Reviewing departmental recruitment processes to include “bias detection tools” and controversial unconscious bias training are just some of the measures recommended in the Department of Foreign Affairs’ Gender, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (GEDI) Action Plan 2022-2025.
Writing in the Action Plan’s introduction, Secretary General of the DFA, Joe Hackett states that real GEDI progress will be achieved through the collective participation of all staff, and that while consultation and planning are important, “now is the time to move to sustained, collective action”.
The Action Plan is based upon five pillars: Gender; Equality; Diversity; Inclusion; and Communications and Compliance, and was highlighted in the submissions media regulator Coimisiún na Meán received by the anonymous ‘Equality Expert Group’ as a model action plan as part of a wider GEDI strategy.
Gender
The Department lists as some of its gender-related targets a reduction of ‘Gender Pay Gap’ from 16% to below 10% by 2025, as well as at least 45% women serving as Heads of Mission, at all levels including Assistant Secretary and above, by 2025.
Support for transgender colleagues is highlighted, while a recommended “action” is the encouragement of more “male Gender Equality champions”.
Diversity
Explaining why a commitment to diversity is important, the Action Plan claims without providing any supporting evidence that “Enhanced diversity leads to better decision-making and outcomes,” and that a wider diversity of perspectives and “lived-experiences” in the department will enhance policies and services for the public.
It’s also important, the action plan notes, because it leads to “a Department that better reflects Irish society”.
The Action Plan says that what the department desires to achieve in order to bring this about is to increase the diversity of candidates applying for roles in DFA, “including ethnic diversity”, as well as to get to a place where it has “identified all groups [italics added] that are under-represented in its workforce, and addressed barriers to their access, retention and promotion”.
It does not specify which groups constitute “all groups”.
Actions the Department was and is to undertake to commit to diversity include:
It also lists reviewing the DFA’s recruitment processes to include “bias detection tools” and “unconscious bias training”. What “bias detection tools” are to be implemented isn’t stated.
Inclusion
The Department lists as its target achievements when it comes to ‘Inclusion’ as having GEDI champions in place across the entire department as well as training in “inclusive work practices” that build a “diverse and inclusive workplace”.
The targets it intends to meet to make those achievements reality include having all new staff complete Diversity and Inclusion online training during their probationary period and have “100% of staff” complete Diversity and Inclusion training and workshop by end of the Action Plan’s term (2025).
The ‘Actions’ required for this include:
Communications and compliance
When it comes to compliance, the DFA, like all GEDI-focused organisations of late, signals an intention to rely heavily on “monitoring and tracking” the implementation of its Action Plan, likely using databases or AI-tracking, although it doesn’t make mention of the specifics.
“DFA understands and communicates internally and externally how our diversity contributes to the realisation of DFA’s High Level Goals and the services we deliver to government and citizens,” reads one of the Department’s desired achievements.
It communicates an intention to make GEDI “a core element of new internal comms strategy,” by a variety of means including GEDI newsletters and town hall meetings with a GEDI focus.