 Diversity Monitoring Report 2022. Summary This was a year in which, as the restrictions to our daily lives were lifted, the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic continued to be felt. In commencing on the path out of the pandemic and starting to look at different permanent changes to our ways of working, we have ensured that equity, diversity and inclusion are at the centre of our decisions. This report describes the diversity of the Scottish Parliamentary Service staff group and NAPA gaps for gender, ethnicity, disability and sexual orientation. The publication of the report meets the requirements of the Public Sector Equality Duty of the Equality Act 2010 to gather and use employee information on the protected characteristics. The employee profile information in this report uses data of the snapshot date of 31st March 2022, along with recruitment data collected from 1st April 2021 to 31st March 2022. What do the findings tell us? This year's report tells us that the diversity declaration rates from the staff group are within the range of 73% to 79% across the different protected characteristics. We will engage with our staff group to improve on this rate. The proportion of women in senior positions has increased from the previous year, at leadership team from 67% to 70%. And as senior managers, grade 6 and above, from 51% to 54%. The percentage rate of minority ethnic people in the staff group is 5%. And for LGBT+, lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans plus staff, 6.1%. The percentage of staff declaring a disability has increased from 7.7% to 8.3%. The proportion of young people decreased slightly, from 3.8% to 3.7%. Recruitment data this year tells us that the proportion of applications from minority ethnic candidates increased by 3% this year to 18%. In addition, successful appointments to minority ethnic candidates increased by 6% to 11%. The proportion of applications from disabled candidates doubled this year from 6% to 12%. And successful appointments increased from 5% to 11%. Appointments to LGBT plus candidates increased from 5% to 19%. With the proportion of applications from LGBT plus people increasing from 8% to 13%. This year, the median gender pay gap increased to 11.2%, from 7.6% in the previous year. The median disability pay gap this year is 13.4%, an increase from 7.6% in the previous year. The median ethnicity pay gap widened further this year, from 27.6% to 30.1%. This year, we have for the first time reported on the pay gap on the basis of sexual orientation, LGBT plus pay gap. The median pay gap this year is 9.8%. We are very aware that we have a challenge ahead of us. We are reviewing our pay and reward arrangements and expect future diversity pay gap reports to be reflective of the outcomes of this review. We also know that some groups continue to be significantly underrepresented at different levels in the organisation. And we will continue with development programmes to support staff with their career progression. What we will do next. The Session 6 People and Culture Strategy and 5-Year Delivery Plan outline our improvement actions to develop an inclusive culture and build a diverse organisation. We will take action in response to the results of our staff survey and progress our commitments in the positive about mental health and wellbeing delivery plan. As we progress into new ways of working, we will seek to remove barriers and optimise the potential for positive impact on diverse groups. We will continue to use positive action to increase diversity in our staff group.