PHILADELPHIA – Today, the City of Philadelphia, through the Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI), released the 2018 Philadelphia Workforce Diversity Profile Report, the annual report that examines the gender and racial diversity of the City government’s exempt workforce.
“For the City of Philadelphia to best serve its residents, it is important that our workforce reflects the great diversity of our city,” said Mayor Jim Kenney. “This report portrays our efforts to implement new strategies, train our leadership and track our progress toward achieving our goal of improving workforce diversity.”
The full-time, permanent exempt workforce, the part of the workforce not required to pass the civil service examinations to acquire their positions, is the primary focus of this report. The study delves into the racial and ethnic breakdown of the workforce, the gender makeup of the workforce, and other information, like average age and tenure of City employees. All data is as of June 30, 2018, the end of the City’s fiscal year.
“This year we have continued to implement strategies to create a more equitable and diverse workforce,” said Chief Diversity Officer Nolan Atkinson. “While the nature of this work can be slow-moving, our early gains are indicative of the thoughtful and methodical approach needed to create meaningful, lasting change for our city.”
The primary focus of the report is limited to exempt positions in offices under the Mayor’s authority. The exempt workforce under the Mayor’s authority was analyzed under several distinct categories, including department heads, cabinet members, and the executive exempt workforce, which is defined in this case as exempt employees who make over $90,000 per year.
Key findings of the report include:
- A positive growth of 2.38% in the diversity of our exempt workforce over the past 2 fiscal years. The administration will continue its commitment towards a more diverse workforce until disparities based upon race or ethnicity no longer exist.
- With respect to the civil service workforce, racial equity training has been introduced to City leadership by ODI through a course of on-site trainings with more than 150 persons within the government. The trainings serve to build the capacity of City leaders to integrate explicit considerations of racial equity into management decisions.
- The report also outlines various ways in which the administration is working to make the City of Philadelphia a better, more inclusive place to work, including enhanced sexual harassment prevention policy and trainings, an in-depth look at the civil service and exempt hiring practices, and an LGBTQ Leadership Pipeline to get more underrepresented members of the LGBTQ community on boards of local LGBTQ nonprofits.