INTRODUCTION
As an organisation we are committed to promoting and embedding equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) for employees and stakeholders.
As an organisation delivering a public function, we have a statutory duty to comply with the General Equality Duty of the Equality Act 2010. This Act simplified and strengthened previous anti-discrimination legislation. It provides a comprehensive legal framework to protect the rights of individuals, and to promote a fair and more equal society.
Under this duty we must have due regard to the need to:
- eliminate discrimination, harassment and victimisation and other prohibited conduct;
- advance equality of opportunity between those who share a relevant protected characteristic and those who do not; and
- foster good relations between people sharing protected characteristics and those who do not.
The nine ‘protected characteristics’ are:
- age
- disability
- gender
- gender reassignment
- pregnancy and maternity
- race
- religion or belief
- sexual orientation.
- marriage and civil partnership (with regard to eliminating unlawful discrimination in employment).
In 2016, the specific duties were amended to include a new duty on Board diversity.
This report follows up on the work completed since the last equalities mainstreaming report was published in March 2021. We plan to report on our progress every two years.
WHO WE ARE AND WHAT WE DO
WICS was formed on 1 July 2005 under the Water Services etc. (Scotland) Act 2005.
In summary, our role is to:
- promote the interests of Scottish Water’s customers, considering the interests of customers both today and in the future;
- ensure that customer charges reflect the lowest reasonable overall cost for Scottish Water to deliver the Scottish Ministers’ Objectives;
- comment on Scottish Water’s reporting of its performance, challenging them to become more efficient and sustainable;
- facilitate the entry of retail water and sewerage providers that wish to supply non-household customers in Scotland; and
- support the Scottish Government’s vision of ensuring that Scotland is a Hydro Nation, as per our obligations under the Water Resource Act 2013.
We are accountable – through the Scottish Ministers – to the Scottish Parliament, and ultimately, to water and sewerage customers in Scotland. We achieve this by being transparent about our work, and by engaging and consulting with others. We also publish information in our annual report about the progress we have made against the commitments we set out in our Corporate Plan.
OUR PROGRESS
DISABILITY CONFIDENT EMPLOYER
WICS is a member of the Disability Confident Employer scheme. Being Disability Confident helps us:
- tap into the huge pool of talent amongst disabled people, and recruit, retain and develop people with the skills we need
- increase understanding of disability and how to make the most of the opportunities provided by employing disabled people
- remove barriers that might be preventing disabled people and those with long term health conditions from accessing employment
- play our part in ensuring that disabled people have opportunities to fulfil their potential and realise their aspirations
HAPPY TO TALK FLEXIBLE WORKING
We are now recognised as an employer that is ‘happy to talk flexible working’. This allows us the potential to attract, recruit and retain staff who may need alternative working patterns.
TRAINING
Employees have undertaken EDI training hosted by an external provider and this is being rolled out on an ongoing basis to ensure consistency. The session covered employment law, protected characteristics, unconscious bias, disability awareness, and recruitment and selection.
We have strengthened EDI training in our onboarding programme which sends a clear message to all new employees of our ongoing commitment to EDI.
A new Employee Training and Development Policy has been created and beyond mandatory training, skills development is available to all employees. This sets out equality of opportunity for all employees to further develop relevant skills to further enhance their experience and contribution at work.
HOW WE MAINSTREAM EQUALITY
We are continuing to mainstream equality, diversity and inclusion into our day-to-day activities and work practices, ensuring it is fully integrated into our organisational people strategy and corporate planning process. We do this by:
COMMITMENT TO EQUALITY, DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION
Our aim is to keep the visibility of creating an equal, diverse and inclusive working environment at the forefront of our organisational culture, ensuring staff are actively integrating equality and challenging potential barriers, to ensure fair and equal working practices for all with equality of opportunity at the forefront.
Using tools available to us, such as the training material from our EDI training sessions and the civil service-learning portal, equalities training will form part of our induction programme going forward, with regular refresher sessions to embed equality, diversity and inclusion into work practices.
We regularly review the equal opportunities policy in our employee handbook, ensuring it remains relevant and fit for purpose. This handbook also includes family-friendly policies to support staff to manage family friendly policies including maternity, adoption and paternity leave which are also reviewed regularly.
All employees are aware of the free, confidential, accessible Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) which is available to all staff.
We also provide an occupational health facility through an independent OH provider which provide managers and employees with further support and guidance in managing their health and wellbeing in supporting employees to bring their whole self to work.
ACCESSIBILITY AND INCLUSION
We continue to ensure our workplaces and services are as accessible and inclusive as possible and we remain open to advice and guidance from external advisers, to ensure we are working with a best practice model.
Our staff continue to complete Workstation Assessments, following HSE best practice, which actively encourages them to review their work environment and equipment to ensure their physical wellbeing needs are met.
Staff are encouraged to request any ergonomic equipment which will protect their health and ensure their safety and comfort while carrying out their duties. All new staff are required to undertake an assessment too, ensuring we get their set-up right from the start. We have sought professional advice on issues such as electrical safety guidance to go above and beyond basic HSE requirements, to ensure staff are informed and can take action to ensure they are working as safely as possible.
We continue to regularly review the accessibility of our published information, particularly through our main communication tool – the WICS website. A recent random review of our website by the Cabinet Office highlighted some accessibility issues which have now been resolved. We continue to work with the Scottish Government’s Digital First Standards Team and our experienced website developers to ensure that our website achieves an ‘AA’ rating of the W3C accessibility standards. We continually implement research and testing to ensure our website has an accessible design, with accessible content, layout and navigation. We continue to work with our website designers and their various technologies and tools available to them to identify and address accessibility issues.
UNDERSTANDING THE DIVERSITY OF OUR WORKFORCE
We have 24 permanent employees with a split of 45% female to 55% male as shown in the below graph at figure 1.
In figure 2 we have the male to female split in salary grades, where there are more women at grade 5 than men and likewise at grade 8 which is a senior management level.
Employees |
|
| Male | 14 |
| Female | 10 |
G1 |
G2 |
G3 |
G4 |
G5 |
G6 |
G7 |
G8 |
G9 |
G10 |
|
| Male | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 |
| Female | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
We have also developed a new Recruitment and Selection Policy which focuses on the need to attract and appoint the best people through fair, equitable and inclusive recruitment and selection processes.
There is a commitment to explore new advertising media to take active steps to broaden the pool of potential candidates to ensure the best reach of talent to add value to an already diverse workforce.
To ensure the integrity of these processes we continue to collate EDI information separately through the application process to ensure that decisions made within the process are not unfairly influenced by any protected characteristic.
Applications are encouraged from all applicants who meet the selection criteria and there are ongoing discussions on how to attract any areas of under representation in terms of advertising media and exploring other networks.
All section panels consist of at least three experienced and fully trained members, and this can include colleagues from outside the recruitment area and external members, to provide a balance of gender and ethnicity.
We use a selection of recruitment stages and methods to allow candidates the best opportunity to showcase their suitability using a variety of selection tools.
We provide candidates the opportunity to declare any adjustments they require prior to an interview to ensure for example that venues are accessible to all, and that any assessments can be reasonably adjusted including any required visual or audio enhancements in advance to support full and equitable participation which are available to anyone who asks without judgement or disclosure.
Being an inclusive and non-discriminatory employer, we actively monitor, identify and tackle any barriers of unconscious bias within our recruitment process and will work to ensure that our practices align with the Scottish Government’s Minority Ethnic Recruitment toolkit.
WORK/LIFE BALANCE AND FLEXIBLE WORKING
We recognise that employees have responsibilities and varying commitments outside of work. Supporting flexible working continues to be encouraged at WICS, not only supporting employees and their wellbeing, but also helping the organisation to retain skills and experience in our workforce.
A new hybrid working policy came into effect in September 2025 following engagement at both individual and group level with employees. There is now a minimum office requirement to work on average 2 days in the office every week in every quarter.
BOARD DIVERSITY
The WICS Board is responsible for the overall direction and performance of our organisation, including our efficiency and effectiveness as a public body.
The Scottish Ministers appoint the non-Executive members of the Board. The Board appoints the Chief Executive.
The Board comprises a Chair, four further non-executive members and the Chief Executive Officer. The full Board (executive and non-executive members) has a 50/50 split of male and female members.
FAIR PAY
Committed to fair pay, we follow the Scottish Government’s pay policy.
The overarching aim of the pay policy is to set pay increases in a way that is fair, progressive, restorative and affordable, protects the lower paid and protects jobs and services. The policy also promotes the wellbeing of public sector workers.
Through the pay policy process, we input directly to the Scottish Government’s Equality Outcomes and Mainstreaming Report.
Each year, as part of our Annual Report and Financial statements, we publish a “Remuneration and staff report”. This report outlines gender split, fair pay disclosure and details about our Board membership, as well as other metrics relating to the well-being of our employees.
PROCUREMENT
Our procurement process is in line with the Scottish Government’s recommended model. A specific condition of contract clause is included in appropriate invitations to tender documents; the clause makes it a contractual requirement for all successful bidders to adhere strictly to their general duties under the Equality Act. In addition, where tenders are to be evaluated on the basis of the most economically advantageous tender, compliance with the 2010 Act is an award criterion.
NEXT STEPS
PEOPLE COMMITTEE
A new People Committee is being established to primarily provide an independent quality assurance check to all people related activities in the organisation and to assure fairness, equity and inclusion in the management of all people practices.
PEOPLE DASHBOARD
A People Dashboard has been created which is published to the Board for every meeting.
This information provides a snapshot of the organisation by providing HR metrics across a range of areas including the number of male employees to female employees, employee age range, salary grade and length of service.
These metrics are presented within a male and female split to show the gender ratio across key areas, and this shows where we are continuing to do well in terms of meeting the EDI agenda, whilst also providing a focus on where we need to explore new ways of addressing any areas of under representation in the workforce in terms of the recruitment strategy.
EQUALITY DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION
We are constantly reviewing our approach to monitoring equality and diversity in the workplace and are considering how we can further raise awareness organisation wide.
An EDI training session, hosted by external HR providers was arranged in 2024 to provide an opportunity to all staff to receive training on key areas of equality and diversity. To ensure skills are maintained refresher training is a set item on the annual training plan for all employees.
Being a Disability Confident Committed (Level 1) scheme member strengthens our commitment to attracting, recruiting, developing, and retaining disabled people in the workplace.
It is a demonstration that we are committed to our Disability Confident journey, and we are actively taking steps to provide a disability inclusive workplace.