Do they have quotas at GCHQ?

A man who wants everyone to pretend he's a woman.

What's a TIM

That is one of Trump's fanatasy conspiracy theories.

Understaffing and pay cuts are I'm afraid the rather boring but usual reason.

And another rather boring and usual reason is that once a pay level in an organisation drops those who can more easily gain employment elsewhere at a higher salary leave. And then are more likely to be white men.

Edited to add this link I forgot to add! https://www.brookings.edu/articles/air-traffic-controllers-and-why-there-arent-enough-of-them/

I don't think that was true re air traffic control though. I think they were/are understaffed because they can't recruit enough people. But I don't think white men were being rejected. I think there weren't enough applicants to reject. In fact, "ending woke DEI" just made everything worse because suddenly people that aren't white men are being removed. And that's how you know it probably isn't true. If it was true Vance etc would have launched a recruitment drive to bring more white men on board. Instead,.their whole focus was on how they were going to remove "diversity hires" (those that weren't white men) to bring things back in track. That's quite a roundabout solution if the problem is a staff shortage because white men were applying but being turned down.

Not sure about GCHQ, but intelligence services need operatives from all backgrounds. All the way TRA groups are getting more militant they need trans people to be able to infiltrate them.

Someone said about Air Traffic control in the US. I believe there were stories of it being critically understaffed because they only wanted to recruit a diverse workforce and the white male applicants were rejected. This led to people doing multiple shifts and doing multiple jobs.

At HQ level, they conform with the rest of Whitehall. Maybe more so than the median Whitehall dept. I haven't looked at Six's social media in a while, but for ages it was very assiduous in pushing Pride stuff on the basis that "this is what distinguishes us from the Russians".

As ever, this will be less meaningful to anyone out in the field than it is to lanyardistas.

You don’t seem able to distinguish between a fictional novel and an organisation. The latest Bond novel has nothing to do with how MI6 is run. Fictional novels are exactly that - fiction. Entirely intended to be over the top and polarising to capture an audience. In the real world, organisations, including the intelligence services, need to comply with employment law and want the best people for the roles, whilst ensuring they get the broadest possible range of candidates.

Ooo hello secret service. Unisex toilets aren’t a good thing to have dotted about. I suppose you could bug them (they provide the perfect hidden environment to) but so are others. You don’t need private sound resistant rooms in public areas. It could compromise the people doing naughty things in them that can then be blackmailed, but most of all the design puts occupants at risk..

UK intelligence service is captured. Source of conflict amongst friends. One frequents here (waves). Other represents majority public view in service that TWAW and anyone who dissents is a witch.

Last discussed last summer so things might have changed a bit.

That depends on whether you guys are good at the job

If you are NT, the world is your oyster, most jobs are designed for you. Don't begrudge us the few jobs we are good at.

Organisations like GCHQ are also interested in people with SpLD like dyslexia because they often have different and enhanced pattern recognition skills so they will see something that others don’t in a data set.

If they were already employing a high proportion of neuro-diverse workers, would that imply that the neuro-typical are underrepresented and extra measures should be taken to attract neuro-typical applicants?

I think I read something a while back about the probation service wanting to recruit more men as the majority of people working as probation officers were women and sometimes a man might be better for a particular case. So that would be an example of them openly trying to recruit more men
But the probation service is al understaffed anyway I think it's kind of academic.

I think I read an article / attended a talk ages ago about GCHQ in particular attracting a lot of neurodiverse talent. Basically if you are going to employ maths or crossword geniuses you’ve probably got some neurodiversity in the mix but that brings amazingly different perspectives to problems. This might also mean adapting your hiring process or staff support offer to make sure you don’t screen such people out.

In some instances, and not sure if this is legal, the ad will say something like this or that group is under represented within the company or what ever.

So it is possible that if the ad said that about men, it could be seen to be something that would be taken into account.

Although, and I have no personal knowledge of this, how many schools worry about men being under represented as teaching staff, let alone in a nursery.

If two candidates are neck-and-neck, one is a man and the other a woman, and the job is one with a shortage of men, would the man automatically get the job? I'm thinking of something like primary teaching or nursery assistant.

I was adding to your statement, not contradicting it. The two candidates must be neck-and-neck with all reasonable means of differentiating them on merit exhausted.

that doesn't refute or negate anything i said.

Because the way people harp on you get the impression that the VAST majority of people think "oh i can only employ someone off this list..."

ETA: I literally said if they are down to the last 2 and they have to choose they will take the one who is least represented.

We offer this only to disabled candidates.

Offering it to everyone with a protected characteristic makes no sense, because we all have the protected characteristics of age, race, and sex, we just all occupy different categories within those characteristics.

We had some training on this recently. What you describe is only legal if the recruiter has exhausted all reasonable means for differentiating the candidates, including inviting them back for second interviews.

well, for eg, i didn't see that many wheelchair users there.

it applies equally to age, disability, race and so on

Also, assuming employers are collecting for some purpose, not just because everybody else does, it should help an employer know that within the area they are based how sucessful they have been in recruiting to reflect the community they are based.

For instance if say they are located in an inner city area where a number of different communities live, then it should show how sucessful their outreach has been to that community.

That is why employers, with out saying it is perfect, should use the categories that match the census ones, so that you can then compare your recruitment response to the locality.

But I suspect many just go through this as a paper exercise and dont do anything with it at all. And if that is the case they shouldn't collect in the first place.

Yes it is about encouraging applications from under represented groups. There is a hell of a long way to go after applying, until you get your foot in the door.

Equal opportunities applies to ALL protected characteristics. It's to ensure that all candidates are treated equal irrespective of their characteristics. It's not just about gender reassignment, it applies equally to age, disability, race and so on. It is meant to encourage people to apply. And there are no hardcoded quota for companies to follow. It is meant to encourage a broad, diverse and well-balanced work environment but there are no minimums of any kind imposed.

What do they mean by "protected characteristic"? The way protected characteristics are defined in the Equality Act means that everyone has several of them, so they would guarantee that all applicants who meet the essential criteria get interviewed. I guess that's not what they mean so they must have their own definition. Do you know what it is?