Steve Evison was worried he was starting to lose touch with staff with the introduction of hybrid working since Covid – especially the younger and more junior members. The majority of his meetings had moved online and usually only involved other senior leaders at Essex County Council, where he works as director of sustainable growth. The opportunity to mix informally with more junior employees and find out what makes them tick had disappeared.
While recognising that hybrid working offers many benefits, he was anxious that younger staff might be feeling forgotten about and isolated by working from home and would find it harder to join up with colleagues in other teams. “The way we work today has hugely changed since Covid,” says Evison. “When everybody was in the office you could make connections with other employees in a much more informal way and get to know different people and how they linked into your job.”
So Evison jumped at the chance to take part in a reverse mentoring scheme that Essex was piloting as part of its diversity and inclusion agenda. Reverse mentoring turns the traditional mentoring relationship on its head with the junior person being the mentor and the senior colleague the mentee.
Evison, 46, was linked up with 21-year-old Abi Turner who had just started an apprenticeship in digital communications and marketing. “It has been quite empowering for Abi and has been really good for me. I had to work hard at making sure I didn’t slip into the role of mentor given that I’m in a senior leadership role. I had to constantly make sure I wasn’t becoming the boss in the meeting.”
And what did he learn? “It’s given me the reassurance that people entering the workplace today are more equipped to deal with working in a hybrid way – it’s a different perspective that I didn’t have before, given I started my career in the late 1990s. It’s also given me a lot of confidence in Abi’s ability and in younger people by association. Abi’s perspective has also helped me to think harder about how we support career development.”
Turner, who joined Essex in April, says she feels more confident at work since she became a mentor. “It’s given me a lot more confidence, which I value. But I’ve also learned that Steve isn’t just this big person at the top with a lot of authority,” she says. “He has his worries too and doesn’t always see all perspectives – he is a person and it’s nice to think of people as just people.”
The introduction of reverse mentoring also confirms Essex as a forward-thinking authority in diversity and inclusion. It is only recently that reverse mentoring has started to get a foothold in public services – it has its roots in the private sector, where it first appeared in the 1990s as a way of sharing new technology skills between age groups.
Diversity and inclusion have always been high on the agenda at Essex. Its employee networks give a voice to people with disabilities, young people and those from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds. There is also a network for employees who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or question their gender. It has a regular employee survey, an employee panel that comments on significant strategy decisions and its Ethicspoint email and helpline provides a route for whistleblowers. A dedicated equality and diversity lead has just been appointed and it has recently launched a women in leadership programme.
Figures from its latest equality and diversity report reflect the success of its diversity and inclusion policies, especially in adult care and children and families services. Across the council as a whole, 12.1% of its employees are ethnically diverse but in adult social care the figure is 20.9% – the highest for any council department; children and family services have the second highest number of ethnically diverse employees at 17.4%. The number of staff working for Essex who declare themselves as gay, lesbian, bisexual or other is 1.8% across the council.
The council’s commitment to improving equality and diversity in its own workforce sits comfortably with its belief that health and wellbeing are fundamental to improving the outcomes not only for its own staff, but for all who work or live in the county.
The council’s Economy, Investment and Public Health function plays a crucial role in delivering its Everyone’s Essex strategy. The function aims to provide first class services across the county, but also to improve outcomes, grounded in the knowledge that the life chances of residents and business success are influenced by a wide range of factors, including health and wellbeing, job creation, the quality of the natural environment and skills provision.
And the council says: “The Economy, Investment and Public Health function covers this wide range of influences, which will make Essex a prosperous and inclusive place to live and work. We welcome those with the talent to deliver on our ambitions.”
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