Beyond the snowy white peaks of the NHS - a Race Equality Foundation briefing paper

The NHS is England’s largest employer of black and minority ethnic staff. In the wake of the Macpherson Inquiry (1998), the NHS launched a major national initiative, the Race Equality Action Plan (Department of Health, 2004), to address the striking absence of black and minority ethnic staff from senior positions.
Research a decade later, in 2013 and 2014 (Kline, 2013, 2014d), suggested that little progress had been made, notwithstanding research demonstrating a powerful business case linking workforce race discrimination to patient experience (e.g. Dawson, 2009; West et al., 2012). The NHS Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES) is a new national initiative which commenced in 2015. It holds a mandatory element with measurable benchmarked outcomes. The WRES metrics have three main groupings:
1. Workforce (recruitment, seniority, disciplinaries and non-mandatory training)
2. Staff experience (staff survey indicators)
3. Board composition

© Race Equality Foundation August 2015. Graphic design by Artichoke 020 7060 3746

Better Health Briefing 39