public Sector Equality Duty)

This list is not exhaustive so if there are any other ways you would like to use the forum, please let us know. 

Please get in touch gsp@cabinetoffice.gov.uk if you would like to speak about how you may be able to start using the forum. 

Diversity and Inclusion Network

In 2020/21 GSP set up a Diversity and Inclusion network to: 

• build connections between individuals involved in Diversity and Inclusion within the security profession
• work to develop new D&I initiatives
• promote the work of the Government Security Profession.

In light of our latest D&I Action Plan, the network will play a more active role undertaking profession wide D&I related projects, reviewing how departmental activity aligns to the Action Plan, and sharing best practice across the profession.  The network will form a vital part in ensuring we are making the right changes in the right places to better work for our citizens and our staff.

 We are looking for members that fall into one of the following categories;

Those in a role which currently includes influencing Diversity and Inclusion. This includes, but is not limited to Diversity and Inclusion Leads and HRBPs.

Individuals with an interest in improving the diversity and inclusivity of the security profession. These members do not need to be in a D&I role exclusively but should be willing to commit to supporting the profession to deliver on D&I ambitions and priorities.

If you are interested in joining the D&I Network, please contact gsp@cabinetoffice.gov.uk

Diversity Vetting Initiative (DVI):

The DVI was first launched in 2021 to improve diversity in the security profession by demystifying the vetting process, and creating a pool of diverse candidates for DV posts. Since 2022, responsibility for the DVI has sat under GSG, and we are now running the second cohort of 20 civil servants from ethnic minorities. Candidates are not guaranteed a job, but the DVI offers a wrap-around support network to candidates, including monthly departmental career days, bespoke security training and support in applying for security roles.

Job Description Analysis Tool (JDAT)

As part of the profession’s work to attract strong candidates for our roles, the GSP Team has signed up to use the Job Description Analysis Tool (JDAT) developed by Be Applied. We would like to offer all vacancy managers across Government Security the opportunity to have your job descriptions and adverts reviewed to ensure they use the most inclusive language possible, so we can appeal to as diverse a candidate pool as possible.

The JDAT is text analysis software that searches job descriptions and adverts for words or phrases that may make them less appealing to a diverse audience and suggests alternatives to ensure our recruitment materials reach and attract a wide, diverse audience.

Examples from Be Applied’s research show that:

• Removing gender bias from your job descriptions could increase the volume of applications by 10-15%
• You are 1.4x more likely to hire a female with feminine-coded job descriptions

The JDAT can also help to improve job descriptions by reducing the use of jargon and acronyms, as well as improving the general ease of reading of the text.

GSP is offering you the opportunity to send us your job descriptions and adverts, and we can run the text through the JDAT to provide you with an inclusion score, a readability score and suggest improvements to reduce or eliminate biased language.

Please get in touch with the GSP Team if you would like us to have your adverts and/or job descriptions analysed.