Civil servants are being urged to enter their nominations for the Diversity & Inclusion Awards ahead of the deadline for submissions this week.
The awards, which include four new categories for 2020, will close for nominations on Thursday 6 August, with officials being asked to nominate individuals or teams who are working to make the civil service a great place to work.
The 12 categories will this year include a Brilliant Team Contribution Award, an Impact on the Citizen Award, an Unsung Hero Award and an Advancing Age and/or Carers Inclusion Award. They also include The Cabinet Secretary’s Year of Inclusion Award, which is this year supported by Coventry University.
In a blog post urging officials to submit nominations, which can go to people of any grade of any team, government chief people officer Rupert McNeil told civil servants to “make your voice heard, and to support a colleague or team that you think is making a real difference”.
The new categories, McNeil said, are “helping us make stronger connections between the projects we have in place to ensure our workplaces are both fair and inclusive, and our wider purpose as a civil service”.
“So there’s a new ‘Impact on the Citizen Award’, for example, which recognises the innovative approaches being used to put diversity and inclusion at the core of our policies. And there’s also a cabinet secretary ‘Year of Inclusion’ Award, which will help us recognise those cross-cutting projects that are ensuring diversity and inclusion is firmly embedded in our wider objectives.”
McNeil said that he is “looking forward to seeing in the nominations those projects that have responded with innovation to [the need to deliver during the pandemic], and to how we have jointly tackled any gaps and disparities”.
He added: “I know I and other senior leaders are immensely grateful for how individuals and teams have pulled together over the past few months.”