Skip to main content

Workforce Race Equality Standard - About, Reports and Resources

The concept of introducing a Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES) for Health and Social care in Wales was proposed during 2021 as part of the Welsh Government’s consultation on the Race Equality Action Plan: An Anti- racist Wales (REAP) in order to address historic poor workforce data on racial disparities. During the consultation issues were raised by NHS Wales and social care staff including:

  • Recruitment and promotion processes that are often discriminatory toward ethnic minority groups.
  • Barriers to ethnic minority staff progressing into leadership and lack of representation in leadership.
  • Unacceptable racist language and harassment going unchallenged.
  • Ethnic minority staff being more likely to have formal complaints and disciplinary processes against them in comparison to white colleagues.
  • Higher proportion of ethnic minority staff reporting bullying harassment or racial abuse.
  • Lack of confidence in addressing racism/ racist practice by all staff and service users with action not being taken when complaints are made.
  • Staff not feeling safe to speak up against racist discrimination and practices.
  •  Staff not feeling safe and confident to provide ethnicity data.
  • Race related incidents not recorded.
  • Lack of structured audit in organisations of experiences of discrimination.
  • Lack of clarity about responsibility and accountability for advancing workforce race equality.
  • Lack of appropriate anti-racist mandatory training.

Following consultation, the REAP was renamed The Anti-racist Wales Action Plan (ArWAP) and published in June 2022. The development of the WRES for Health and Social Care was a key priority action in the (ArWAP) to catalyse successful delivery of the Health and Social Care Goals across the plan.

Development of the Workforce Race Equality Standard for Wales  

A scoping exercise was conducted in social partnership in April 2022, to agree the workforce reporting requirements to measure progress in race equality across Primary Care contracted staff, Directly Employed NHS staff and Social Care and identify data to catalyse systemic, organisational level change.

Reports 


Resources

These animations explain how the workforce race equality standard will move towards a workforce community where there is fairness and equality for all.