Equal opportunities
Bridgend County Borough Council is committed to creating a workplace culture that recruits, retains, and develops staff from diverse backgrounds. In turn representing, and therefore better serving, our communities.
We are enthusiastic about equality, committed to improving our staff diversity, and supporting an inclusive culture which allows everyone to bring their full and authentic selves to work.
We are dedicated to recruiting Welsh speakers, disabled people, people who identify as LGBTQ+ and people from minority ethnic backgrounds as part of our commitment to address under-representation across all levels of the organisation.
The equal opportunities questions form part of the application process, and this information is used by the council for monitoring purposes only. These questions are not used as part of the selection process and is not available to managers.
For us, ‘equality’ means understanding and tackling barriers so everyone has a fair chance of reaching their potential. We have arrangements in place that help to create a recruitment process where all applicants can do their best.
Disability Confident Scheme
We are a disability confident employer. This scheme helps us show our commitment to recruit and retain disabled people as well as people with health conditions for their skills and talents.
This commitment is shown through a range of practices like:
- a fully inclusive and accessible recruitment process
- offering an interview to disabled people who meet a job’s minimum criteria as per the Guaranteed Interview Scheme below
- making reasonable adjustments as required
- ensuring staff are sufficiently disability equality aware
Guaranteed Interview Scheme
As a Disability Confident employer, we offer a Guaranteed Interview Scheme. This means we interview applicants with a disability as defined in the Equality Act 2010 who meet an advertised job’s essential criteria.
Eligible applicants can opt into the Guaranteed Interview Scheme when completing an application form. If applying under the scheme, you must show in your application form that you meet the role’s essential criteria as per the person specification. We will consider you based on your abilities.
Reasonable adjustments
We support applicants to perform at their best. Please identify any reasonable adjustments needed during the recruitment process. If there’s anything we should know about before the interview like access issues or special adjustments, we will make every effort to accommodate them.
Also, we must consider reasonable adjustments to support employees in the workplace. This can apply to supporting a new employee, preventing an absence, or assisting someone back into work.
Adjustments could be introduced temporarily or permanently. They include:
- workplace adaptations
- altering working hours/patterns
- amending duties
- phased returns
This list is not exhaustive, as adjustments will vary according to individual circumstances. They may also include getting support from Access to Work.
Equality monitoring in recruitment
We welcome applications from all regardless of gender, race, religion, belief, language, disability, age, sexual orientation, marital status, pregnancy or maternity. Also we encourage applicants to provide equality monitoring information.
This enables us to assess the effect of our recruitment and employment policies and practices, and improve them where possible.
The information is strictly confidential and used for monitoring purposes only. It will not be used in the selection process. Please note that this information will be subject to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018.