Organisational Culture in the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service

20. As at 31 March 2024 the SFRS employed 7,512 staff, with a gender profile of 85.6% male and 14.4% female. More details of the workforce make-up can be found in Table 1 which shows the variation in the proportion of female and male members of staff in the Service. The gender make-up of Scotland at the 2022 census was 51.4% female and 48.6% male.

Table 1 SFRS workforce as at 31 March 2024 (source SFRS)

21. Identifying how representative the workforce is of the local community in terms of ethnicity, for example, is difficult, as recording of ethnicity is not mandatory on SFRS systems. In the Service 46% of staff have not recorded their ethnic background, or have noted it as prefer not to say, on the SFRS Human Resources (HR) and Payroll System. For those that did record their background, 52.8% recorded white and 1.2% recorded as a minority. The ethnic diversity of local communities varies across Scotland; generally rural areas of Scotland tend to be less diverse than the urban central belt.

22. It is a similar picture for disability, less than 1% of staff have recorded that they have a disability on the HR and payroll system. For the majority of staff the information is not recorded (72%), with 26% recording that they’re not disabled. There may be factors which influence the low number of disabled staff employed, such as their operational role. However, there may also be a reluctance to declare disabilities and other protected characteristics such as sexual orientation.

23. Since 2018-19 the SFRS has been publishing demographic statistics for new entrants and, as part of its recruitment process, the Service is seeking to improve the diversity of its workforce by trying to attract underrepresented groups. Although some statistics are published, the full diversity of new entrants is unclear. For example, in 2023-24; of the 432 new entrants, 357 were male and 75 female. However, in wholetime recruitment, for 95.1% of new entrants, the ethnicity was not stated. A similar position exists in the recruitment of On-Call, Control, and Support staff, with respective ‘not stated’ figures of 94.4%; 100% and 69.9%. The Service aspires to have a workforce which is representative of the people and communities of Scotland, but without relevant data it is impossible to say whether this aspiration is closer to being achieved or not.

24. It is clear that the Service is predominantly male and therefore is not reflective of society in Scotland. The Service has stated that it will take steps to encourage the completion of sensitive information through management engagement with staff. Whilst the Service publishes demographic information in relation to its workforce, it does not provide comparative analysis of its workforce to the general working population of Scotland. The SFRS also reports every two years on the Pay Gap and occupational segregation by Gender, Disability and Ethnicity. For data exploring disability and ethnic minorities, this report is based on relatively small data sets which makes robust analysis challenging.

25. The Service introduced a new Positive Action Strategy in 2019, with the aim of promoting the SFRS as an Employer of Choice to Scotland’s diverse communities, to attract, recruit and retain people from underrepresented groups. Positive Action (PA) measures are allowed in the Equality Act 2010 in order to give additional help for groups of people who share a ‘protected characteristic’ (for example, race, sex, or sexual orientation) in order to provide a level playing field. We make comment on PA later in the report.

26. Contractually, the workforce is broadly split into two categories, uniformed and Support staff. Within this there is further sub-division. Support staff provide the functions such as technical support and administration support services necessary for the Service to operate, for example office-based administrative staff, (who mostly work from home) and workshop-based mechanics and technicians. Within the uniform category, the workforce is split into Wholetime operational, including operations control, and On-Call operational (RDS and VDS). Station-based Wholetime firefighters are employed on a five-watch duty system based on a 10-week, continually repeating, shift cycle. Whereas On-Call firefighters are mobilised on an as required basis, responding to alerts when necessary, in addition to designated, usually weekly, training sessions. Whilst not unique to the SFRS, a lack of diversity in workforce in the Fire and Rescue Service sector has been highlighted over the last three decades, predominantly regarding the sector in England and Wales, from the Tom Bucke Report (1994) to more recent reports (Afzal, 2022; Morris, 2024) and HMICFRS inspections (2023, 2024). Improving services and community outcomes through a more inclusive, equal and diverse workforce is key for a vibrant organisational culture^[6].