An engaged and representative workforce
Performance reflections
The headcount in the core Council (excluding Schools), the number of staff, has increased slightly. The workforce data (excluding Schools) shows a broadly stable position, with core headcount increasing slightly to 4,304.5 FTE, supporting service delivery. Sickness absence has improved overall, with a reduction in rolling absence to 13.5 days and short-term absence decreasing to 4.3 days, indicating positive impact from wellbeing and attendance management initiatives, although long-term absence has risen marginally and remains an area for focus.
The absence figures are closely monitored throughout the year. Significant changes and decisions have been taken in relation to persistent or long-term absence cases where there is no indicated return to work or improvement - these are not reflected in the figures immediately.
The Staff Survey response rate has increased by 9% since 2023, reflecting an increase in engagement. Further progress is expected, as the organisation continues to build trust with the workforce, by ensuring consistency in practice and improving psychological safety.
Gold standard of the THRIVE award for staff health and wellbeing has been achieved and the budget for reasonable adjustments has been centralised to improve the organisational response for employees.
The proportion of the workforce identifying as Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic increased from 24.5% in March 2025 to 26.1% in March 2026 - an increase of 1.6 percentage points, demonstrating progress towards the target of reflecting the diversity of the city. Despite this, the year-end position remains below the population benchmark (34.9%), highlighting the need for continued focus.
The proportion of the workforce declaring a disability increased from 7% in March 2025 to 8.6% in March 2026, a rise of 1.6 percentage points, demonstrating positive progress in disclosure and representation. However, this remains significantly below the Coventry population benchmark of 15.45%, indicating continued scope for improvement.
The proportion of the workforce identifying as LGB+ decreased slightly from 3.60% in March 2025 to 3.5% in March 2026 with a reduction of 0.1 percentage points. This follows a mid‑year dip to 3.3%, with some recovery by year end. Representation remains below the population benchmark of 3.76%, indicating limited overall progress. The proportion of the workforce aged 16 to 34 increased from 17.2% in March 2025 to 19.3% in March 2026, a rise of 2.1 percentage points, demonstrating positive progress in improving age diversity. Representation remains below the Coventry population benchmark of 29.8%, indicating further progress is required.
The legal sex profile of the workforce has shifted slightly, with female representation decreasing from 68.1% to 67.4% and male representation increasing from 31.9% to 32.6% between March 2025 and March 2026. This reflects a marginal movement towards a more balanced sex profile.
Agency spend has decreased because of recent initiatives by the recruitment team to stabilise the workforce. This has included supporting managers to adopt more proactive attraction and recruitment strategies. Targeted efforts to transition individuals from agency contracts to CCC contracts have further contributed to reducing overall spend.
Actions taken in year
To support diversifying the workforce, a number of initiatives have taken place across 2025 to 2026, including the expansion of the Inclusive Interview panels initiative and Wezesha, a positive action programme designed to support, develop and retain global majority colleagues. The recruitment team is actively working to promote the Council as an employer of choice across the city through various initiatives, including recruitment fairs and digital channels such as Indeed and LinkedIn with specific reference to welcoming applications from underrepresented groups in our job adverts.
Programmes like Elevate, a positive action programme designed to support, develop and retain LGBTQ+ colleagues and Aspire designed to support, develop and retain colleagues with disabilities and long-term health conditions have been launched.
Regular webinars designed to help colleagues understand and fairly apply reasonable adjustments are offered by Occupational Health and all Council line managers are required to attend Disability Inclusion training to create a disability confident culture. The training was introduced at the end of 2023 following the Calibre positive action programme, as part of a phased, targeted rollout.
Given the scale of our workforce (900+ line managers) and limited Learning and Development budget and capacity (with no dedicated Diversity and Inclusion resource), delivery has been spread over multiple years, with sessions capped at 25 participants. Uptake to date (34%) therefore reflects delivery capacity rather than engagement.
Over the past year, sessions were prioritised for Care, Health & Housing, Children’s Services, and Customer Service teams to improve completion rates and target areas of greatest need, with progress reported to the Chief Executive and the D&I Board.
In 2026, the Apprenticeship team moved to a structured recruitment window approach for apprentices, which supports a clear, consistent recruitment experience for all applicants and more time to recruit, helping us attract better applicants. Further training is also taking place locally and corporately to assist in the managing of sickness absence. Managers are making more difficult decisions in relation to long term or persistent absence cases; the policy has been updated to allow for easier escalation - this will be implemented from June to August 2026.
Work is currently underway to finalise the corporate Staff Survey Action Plan, which will help to embed the culture change required across the Council, in relation to the 4 key themes: Trust, Fairness, Change and Communication, with the implementation of the new agency provider, WM Temps/Opus, in June, this will further support our efforts to reduce spend. The focus will be on embedding workforce planning and talent management strategies, alongside proactively managing and minimising off-contract arrangements to avoid inflated agency costs.