Ethnic Minorities and the Labour Market (EMLM) Stakeholder Meeting
NHS Greater Glasgow
Millennium Hotel, Glasgow
18 th July 2006
Present
Dr Charan Gill MBE – Chair EMLM
John Crawford – NHS Greater Glasgow
Naeem Bhatti – Secretariat EMLM
Naira Dar – SEHD Employment Practice
Gerry Kelly – HR Manager, G/Glasgow
Alison Colvine – Secretariat EMLM
Olivia Benjamin – Placement Student (SE)
Purpose of meeting
The purpose of the meeting was to consult with health colleagues on the draft action plan and get their support for taking actions forward. Although the NHS represents a particular sector,
EMLM group wanted to seek the views of an employer and to assess if actions are flexible enough.
Background
Alison Colvine provided background information on the formation, aims and purpose of the
EMLM group. EMLM group is looking at issues faced by the established ethnic minorities as well as considering issues faced by invisible ethnic minorities. The EMLM Action Plan will be a stand alone document, available to the general public, that will also feed into the overall National Race Equality Strategy and Action Plan work which is currently being developed by the Scottish Executive Equality Unit.
Discussion
Dr Gill emphasised that the EMLM group would like to build on and learn from the current
NHS recruitment work which aims to bring in a more diverse workforce within the NHS. He pointed out that the EMLM group is looking to set targets/actions that are achievable, measurable and deliverable which can be accounted. Colleagues confirmed they were broadly encouraged with the direction of the draft Action Plan and felt that the NHS as a public employer can support what the draft Action Plan envisages. Furthermore, they felt the draft Action Plan was robust to make an impact. The main points from the discussion were as follows:
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As work on ethnic monitoring is patchy, with no robust baseline data, how can the group set targets? Although, it was acknowledged that by law data on ethnicity of public sector staff should be available;
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John Crawford advised that in the Greater Glasgow and Clyde area the total workforce numbers about 45,000 but over the next 5 years around 24,000 vacancies will arise. As a result, NHS is working hard to recruit and reach out to those, including ethnic minorities, who may not have considered a career in the NHS;
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There are over 200 different jobs available in the NHS. Although NHS is the biggest employer and as an organisation is as diverse as Scotland, its PR does not reflect this;
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John Crawford advised that he was surprised to note the draft Action Plan also focuses on educational attainments of ethnic minorities as he thought that ethnic minorities performed well compared to the white population. Alison Colvine confirmed that although ethnic minorities overall perform well there are variations amongst different ethnic minority groups with some performing very poorly;
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John had also suggested that the draft Action Plan did not cover disability and suggested that disability also be covered to avoid making duplicate approaches to employers when the Disability Discrimination Act comes into force later in the year;

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The major challenges facing the NHS are: o It needs to pro-actively challenge ethnic minorities’ perception of the NHS as an employer; o Balance of setting targets with processes; o Manage the two sides to implementation – one is policy and the other are people; and o The building blocks are already in place, but how does the NHS move it forward with what people do on a daily basis;
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Naira Dar advised that there a number of initiatives already happening to encourage more ethnic minorities to consider a career in the NHS. There is perhaps a need to package and promote these initiatives together while ensuring focus on individual initiatives is not lost. Furthermore, she thinks that diversity should be built into the main business planning and we should be using levers which will get the work done.
Public bodies can easily use the Race Duty, but for the private sector there is a need to sell the benefits of a diverse workforce;
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Within the NHS James Barbour has been appointed as Chief Executive for Diveristy in Leadership to work with other Health Board Chief Executives to address issues of equality and diversity. There is also work going on to develop diversity champions and at present only 2 such champions projects exist – one in Lanarkshire and the other in Tayside.
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Gerry Kelly advised that NHS takes its diversity duty seriously since if an NHS supplier does not meet the conditions of diversity and equality then that supplier is excluded from providing a service or goods to the NHS;
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Gerry informed that by December 2006 NHS recruitment will be uniformed across different NHS boards – that is, one application form will exist for different NHS boards. He also advised of the SWISS programme which had been set up last year to capture ethnicity data of NHS employees but due to communication problems it was not captured very well. However, this year the NHS is trying an individual deadline approach for each NHS board. It is hoped that by allowing for a separate deadline for each health board would allow for more and qualitative data to be captured;
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John thought that the main challenge of working with ethnic minority organisations was that such organisations may not have spread across various ethnic minority communities. Capacity building within communities is an issue and Mary Castle is currently carrying out some work in this field. He also favours a change in the service provision of the NHS and that the NHS can not treat everyone as equal. He thinks that people should be treated individually because if everyone is treated as equal then those disadvantaged will remain disadvantaged;
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Naira emphasised that the NHS also needs to engage with the voluntary sector; and
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John confirmed that NES (National Education School) for all undergraduate medical students has established a diversity post to ensure students, the future NHS workforce, has an awareness of issues around diversity. He hopes that such an approach will lead to the beginning of understanding of what diversity means and truly represents One
Nation, Many Cultures.
The Chair was very encouraged with the work NHS is currently doing and plans to carry out to close the opportunity gap between ethnic minority groups and the white population.
EMLM Secretariat
Scottish Executive
July 2006