A diverse team

Having a diverse and inclusive workforce improves team performance, communication, innovation and wellbeing. It helps our colleagues to feel confident, valued and able to deliver the best service to our communities.

As a public service, we work under the Public Sector Equality Duty to eliminate discrimination, harassment and victimisation.

The Core Code of Ethics outlines our expectations from everyone who joins WYFRS. We need all our people to put our communities first and deliver equity, diversity and inclusion in all that they do. To be successful you need to demonstrate integrity and leadership, making sure everyone you meet, support, serve and work with are treated with dignity and respect.

The diversity of West Yorkshire is what makes it such a great place to live and work and whilst we are proud to say our workforce is much more diverse than it once was; we recognise that we still have vital work to undertake to make our service representative of our community. We do this through committing to running positive action initiatives to help people consider the fire service as an employer of choice.

We are an equal opportunities employer; we value and celebrate diversity, inclusion and neurodiversity. We particularly welcome candidates from communities that are currently under-represented at WYFRS, including women, people from ethnic minorities and applicants with disabilities. We can offer support and adjustments for candidates and staff who experience barriers to work that result from health conditions or neurodivergence, such as dyslexia or ADHD. We are a ‘Real Living Wage’ employer and we are proud to say our gender pay gap is lower than the West Yorkshire average.

Why is diversity, equity and inclusion important to us?

It’s only when our teams reflect our communities that we can truly understand what our communities need from us. We want to remove any barriers to engagement with us to ensure we understand, deliver and make a difference to everyone in our county.

We want to recruit the best Firefighters irrespective of gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation or disability.

WYFRS commits to diversity, equity and inclusion through:

• Employee networks celebrating gender inclusion, disability, LGBTQ+, ethnic diversity and menopause.
• Annual events and celebrations including Pride, Black History Month, Ramadan and Eid, Diwali, International Women’s Day and White Ribbon Day.
• Essential inclusion training is mandatory to all staff.
• Neurodiversity screening including a supportive reasonable adjustment process which supports inclusion by design.
• Access to assistive software and dedicated trainers.
• Inclusive policies such as; Shared Parental Leave, Adoption, Reasonable Adjustments, Dignity and Respect and Cultural Needs.