Section head
Department of Health
The Department of Health provides health and social care policy, guidance and publications for NHS and social care professionals and has a permanent workforce of just over 2200 staff.
Our aim as an employer is to attract and retain people who are the best in their field, with the right skills and competencies and from a range of diverse backgrounds, in order to ensure policy development is led by those who represent the community we serve.
The representation of women in senior positions is higher than many other government departments, at just over 40%. We have achieved this using a number of measures including: instructing head-hunters to deliver a diverse pool of candidates, particularly in respect of gender balance; promoting our Flexible Working Hours policy in job advertisements; having a minimum of one woman on every recruitment panel; promoting and supporting home-working; and providing structured development programmes for women in senior positions and those in the ‘feeder grades’.
Aside from the healthy representation of women in senior positions – and throughout the organisation – we believe there has been a shift in culture. We received full Investors in People accreditation in June last year, confirming our commitment and practices in relation to valuing and developing staff, and we hope that the balanced gender profile across the grades will move us further in this direction. We have a good reputation for good quality policy delivery, which can only be strengthened by our increasingly diverse workforce.