MSF UK's commitment to EDI

At MSF UK, we strive to create an environment that is inclusive and free from discrimination and victimisation. We believe in equal opportunities for all, including in recruitment, selection, promotion and training for our people, the communities we seek to assist, and our partners.

OUR EDI POLICY 

MSF UK is just one part of the global MSF movement. We recognise that MSF is rooted in European post‐colonial traditions, and this manifests in many aspects of our organisation.

We are committed to accelerating the ongoing redistribution of power and decision‐making more evenly across the world; ensuring our medical humanitarian assistance is free from any racist or discriminative barriers; and working on addressing all aspects of structural racism as they manifest in MSF.

READ MORE ABOUT OUR COMMITMENTS

At MSF, we are committed to upholding gender equality as a fundamental human right in both our internal and external operations.

To achieve this, we have implemented fair and transparent pay grade systems for our UK and Ireland-based and internationally mobile staff. Our pay grade systems prioritise skills, equal opportunities, and performance to ensure fairness in compensation.

In 2021, MSF UK reported a mean gender pay gap of 6.6 percent and a median gender pay gap of 5.6 percent.

While we see this as a good result, we acknowledge there is still work to be done as our goal is to achieve a zero percent gender pay gap.

To reach this goal, we will continue to review and improve our policies and procedures, with a focus on recruitment and staff retention.

Please read our 2021 Gender Pay Gap Report to find out more about how MSF UK and Ireland are committed closing to the pay gap.

GENDER PAY GAP AT MSF UK

We recognise the importance of accessibility and inclusivity for all individuals, regardless of disability, health, or wellbeing. We strive to communicate in a way that works for you and make adjustments to remove or reduce any barriers that you may be facing.

If you require any adjustments or support, please contact office-ldn@london.msf.org and we will do our best to help.

This year’s report covers the 12 months from January – December 2023. We are pleased to note this is our first time reporting on the EDI progress we are making at MSF UK and pleased to also be able to report on the diversity of our workforce.

The associative and executive leadership of MSF UK is committed to do better on EDI. A diverse and inclusive organisation benefits everyone we work with. For us, the advantages of a 'diversity dividend' are clear - leading to better outputs, better decision-making, and better returns. We are committed to supporting structural and workplace equality and building an inclusive organisation from the inside out.

Our EDI Vision aims to demonstrate organisational commitment and to ensure we maintain the momentum needed to deliver our EDI actions. Our two-year EDI action plan (2022 – 2024) outlines the framework to embed EDI into our policies, processes, and practices. It also determines our approach in improving the way we support our staff and improving the way we recruit to ensure better transparency and fairness.

As we move into 2024, we continue to:

• identify and action areas for further improvement.
• set new targets and indicators for our existing actions.
• consider ways to reduce and remove structural inequality.

Our action plan is primarily focused on ensuring we deliver on EDI as a core component of our work at MSF UK. However, MSF UK is just one part of the global MSF movement. Whilst we set out our EDI progress in MSF UK, we also continue to participate in movement-wide discussions to consider how they apply to our work. In the UK, this means looking at creating pathways for change through our projects, research, policy and advocacy, funding, communications, and decision-making.

We are encouraged that our EDI work in the UK, as well as our active participation in movement-wide discussions and initiatives, has significance on the work and perspectives of MSF more broadly. We are learning from others, as others are learning from us.

Key achievements

We have delivered a meaningful programme of work on EDI in 2023. This has helped us to:

• build a better understanding of diversity.
• work collaboratively to identify areas for improvement and change.
• be more accountable about our EDI work and what we need to achieve.

We began by evaluating our processes, policies and ways of working to address potential bias and to make sure that, wherever possible, we are being inclusive.

Our key achievements in 2023 include:

• updating our workplace diversity questions and introducing questions on socio-economic background and caring responsibilities.
• auditing several policies (sitting in the Executive Office) to ensure inclusion of equality and diversity.
• establishing ourselves as a Disability Confident committed employer.
• highlighting our commitment to EDI with a tailored EDI page on our website at msf.org.uk.
• delivering a programme of EDI events and workshops.

Belonging is essential to who we are as individuals and who we are as an organisation.

We began work to review our policies and update them to include principles related to EDI, and this work will continue in 2024. We produced, updated, and agreed a reasonable adjustment policy, supporting the changes we as an employer can make to remove or reduce disadvantages related to someone's disability. This included implementing the recording of reasonable adjustments to allow us to monitor and review the support we provide to staff. We highlighted the importance of effective communication between HR, managers, and staff, and discussed ways we can raise awareness of reasonable adjustments - for example, in one-to-one and team meetings.

Early in the year we signed up to become a Disability Confident committed employer, a UK government scheme. We are putting in place targeted actions to support staff in accessing reasonable adjustments. Another recommendation of the scheme is to ensure our recruitment process is inclusive and accessible. We are working to establish a process to offer a guaranteed interview to candidates with disabilities when they fulfil the essential criteria for a role.

We introduced Mental Health First Aiders, who are now trained and in post. This programme equips our staff to support others in a crisis and helps them learn how to recognise and respond to the signs and symptoms of various mental health conditions. MHFAs also reduce stigma and help to build a supportive workplace culture where staff feel they can be open about their mental health.

We began work on how we recruit to ensure fairness of access and transparency in how we process, shortlist and interview candidates. This includes putting in place data metrics to assess for bias and diversity as well as delivering EDI training for hiring managers.

At the global level, the ongoing implementation of the International Rewards Review project will result in MSF UK rolling out a more equitable salary benchmarking and reward package for our Internationally Mobile Staff. This supports our intention to recruit and retain a diversity of staff across all levels of seniority and all staff groups.

Represent a wide range of marginalised identities at all levels of the organisation

We recruited for two Associate Trustee positions on the MSF UK Board. These positions provide a development opportunity into senior governance roles, thus supporting the professional growth of colleagues from across the MSF movement.

We monitored against EDI ambitions the two Higher Education programmes delivered by MSF UK, LEAP, and GHHM, which also play an important role in supporting the professional growth of colleagues from across the MSF movement. Plans are being put in place to increase accessibility to groups underrepresented in applications to these programmes, for example, female locally recruited colleagues from low-income countries who represent a very low proportion of female applicants to LEAP.

We incorporated EDI into the way we procure, including supporting small suppliers to establish good EDI practices in their own organisations, reviewing suppliers’ EDI policies and providing them access to EDI resources, events, and information.

We revised and updated our workforce diversity questions. We changed the way we asked some questions and included some new ones, such as on socio-economic background and caring responsibilities. We encouraged all members of our workforce to complete the questionnaire, making sure each question had a 'prefer not to say' option. As part of this work, we provided a detailed guide and Q&As and members of our senior team, including our Executive Director, recorded videos outlining why we collect this information and what we do with it. A section later in this report on our workforce outlines the resulting diversity statistics, and explains how we will use this data. This work has meant we are now on track to set diversity targets for gender, ethnic group, and disability.

Information has been regularly updated on our SharePoint site, via an EDI Newsletter, and through events, language guides, and recommendations for further reading and listening.

Proactively guarantee fair treatment, equitable opportunities of progression and understanding of support when faced with oppression

Having inclusive policies in place provides a baseline for implementing inclusive workplace values.

We are working to review our HR policies to ensure they are inclusive and support good practice on EDI. This is a detailed and complex process, especially where changes to policies and processes are required. Our commitment is to promote and maintain an environment where everyone that is associated with us, or who encounters our activities, feels respected, safe, and valued.

We are reviewing our Paternity Leave policy and our policies for extended leave for parents and expectant parents. We know we have more work to do in this area. We also identified other policy gaps, for example on LGBTQI+ and trans inclusion.

In our policy review, we have made explicit mention of LGBTQI+ and disability, health, and well-being. We also set out a framework for our work on LGBTQI+.

All staff are educated, upskilled and challenged on EDI

Learning about EDI helps create an inclusive workplace culture and raises awareness of the value of collaborating on EDI. We actively encourage staff to explore their interests and biases on EDI. This has resulted in discussion groups across senior leadership and teams.

We set up an EDI Working Group to provide an opportunity for staff to engage in reflection and dialogue and to learn more about our work on anti-racism and EDI.

We have developed a flexible and personal approach to learning. We will now deliver tailored training on EDI, which looks at EDI issues across the work we deliver internally and externally.

The MSF UK and IE section is an active organisational ally, champion, and supporter of progress on EDI and decolonisation in the MSF movement

We support the wider global MSF movement and have connected with a wide range of practitioners to collaborate and engage on our work on EDI.

We have engaged in open discussion forums, together with MSF colleagues across the globe, where we are working to understand concerns of discrimination and abuse of power.

MSF UK, through the Manson Unit, commissioned research examining perspectives on power and inequality within MSF - the Power Analysis Research project. Undertaken by independent researchers, this work aims to be a resource to inspire reflection and spark critical reflection and change within the MSF movement.

MSF UK will also be looking to the Power Analysis Research to see where and how we can collaborate to effect meaningful change.

When it comes to understanding our workforce in terms of “protected characteristics” Discrimination: your rights: Types of discrimination ('protected characteristics') - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) under the Equality Act, our disclosure levels are reasonable, with an overall completion rate of 73 percent.

Our internationally mobile staff (IMS) are not included in this data set. We employ between 80 – 100 such staff who are deployed worldwide on a range of short, medium and long-term contracts. We are practically constrained in gathering data on the diversity of our IMS because of system limitations and because they are seconded across six MSF Operational Centres, with each Operational Centre using a different system. Our intention, however, is to collect this data in time for our next progress report for 2024.

In 2023, the data for the MSF UK workforce (excluding IMS) showed that amongst 138 staff as of 31 December 2023:

• 65 percent were women.
• 6.5 percent were disabled.
• 6.5 percent were of a diverse sexual orientation.
• 32 percent were Black, Asian and ethnically diverse.

The Office for National Statistics for the same period shows that the percentages of the working age population in England were 50 percent women, 17 percent Black, Asian, and Ethnically Diverse, three percent of a diverse sexual orientation, and 23 percent who are disabled.

People may identify in more than one way, for example being both from an ethnically diverse background and a woman, and therefore can be represented twice in the data.

Gender

Our workforce in 2023 was 65 percent female and 33 percent male. Two percent preferred not to say.

The government employment figures for 2022 show that women made up 51 percent of the workforce in England, Scotland, and Wales.

In 2021 MSF UK & IE had a mean gender pay gap of 6.6 percent and a median pay gap of 5.6 percent.

We continued to make good progress in strengthening our pipeline of female talent, resulting in increasing levels of representation at senior and director level. We are delighted that women make up 46 percent of our board MSF Association | MSF UK.

However, we recognise the specific needs of women in the workplace are not always being met in MSF UK and are far from being met across the MSF movement, where there is an increasing gender imbalance, particularly at senior levels including managerial and coordination roles, and particularly impacting locally recruited women in our operational projects.

As MSF UK we can influence change by sharing policies and practices in relation to flexible working, reduction of temporary or short-term contracts, putting in place senior allyship of women, and ensuring a fair recruitment process for women wishing to progress into senior roles. We also plan to pay particular attention to raising awareness of the issue of gender imbalance in our operational projects and providing training to our Internationally Mobile Staff, who hold responsibility for the recruitment, retention and promotion of locally recruited colleagues while deployed on assignments with an Operational Centre.

Disability

We have made good progress in implementing our work on disability inclusion. We redesigned and improved our approach to workplace and reasonable adjustments and have delivered training and other interventions to improve disability awareness, enablement, and confidence.

To continue to remove barriers for our disabled and neurodivergent colleagues we are focused on encouraging open conversations and learning from those with lived experience.

We asked staff whether they had a disability under the definition set out in the Equality Act of 2010, and there was a six percent declaration for this category.

Ethnic Group

Black, Asian and minority ethnic staff account for 32 percent of our workforce, higher than the working age population in England and Wales at 19.3 percent Working age population - GOV.UK Ethnicity facts and figures (ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk) and higher than the NHS workforce, which in 2023 showed BAME staff made up 24.2 percent of staff NHS England » New figures show NHS workforce most diverse it has ever been.

We continue to encourage workforce diversity to ensure better representation of our minority ethnic talent across all levels of seniority. Our work on anti-racism supports the requirement for everyone to take responsibility for understanding racial bias through racial awareness workshops, training, and events.

Religion or belief

Understanding of religion or belief is part of our approach to supporting inclusive values and belonging as well as encouraging meaningful dialogues, inclusivity, and empathy in our workspaces.

Twenty-three percent of the MSF UK workforce identify as Christian and nine percent as Muslim. Half of the workforce identifies as having no religion or belief. This is in line with data that demonstrates that the UK public are among the least likely internationally to identify as religious lost-faith-the-uk's-changing-attitudes-to-religion.pdf (kcl.ac.uk).

Sexual Orientation

During the year, we worked on promoting the inclusion of sexual orientation and gender-diverse expressions / LGBTQI+. As part of our engagement strategy, we displayed an exhibition produced by MSF’s LGBTQI+ Inclusion in MSF Health Projects and the Where Love is Illegal: A Witness Change Project at the MSF UK office, the British Medical Association, and the international law firm Clifford Chance.

An estimated 3.3 percent of the UK population aged 16 years and over identified as lesbian, gay or bisexual in 2022 Sexual orientation - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk). At MSF UK & IE, the percentage for lesbian, gay and bisexual is 12 percent, substantially higher than the UK population.

Social mobility

We recognise social mobility as an important indicator of representation in the medical humanitarian space. Accessibility to the international humanitarian sector for people from lower socio-economic backgrounds is a longstanding concern in the UK, as humanitarian work is not traditionally well rewarded and as most roles in the sector, including at MSF UK, require applicants to hold graduate or postgraduate qualifications, with an additional requirement to volunteer or take on work placements to gain relevant skills and experience. Gaining the necessary qualifications and experience to apply to work for us may not be feasible for those from lower socio-economic backgrounds.

As well as collecting data on social mobility in our workforce, we will start working further to understand and reduce barriers to people from lower socio-economic backgrounds who wish to work with us.

The Social Mobility Index is a framework for measuring social mobility in the UK. It supports a systematic look at social mobility outcomes, as well as the drivers behind social mobility. It sets out a long-term vision for measuring and monitoring social mobility outcomes over the next 30 years across the UK.

Social mobility (a)

Parental occupation

MSF UK has a greater proportion of staff from a professional parental background compared to the national average, and a lower proportion of staff from a lower socio-economic background when compared to the national average. At MSF UK 68 percent of parents come from a professional and traditional professional occupation, compared to the UK average of 37 percent.

Social mobility (b)

Type of school attended

In 2023, 25 percent of staff attended an independent or fee-paying school, which compares to the national average of 7.5 percent of the workforce.

Social mobility (c)

Free school meals

Thirteen percent of our staff were eligible for free school meals, compared to 45 percent who were not.

Refugee or Asylum Status

Caring responsibilities

Of staff who responded, 33 percent declared that they have primary caring responsibilities.

Conclusion

We continue working to improve data quality, collection, and coverage in order to guide our action and our priorities in the area of EDI.

The MSF UK and IE EDI Programme Board will continue to direct our EDI work. This ensures continuing leadership and support for the delivery and implementation of EDI.

We will collaborate with our people to achieve the best outcomes for our staff, patients and stakeholders. We will continue to report regularly and openly on the developments we make against our EDI Action Plan.