Corporate document

Our combined Kia Toipoto and Inclusion & Diversity Plan 2024/25

Formats and related files

Our context #

Mean gender pay gap - 2018 to 2024

We have made significant progress with closing the gender pay gap at Te Tai Ōhanga, with the pay gap more than halving since 2018 - currently 8.7%, down from 20% in 2018.

Our ethnic pay gap has increased slightly in the last year however we have a negative mean pay gap for our Pacific and Māori staff.

Our context and story so far #

  • We know that to achieve our vision of lifting living standards for all New Zealanders, we need to be a genuinely inclusive workplace that embraces diverse thinking, and effectively engages with, and better represents, our diverse communities. Our combined Kia Toipoto/Inclusion & Diversity action plan continues to build on the work we've done so far to be a workplace where everyone is welcome, heard, valued and respected.
  • Establishing our wharenui (meeting house) was a bold and innovative move in the late 1980s. Named Ngā mokopuna a Tāne (the grandchildren of Tāne), this taonga (treasure) holds deep significance and emphasises the value of considering the longer-term impact of our mahi. Our workplace design echoes the wharenui's essence, featuring colour, imagery and a central pou (pillar) that connects our people to it at every level of our office. We celebrated the 30th anniversary of Ngā Mokopuna a Tāne in 2021 with an unveiling of Ngā Manu a Tāne, four bird sculptures that act as kaitiaki for our wharenui.
  • Our current I&D strategy was developed through a collaborative co-design process with our people. This approach strengthened engagement, reaffirmed our commitment to I&D, and ensured our updated aspirations signalled the kind of organisation we want to be. I&D principles are woven into key processes such as induction, recruitment and regular confidential employee surveys and exit interviews help us track our progress.
  • Our Values and Behaviours were refreshed last year and developed using an organisation-wide collaborative process, Ngā Mokopuna a Tāne serves as both an anchor and inspiration for them. The Values Making a difference (kia pono) Enhancing Mana (kia whakamana) and Acheiving Together (kia hono) guide our actions and support Tiakina - our Guardianship and Stewardship responsibilities. In short, they describe us "at our heart, at our best".
  • We have run two iterations of our Te Ara Pounamu Awards, which provide a platform for individuals and teams who exemplify our Values and Behaviours to be recognised. Throughout 2024 we have worked to embed our Values and Behaviours in all people processes, and ensure our people have a thorough understanding of them.
  • Kia Tū, our refreshed leadership development approach, builds further on our Values and Behaviours, and reflects a distributed and shared leadership frame. New resources and training are available to build the confidence and skills of our people to lead from where they stand. Our refreshed Leadership Capability Framework encompasses this approach and includes a section dedicated to I&D to support individual development.
  • Our I&D strategy specifically recognises the important role our people leaders play in driving our I&D mahi and our recent organisational survey results show that this is a strength of ours. Current training for our people leaders focuses on supporting them to build a culture of psychological safety, engagement and accountability within their teams and we're integrating a strengths-lens on performance and development. Regular People Leader Forums also provide our leaders with opportunities to connect, hear diverse perspectives and share ideas to continue to build a strong, diverse, inclusive organisation.
  • In line with our Whāinga Amorangi plan to build cultural capability, we continue to offer a range of Māori capability training options and survey our people regularly to gain their perspectives and assess our progress. Senior Leader led initiatives underpin our annual celebrations of Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori and Matariki, and reflect the commitment from the top of our organisation. Recent organisational survey results show that, while there's still more to do, we have made improvements across the board over the past three years.
  • Te Tai Ōhanga benefits from the support of Te Puna Aronui, a cross-organisation network of people with expertise in Te Ao Māori and Pacific perspectives. Guided by them, we're working to integrate Te Ao Māori perspectives into our policy advice through our He Ara Waiora framework, which promotes a holistic and future focused approach to wellbeing. A recently launched handbook and e-modules support our people to share knowledge and apply the tools in their mahi. Ngā Pūkenga, a partnership group of Māori thought leaders, provides appropriate stewardship and support for our use of He Ara Waiora.
  • Two e-learning modules have been designed and delivered to support the aims of our Pacific Strategy 2022-2025. The first module, shared widely with other public service agencies, focuses on building capability through understanding Pacific communities. The second module explores the Pacific Operating Model andfocuses on applying Pacific perspectives into our policy advice. This was launched last year and now we continue to embed it.
  • Initiated in 2016, the annual Ivan Kwok Award celebrates excellence in engagement with Māori. This award pays tribute to the exceptional Ivan Kwok (ONZ) who devoted 41 years at the Treasury and made a significant contribution to government understanding of Crown-Māori relationships through his advice and influence.
  • One of the ways that we cultivate a sense of belonging is by welcoming newcomers into our work whanau with a traditional pōwhiri ceremony in our wharenui. Our internal waiata group, Te Puna Wai, plays a critical role as a source of waiata and wairua (spirit) within our organisation. They support our Executive Leadership Team and the wharenui at pōwhiri for new staff, visiting dignitaries and on special occasions, as well as giving occasional informal concerts in the atrium and participating in Te Kōnohete(a public sector kapa haka competition).
  • We are steadily enriching our collection of organisational cultural tools, and our Puna Ako mobile app is a rich resource to support te reo Māori pronunciation, understanding of tikanga, and principles of Māori engagement. This app, accessible to both our staff and the public, offers a detailed and user-friendly resource for anyone aiming to boost their confidence and comprehend te reo and tikanga to aid their everyday work.
  • We continue to monitor our people practices to remove bias. When recruiting, we use gender balanced interview panels, a gender decoder across our job adverts, and a Gender Pay Gap Calculator to evaluate and address potential pay disparities in salary. We use diverse advertising channels and networks to widen our attraction pool and we have established specific internship programmes for Māori and Pacific Peoples. Like-for-like gender pay gaps are also regularly reviewed through our remuneration process.
  • Our Employee Led Networks include the Womens, Te Puna Aronui, Rainbow, Pan-Asian, Pasifika and Neurodiversity networks and each has a Senior Leader Sponsor. Our recently established Network Leads group has supported them to work collaboratively on initiatives, share strategies, learnings, and successes, and collectively add value to our I&D approach. You can find more detail about our networks on later slides in this report.
  • Although we acknowledge there is still a considerable journey ahead, we take pride in the strides we've taken so far at Te Tai Ōhanga. The 2024/25 integrated Kia Toipoto/I&D Action Plan sets out the roadmap to further close our pay gaps, accelerate progress for women and create a diverse and inclusive workplace for all.

Alignment with Papa Pounamu principles #

The Papa Pounamu programme sets the diversity and inclusion programme for the wider public service & has 5 priority areas. Te Tai Ōhanga's strategy maps closely to the Papa Pounamu principles as shown below:

Papa Pounamu Principles

I&D Strategy focus areas

Te whakawhanaungatanga / Building relationships
Ngā tūhononga e kōkiritia ana e ngā kaimahi / Employee-led networks
Inclusive workplace practices
Hautūtanga Ngākau Tuwhera / Inclusive leadership Leader-led Inclusion and Diversity
Te Urupare I te Mariu / Addressing bias Inclusive talent approaches
Te āheinga ā-ahurea / Cultural competency Cultural capability
                                ←        Data-led monitoring and reporting         →

An overview of Te Tai Ōhanga's Inclusion and Diversity strategy #

We aim for Te Tai Ōhanga to be an inclusive organisation, and one that attracts and retains the best talent, draws on our diverse skills and experiences and is informed by diverse perspectives. Our I&D strategy focuses on five key areas:

Inclusive workplace practices

Building a culture at Te Tai Ōhanga where everyone feels welcomed, heard, valued and respected, so they can contribute to their potential.

Leader-led Inclusion and Diversity

Supporting our people leaders to confidently lead and integrate Inclusion & Diversity into our mahi and ways of working.

Inclusive talent approaches

Making our people processes fair, transparent and equitable by identifying and minimising potential for unconscious bias to affect outcomes.

Cultural capability

Strengthening our culture by building individual and organisational capability, supporting the Public Sector shared goal of true Māori/Crown partnership.

Data-led monitoring and reporting

Enhancing and improving the quality and transparency of our workforce data to support effective tracking, reporting and decision-making.

Our 2024/2025 action plan summary #

   

I&D Strategy:

Our 2024/25 focus areas in a nutshell:

Inclusive workplace practices Continuing to embed our refreshed Values and Behaviours, continuing to support our employee-led networks, and promoting and supporting the implementation of the Reasonable Accommodation policy.
Leader-led Inclusion and Diversity Continue our leadership development approach to encompass all our people (Kia Tu - 'lead from where you stand') and strengthening the cultural capability of our leaders to model inclusive ways of working.
Inclusive talent approaches Continue to broaden our talent attraction pools to increase our demographic and cognitive diversity at Te Tai Ōhanga including focus on early in careers pathways. Continue to offer Career Development workshops for all our people.
Cultural capability Extending and supporting uptake of our tools and resources and continuing to provide opportunities for development through our range of Māori capability course offerings and opportunities.
Data-led monitoring and reporting Monitoring our gender and ethnic pay gaps and implementing the public service 4-point plan to increase rainbow and disabled representation in the public service.

Workforce Data as at 30 September 2024 #

Introduction #

As we work towards lifting living standards and improving intergenerational wellbeing for New Zealanders, Te Tai Ōhanga also has a role to play as an employer. Our organisation can positively affect the lifetime earnings of women and ethnic employees in a global environment where pay gaps still exist for women and non-European ethnic groups.

Te Tai Ōhanga remains committed to addressing our gender and ethnic pay gaps as a priority, and we continue to work towards understanding and addressing the drivers that contribute to these gaps.

In this section we will outline our workforce composition, our pay gaps and some of the contributing drivers.

Our refreshed four-year strategy (July 2021-June 2025)

Our refreshed four-year strategy (July 2021-June 2025)

Representation #

Workforce Composition

As at 30 September 2024, our workforce comprised of 617 permanent and fixed-term employees. Their gender and ethnic representation is shown in this table.

Note that:

  • As shown here, a small subset of our employees have not stated a gender or identified as another gender; in the interests of privacy, we have not included them in our analysis other than where gender is not a factor.
  • Since one person may identify with multiple ethnicities, ethnicity percentages can add up to more than 100%.

Workforce composition as at 30 September 2024

Workforce composition as at 30 September 2024

Source: Treasury employee data, September 2024

Employees by gender and employment type

This table shows our gender and employment type breakdown. As at 30 September 2024, 48.8% of our employees are women, 11.6% of whom work part-time (less than 80 hours a fortnight, excluding staff seconded out or on extended leave). This compares with 7% of men working part-time.

This table does not include those that have identified as another gender or have not stated a gender, therefore the total in this table does not match the overall headcount.

Employees by gender and employment type as at 30 September 2024

Employees by gender and employment type as at 30 September 2024

Source: Treasury employee data, September 2024

Women in Senior Leadership

At Te Tai Ōhanga, women hold 47.6% of senior leadership roles (defined as Tiers 1-3). In the public service, (by this same definition), women hold 56.7% of senior leadership roles.

We have three women and four men on the Executive Leadership Team. Kaiurungi is our Tier 3 leadership group. The Māori word ‘Kaiurungi' is used to refer to those who steer or guide the organisation. This group comprises eight women and eight men.

Data provided to Te Kawa Mataaho for their workforce data release is provided as at 30 June 2024, therefore there may be slight differences in what appears in this report, which uses data as at 30 September 2024.

Women in Senior Leadership 2024

Women in Senior Leadership 2024

Source: Te Kawa Mataaho Workforce Data 2024

Ethnic Diversity at Te Tai Ōhanga and in the Public Service

This graph shows the ethnic makeup of Te Tai Ōhanga and the Public Service*.

While there has been a small upward trend in the percentage of Māori, Pacific Peoples and Asian employees in our workforce over recent years, we still have some way to go before we can say that our workforce is representative of New Zealand's population. We are less ethnically diverse than the public service on average, although this is slowly changing over time.

*If an individual reported identifying with two ethnicities that fall into the same Level 1 category - eg, NZ European and Australian, or Chinese and Filipino - this was counted only once.

Ethnic Diversity at Te Tai Ōhanga and in the Public Service 2024

Ethnic Diversity at Te Tai Ōhanga and in the Public Service 2024

Source: Te Kawa Mataaho Workforce Data 2024

Pay Gap #

Mean Gender Pay Gap Over Time

Our mean gender pay gap has stayed the same at 8.7% in 2023 and 8.7% in 2024.

It remains slightly higher than the overall public service gender pay gap of 6.1%.

Mean Gender Pay Gap Over Time 2024

Mean Gender Pay Gap Over Time 2024

Source: Te Kawa Mataaho Workforce Data 2024

Gender pay gap

Mean and median gender pay gap 2024

We have made significant progress with closing the gender pay gap at Te Tai Ōhanga. The pay gap has halved since 2018.

Our data shows that the Treasury's mean gender pay gap is 8.7%, and the median gender pay gap is 7.45%. This is largely influenced by grade distribution.

Whilst we are bringing in equal number of women and men into the organisation there is more work to be done to attract women into the higher remunerated roles (such as our Principal Advisor roles). We also have a higher proportion of women in our lower paid roles.

Median remuneration by ethnicity 2024

Our data shows that there is still an overall ethnic pay gap at Te Tai Ōhanga. The median remuneration has been used for each ethnic group, because:

  • some groups have low numbers of representation at Te Tai Ōhanga
  • the results are affected by very high or low individual salaries
  • this method better protects individuals' privacy.

The employees who did not specify an ethnicity with which they identified, have not been included in this section of the report.

Median remuneration by ethnicity 2024

Median remuneration by ethnicity 2024

Source: Treasury Employee Data September 2024

Mean ethnic pay gap

Mean ethnic pay gap - 2023 and 2024

Our overall ethnic pay gap (non-European vs European) currently sits at a mean of 13.6%. This time last year, our overall ethnic pay gap was sitting at a mean of 12.4%, which is a slight increase over the last year.

When looking at the mean ethnic pay gap for our Pacific and Māori staff within our organisation, these groups are experiencing a negative pay gap (in favour of Pacific and Māori).

Asian Pay Gap

In the past year our Asian pay gap has increased from 17% to 18.2%. Tenure, age and occupational level are the key drivers of this increased pay gap.

Over the last year, 43.8% of Asian new starters were in the lower bands such as in our graduate programme. This occupational grouping has driven an increase in the pay gap, despite increasing our Asian representation organisationally.

At Te Tai Ōhanga our Asian represented staff are on average 4.2 years younger than non-Asians and are on average 2.4 years less tenured than non-Asians.

Our internal, employee-led Pan-Asian network is fully committed to supporting ongoing organisational mahi to understand and address our ethnic pay gaps.

Ethnic diversity by band group 2024

Ethnic diversity by band group 2024

Source: Treasury Employee Data September 2024

Occupational grouping

Our data shows that patterns of 'occupational grouping' are still present and continue to have a significant impact on our pay gaps. This is also an issue in similar organisations overseas and across the public service.

Occupational grouping means that women or ethnic groups are over-represented in lower-paid occupational groups and men or Europeans are over-represented in higher-paid occupational groups.

“Occupations that are traditionally male dominated tend to be more highly valued than are occupations that are traditionally female dominated, and this influences salaries. This occupational segregation — women being more likely to be working in lower-paid occupations — is a key driver of the gender pay gap for many departments.” 
- Te Kawa Mataaho (2023)

“Like the gender pay gap, ethnic pay gaps can relate to occupational segregation or the occupation profile of a particular ethnic group. Māori, Pacific and Asian public servants are over-represented in lower-paid occupation groups.” 
- Te Kawa Mataaho (2023)

Gender Representation by pay quartile

One of the primary drivers of our gender pay gap is occupational grouping, a pattern we generally see emerging as pay gaps increase by grade, tenure, and age. The interplay between these factors can be complex and may be subject to legacy issues (eg, organisational, sectoral, or societal) still evident in parts of the wider system.

For example in 2024, women at Te Tai Ōhanga fill 62% of the lower-paid jobs (quartile 1), compared to 40% of the higher-paid roles (quartile 4).

Gender representation by pay quartile 2024

Gender representation by pay quartile 2024

Source: Treasury Employee Data September 2024

Occupational grouping: representation by grade and tenure

Our data shows that our gender pay gap increases by grade, in line with external research that suggests the gender pay gap in New Zealand increases for women in more senior positions and on higher salaries.

We see a negative gender pay gap of -4.55% for grades 11-14f (has decreased since 2023 at -9.3%), however, we see the gender pay gap increases in grades 15 and above. This may be connected to tenure. In grades 15 and above, men have, on average, been at the Treasury longer. For example, Men are 2.6 years less in 11-14f, 0.5 years more in 15-17f, 2.5 years more in 18-20f and 3.9 years more in 21-24f respectively.

While hiring men into our higher bands does impact our overall gender pay gap, the specific gender pay gap for these grade brackets is lower than our overall gender pay gap, despite men having significantly higher average tenure.

Not all of our pay grades had enough people for meaningful comparison, so we have combined our grades into groups.

Gender representation and GPG by grade

Gender representation and GPG by grade

Source: Treasury Employee Data September 2024

Tenure at the Treasury by grade 2024

Tenure at the Treasury by grade 2024

Source: Treasury Employee Data September 2024

Occupational grouping: pay gaps by tenure and age

Our data shows that the gender pay gap increases with tenure, which also relates to occupational grouping.

Women with over 10 years' service are more highly represented in lower grades than men and this has a significant influence on our organisational gender pay gap.

By tenure, we see the gender pay gap fluctuates. While it's relatively low for the tenure groups under 10 years, with 4% being the highest, it rises to 17% for staff who have been here over 10 years.

Te Kawa Mataaho states, “Gender pay gaps increase with age, starting from 1.5% for those aged 20 to 24 and rising to 11.4% for those aged 60 to 64.” Higher pay gaps for some women over 55 have also been observed in external research*.

Our data points to occupational grouping being the main driver; 41.9% of women aged over 55 hold roles graded below 18, compared with only 10.2% of men.

*Sin, Stillman and Fabling (2017) and Australian Workplace Gender Equality Agency (2021)

Gender representation and GPG by tenure 2024

Gender representation and GPG by tenure 2024

Source: Treasury Employee Data September 2024

Gender representation and GPG by age 2024

Gender representation and GPG by age 2024

Source: Treasury Employee Data September 2024

Intersectionality

In New Zealand, large ethnic pay gaps exist compounded for women of diverse ethnicities - to create larger pay gaps compared with the average earnings of all men.

Te Kawa Mataaho states: “In the Public Service men are paid more on average than women in each ethnic group, and Europeans are paid more on average than other ethnicities. This reflects the way that gender and ethnic bias compounds for Māori, Pacific and ethnic women. Pacific women and Asian women have the lowest average salaries in the Public Service.”

“The gaps in pay between all men and wāhine Māori, and between all men and Pacific women, are substantially higher than the overall gender pay gap.” - Manatū Wāhine, Ministry for Women

Mean gender pay gaps for European and Asian women

Our small sample sizes make it somewhat challenging to effectively examine the causes of the ethnic pay gap, as well as the effects of intersectionality (eg, gender and ethnicity together). We do have sufficient numbers for analysis of the gender pay gaps for female European and Asian employees respectively, shown here.

Compared with all men, we see a small gender pay gap (6%) for European women (n=244) at the Treasury, and a larger one (19.5%) for Asian women (n=53). Te Kawa Mataaho's Workforce Data 2024 shows that, in the public service, men are paid more on average than women in each ethnic group, and that Europeans are paid more on average than other ethnicities.

Mean gender pay gaps for European and Asian women 2024

Mean gender pay gaps for European and Asian women 2024

Source: Treasury Employee Data September 2024

Calculating our gender pay gap #

Methodology

We calculate pay gaps in alignment with how Te Kawa Mataaho calculates the public service average gender and ethnic pay gaps in their Workforce Data release. Unless otherwise stated, our data throughout this report:

  • includes fixed-term and permanent employees, but not temporary/casual employees or contractors/consultants
  • is current as at 30 September 2024
  • includes all employees seconded out, and employees on extended leave, but not secondees from other agencies working at Te Tai Ōhanga
  • is headcount and not Full Time Equivalent (FTE) staff
  • is based on the mean gender pay gap
  • may have been summarised or aggregated where sample sizes are small (fewer than 20 men or 20 women) and/or where individual privacy is a consideration.

For example:

(Mean male full-time rem - mean female full-time rem)/ 
(Mean male full-time rem) x 100

OR

(Median male full-time rem - median female full-time rem)/ 
(Median male full-time rem) x 100

Methodology

When calculating ethnic pay gaps, all employees are assigned a value for each major ethnic group:

  • TRUE - This employee identifies with this ethnic group
  • FALSE - This employee doesn't identify with this ethnic group
  • Not Stated - The employee did not disclose their ethnicity

For ethnic pay gap calculations, only employees who have values of TRUE or FALSE are included in calculations. As employees can select up to 3 ethnicities, an employee can be in multiple ethnic groups and employees who have not disclosed their ethnicity are excluded from the calculations.

The ethnic pay gaps are calculated as the average total remuneration of those that identify with that ethnic group vs those that don't identify with that ethnic group. For our overall ethnic pay gap calculation, we use a Non-European vs European format where a positive number indicates that there is a pay gap in favour of European employees.

For example, the Non-European pay gap is calculated as follows. All other ethnic pay gaps are calculated in the same way but by using different ethnic groups:

(Mean European full-time rem - mean Non-European full-time rem)/ 
(Mean European full-time rem) x 100 

OR

(Mean Non-Māori full-time rem - mean Māori full-time rem)/ 
(Mean Non-Māori full-time rem) x 100 

A closer look at our 2024/2025 action plan #

Leader-led Inclusion & Diversity #

Actions to support our key Inclusion & Diversity focus areas: Success factors that will let us know we've made progress:

Leadership development

  • Embed Kia Tū (‘Lead from where you stand’), our refreshed approach to growing leadership capability, including a focus on strengths-based development.
  • Continue to design and deliver interventions that support all our people leaders to lead inclusively and our people to lead from where they stand (eg, for example our ‘Leading through Strengths’ workshops).
  • Provide further opportunities and support for employees to attend the Accentuated Leadership programme. This programme is designed by ethnically diverse women for ethnically diverse women, and aims to help participants step into their authentic leadership identity and power.

Increase our leaders' cultural capability

  • Refresh our Whāinga Amorangi plan and ensure alignment with Te Ao Māori strategy. Keep a focus on strengthening Māori Crown relations capability through targeted initiatives which will support our leaders and people to champion the development and implementation in this space.
  • Gain insight into and increase understanding of Māori engagement protocols/tikanga in a marae environment.
  • Build stronger communication skills through Māori language pronunciation tools and essential phrases.
  • Develop greater understanding of the relevance and practical application of the Treaty of Waitangi in the public sector.
  • Feedback from employees about increased levels of empowerment and engagement from those not in formal leadership positions.
  • Feedback relating to value gained from attending courses and interventions.
  • Continued engagement in participation in the Accentuated Programme and positive feedback about the Accentuated Programme from participants and their people leaders.

Papa Pounamu principle:

Hautūtanga Ngākau Tuwhera / Inclusive leadership

Inclusive Workplace Practices #

Actions to support our key Inclusion & Diversity focus areas: Success factors that will let us know we've made progress:

Embed our Values and Behaviours:

  • Ensure our Values & Behaviours are embedded across the organisation and well reflected in all our people processes (eg, people plans, induction, recruitment, development, etc).
  • Co-design practical solutions with our culture champions group to bring our Values & Behaviours to life at Te Tai Ōhanga.
  • Continue with Te Ara Pounamu, our internal recognition programme that aims to celebrate those that demonstrate our Values and Behaviours.

Support our Employee-led Networks:

  • Continue to support our employee-led networks and embed the newly established Network Leads group.
  • Deliver the Allyship programme to our culture champions group to equip them with the confidence and capability to be good allies and share their learnings with their teams.
  • Continue to build our organisation's kete of tools, resources and learning to support inclusion in practice (eg, guidance on supporting people in the workplace with ADHD or autism).
  • Our people can articulate and demonstrate our refreshed Values & Behaviours and they are utilised in all people processes.
  • Engagement survey scores on our people’s familiarity with the Values & Behaviours and their people leader’s demonstration of them.
  • Employee-led networks have annual plans in place and are supported to drive initiatives to support these plans.

Continue to renew and update our people policies:

  • Consult with Employee Led Networks (ELNs), the Public Service Association (PSA) and all staff on our approach to reasonable accommodations to increase our employee value proposition and support a more inclusive workplace culture.
  • Refresh our recruitment policy to ensure our current inclusion and diversity recruitment practices are documented and updated, to eliminate bias and discrimination during the hiring process.
  • Raise awareness of our inclusive policies, such as our alternate leave policy, ie, public holidays can be transferred to another day, in accordance with the Holidays Act.

Tools and Resources:

  • Guest speaker sessions on menopause to ensure there is an appropriate understanding and level of support provided to those in the workplace going through menopause.
  • Accentuated workshops for women in leadership who are ethnically diverse are offered to our current and new people leaders.
  • Resources co-designed by our ELNs and culture champions group to support our people to be good allies in the workplace.
  • Consultation on our Reasonable Accommodation policy is finalised and implementation completed by next financial year.
  • Menopause session delivered.

Papa Pounamu principle:

Te whakawhanaungatanga / Building relationships

Ngā tūhononga e kōkiritia ana e ngā kaimahi / Employee-led networks

Inclusive Talent Approaches #

Actions to support our key Inclusion & Diversity focus areas: Success factors that will let us know we've made progress:

Talent attraction

  • Continue to broaden our talent attraction pools to increase our demographic and cognitive diversity at Te Tai Ōhanga (eg, through key messaging in our job adverts to attract more diversity).
  • Review and refresh graduate and intern recruitment pages on our external website and collateral to showcase Te Tai Ōhanga as a diverse and inclusive employer and increase diversity of early in career new starters.
  • Continue to strengthen existing key relationships with education providers to lift our profile and build our future graduate and intern pipelines and build new engagement through more diverse early in career networks.
  • Continue to capture and apply learnings from our successful graduate and intern recruitment round last year, which resulted in gender balance and increased ethnic diversity in our cohorts.
  • Specific team diversity actions are incorporated into people planning and recruitment strategies.

Development and progression

  • Continue to offer our career development workshops across the organisation for those seeking to prepare themselves for career progression.
  • Explore rotation options across the Treasury to support different cohorts across the organisation to diversify their skills and experience in differing teams.
  • Our pool of candidates for roles becomes increasingly diverse.
  • Refreshed graduate and intern recruitment processes to incorporate more diversity of our attraction campaigns.
  • The diversity of applications for all roles has increased.
  • Continue to gain positive feedback on career development workshops from participants and their people leaders.
  • Explored rotation options and clarified our future approach.

Papa Pounamu principle:

Te Urupare I te Mariu / Addressing Bias

Actions to support our key Inclusion & Diversity focus areas: Success factors that will let us know we've made progress:

Training and development

  • Continue to embed our Pacific Operating Model e-learning module to help policy analysts apply Pacific cultural capability to their practice.
  • Continue to deliver and assess effectiveness and gaps to improve our suite of offerings (eg, determine whether we need more advanced Te Reo Māori training).
  • Continue to iterate and embed our Whāinga Amorangi plan to increase our Māori Crown relations capability and to recognise the aims and aspirations of Māori.

Tools and resources

  • Continue to build awareness of the importance and value of building Māori Capability at Te Tai Ōhanga and how it relates to people's mahi.
  • Run our annual Māori Capability survey to measure our progress against our Whāinga Amorangi plan and hear our people's perspectives.
  • Continue to build our toolkit for our people, eg, mihi whakatau guidance.
  • Support our people to be able to articulate the important elements in Māori perceptions of wellbeing, and the tikanga - values or principles – that underpin He Ara Waiora, a framework that gives a uniquely Aotearoa perspective to measure wellbeing.
  • Positive feedback about our learning solutions to support the Pacific Strategy.
  • We improve against our measures as outlined in our Whāinga Amorangi plan.

Papa Pounamu principle:

Te āheinga ā-ahurea / Cultural competency

Data-led Monitoring and Reporting #

Actions to support our key Inclusion & Diversity focus areas: Success factors that will let us know we've made progress:
  • Continue to monitor the gender and ethnic make-up of candidates throughout various stages of the recruitment process, across our organisation and leadership levels, and across other significant workforce groupings (eg, Analysts / Senior Analysts).
  • Continue to monitor salaries of same or similar roles for gender and ethnic pay gaps, through our annual remuneration round and quarterly reporting to senior leadership.
  • Begin to implement the public service’s new Four-Point Plans for increasing Rainbow and Disabled peoples’ representation in the public sector, in consultation with our relevant internal networks and employee groups (we anticipate starting with step one: visibility through improvements to data collection).
  • Work with the Rainbow Network to address gaps or inconsistencies in IT systems related to name or gender marker changes.
  • Ensure equity is an overarching principle to any changes to our remuneration system.
  • Our senior leadership teams remain gender balanced: 40-40-20.
  • The percentage of Māori and Pacific applicants for our roles doubles (Five-year target).
  • Our representation of Māori and Pacific employees in bands 19 and above increases.
  • Our Asian pay gap decreases and the representation of Asian women in leadership roles increases.
  • Our pay gaps for the same or similar roles remain negligible.

Supports achievement of the 5 Papa Pounamu principles

Tracking our progress: Kia Toipoto 2023/2024 #

Progress against our 2023/24 Action Plan #

Engaging with our people

Our diverse teams and an inclusive environment are key to our success at Te Tai Ōhanga - The Treasury.

Our Employee-Led Networks (ELNs) work together and with our people to amplify their diverse perspectives and contribute to a culture of inclusion and ensure we are creating a sense of belonging in our workplace.

Our ELNs work with us to bring positive change across the organisation by way of promotion of their different events and supporting us to drive diverse and inclusive hiring practices.

We met with each of our internal employee-led network committees and the PSA to discuss the progress we have made since last year and explore what we might include in this year's action plan.

Treasury Women's Network Te Aka Wāhine o Te Tai Ōhanga

The Treasury Women's Network (TWN) is one of our longest-standing internal employee-led networks. Their vision is to shape the future of women, cis and trans people, at the Treasury by providing opportunities for development, fostering valuable connections, and facilitating members' success through career growth. They are passionate people from across the Treasury who are focused on a culture of collaboration and support. They support women to grow and develop their career aspirations, build and foster networks as part of their professional and personal development, and engage in awareness raising and advocacy activities.

TWN has played a role in developing our Kia Toipoto action plans, with discussions centred on their insights into the patterns of occupational grouping we observed and how we might address these.

Their forward work programme includes the continuation of their annual Speed Mentoring event, a guest speaker on menopause in the workplace, and supporting women to attend leadership training. They also run events for annual days, including International Women's Day and Suffrage Day.

Treasury Rainbow Network He Takatāpui o Te Tai Ōhanga

The Treasury Rainbow Network (TRN) is our internal Rainbow Network that aims for a safe and inclusive space for LGBTQIA+ employees (including parents of and allies) to connect. TRN has played a role in developing our Kia Toipoto action plan. The discussions focused on how rainbow data is displayed in the report, what data is collected by the Treasury, and where improvements can be made, especially in alignment with the public sector's new Rainbow Four-Point Plan, the first step of which addresses visibility and data collection.

This year, the Network fundraised through their annual events, such as Pride and the Rainbow bake sale, and donated to Rainbow Path and Te Kawe Maha, Queer Archives Aotearoa. They will continue with these events and intend to engage InsideOut to run sessions on Rainbow Inclusivity in the workplace.

Treasury Pan-Asian Network Te Hono ki Āhia Te Tai Ōhanga

The Treasury Pan-Asian Network's vision is to support an authentically positive and inclusive workplace where our Pan-Asian employees can thrive. It is a platform by and for Pan-Asian staff in the Treasury to support and network with each other. The Network aims to advise on solutions to help close the ethnic pay gap and improve the employee experience for Pan-Asian employees, provide a culturally safe space in which Pan-Asian employee experiences can be constructively shared, explored and understood, and be a space for the promotion of learning, upskilling on the Treasury work-related matters and professional development, particularly on elevating Pan-Asian leaders.

The Network has undertaken significant work for the Treasury, including onboarding a senior leader sponsor and committee members, conducting a member survey, participating in graduate and intern interviews, supporting participants to attend the Accentuated Women of Colour leadership training programme, and organising cultural events to promote cultural awareness.

They are currently establishing a mentoring programme within the network, building awareness of the barriers that Pan-Asian employees face, and engage with the People & Wellbeing team to raise awareness of inclusive policies and provide input into organisation-wide initiatives, such as Allyship training.

Neurodiversity Network

The Neurodiversity Network was formed at the end of 2023 and officially launched at the beginning of this year. Their vision and purpose is to provide a safe space for neurodivergent staff and allies and to support the Treasury in creating an inclusive environment where diverse neurological conditions are understood, respected, and valued.

In the coming year, the Neurodiversity Network intends leveraging the momentum from its recent success running ADHD webinars hosted by ADHD Alex and working with Autism New Zealand to deliver a series of similar offerings. They will also be working alongside our People & Wellbeing team to consult on guidance for leaders, a Reasonable Accommodations policy and recruitment processes.

Te Puna Aronui

Te Puna Aronui is a network of Māori senior leaders and advisors from across Te Tai Ōhanga, whose purpose is to connect, create and support each other in our mahi, as Māori. The Puna host a monthly, informal hui for kaimahi to kōrero, share insights and talk about what's at the fore for them, in Te Tai Ōhanga and te ao Māori. External speakers and experts are occasionally invited to present and kōrero on a kaupapa too. The team won the Ivan Kwok award in 2023, which acknowledges teams that have demonstrated and achieved significant growth and leadership in the Māori crown space.

Complementary to this group, is the Treasury's informal Pasifika Network, a voluntary, employee-led initiative that fosters an inclusive environment for staff of Pacific heritage to connect, share experiences, and provide support to one another.

Public Service Association

The Treasury signed our first collective employment agreement with the PSA in 2024. We met with delegates as part of our wider employee-led network engagement, and gave a high-level overview, focused on building the relationship and providing them with a status update on the 2024/25 action plan. Going forward, we will continue to consult with the PSA via delegates on our Kia Toipoto report and action plans alongside the employee-led networks.

Leader-led Inclusion and Diversity

Take opportunities to continue incorporating Leader-led Inclusion & Diversity capability building options aligned to our leadership development framework and refreshed Values & Behaviours.

What we said we'd do… How we did...

Leadership development

  • Broaden our leadership development approach and offerings to encompass all our people and align with our refreshed Values (ie, ‘lead from where you stand’).
  • Continue to incorporate leader-led I&D into our development mechanisms such as our People Leader Forums and refresh our People Leader Capability Framework to bolster our strengths-based approach to development and performance.
  • Provide opportunities and support employees to attend the Accentuated Leadership programme, a programme designed by ethnically diverse women for ethnically diverse women to step into their authentic leadership identity and power.

Leadership development

We launched our refreshed approach to leadership development, which embodies the concept that everyone has the potential to lead from where they stand, regardless of formal position or role. The implementation of the approach has been supported by introducing eLearning modules, workshops, drop-ins, and sessions at team meetings. Concurrently, we updated our Leadership Capability Framework to support this refreshed approach and ensure alignment with our Values & Behaviours.

Two new offerings were developed and delivered this year to support staff and people leaders to apply a strengths-based approach to performance and growth. These workshops have received excellent feedback.

We supported two women to attend the 2024 Accentuated Leadership programme and continue to receive positive feedback on this offering. We intend on continuing to provide opportunities and support for our ethnically diverse women to attend this course.

Increase our leaders’ cultural capability

  • Gain insight into and increase understanding of Māori engagement protocols (tikanga) in a marae environment.
  • Build stronger communication skills through Māori language pronunciation tools and essential phrases.
  • Develop greater understanding of the relevance and practical application of the Treaty of Waitangi in the public sector.

Increase our leaders’ cultural capability

The results from our annual Māori Capability Survey revealed our people are confident in their Treaty of Waitangi knowledge but are less confident in their Tikanga capability.

We continued to support our people to build their Cultural Capability through educational sessions on our internal Wharenui, Ngā Mokopuna a Tāne, events through Te Wiki o te Reo Māori and Matariki, and through our formal courses.

Inclusive Workplace Practices

Our people feel welcome, heard, valued, and respected at Te Tai Ōhanga 

What we said we'd do… How we did...

Embed our Values and Behaviours

  • Develop collateral to support implementation of the Values and Behaviours.
  • Reflect the Values and Behaviours in all of our people processes, eg, induction, recruitment.
  • Embed Te Ara Pounamu, a recognition programme that aims to celebrate those that demonstrate all three of our Values.
  • Implement practical solutions that bring the Values and Behaviours to life at Te Tai Ōhanga.

Embed our Values and Behaviours

We successfully launched a suite of collateral to support visual recognition of the Values and Behaviours, including PowerPoint slides, a computer lock screen and posters. We also saw strong nominations for the recent Te Ara Pounamu awards, which celebrates those in the organisation that demonstrate all three Values. 

We launched our Kaihāpai programme, a cross-organisational group of culture champions. The programme includes development to increase their capability to manage self and influence others – ie, Lead from where they stand – and the opportunity to work with their peers and teams to help further embed our Values and Behaviours across the organisation.

Our 2024 staff survey results show there is good recognition and demonstration of our Values and Behaviours amongst our staff and one of our top two results was that our people leaders' actions and behaviours align with them.

Support our employee-led networks

  • Continue to support our employee-led networks, including the newly established Pan-Asian and Neurodiversity Networks.
  • Develop an Allyship programme to equip our people to have the confidence and capability to be good allies.

Support our employee-led networks

We continued to support our employee-led networks and their work programmes as detailed in slides 39-44.

Continue to renew and update our people policies

  • Consult our union and staff on our draft Reasonable Accommodation policy, which aims to increase our employee value proposition and support a more inclusive workplace culture.

Continue to renew and update our people policies

This work was paused while our union agreement was finalised. With the agreement now ratified, we will proceed with consultation on our draft policy. This has been noted in our Action Plan for this coming year.

Inclusive talent approaches

To monitor our people processes to ensure they are fair, transparent, and equitable 

What we said we'd do… How we did...

Talent attraction

  • Broaden our talent attraction pools to increase our demographic and cognitive diversity.
  • Implement refreshed recruitment and careers website and collateral to be more people - and purpose - focused and showcase the Treasury as a diverse and inclusive employer.
  • Strengthen existing and build new key relationships with education providers to lift our profile and build our future graduate and intern pipelines.
  • Capture and apply learnings from our successful graduate and intern recruitment round last year, which resulted in gender balance and increased ethnic diversity in our cohorts.

Talent attraction

We have achieved gender balance and improved diversity in our current early in career cohorts, and our upcoming cohorts are on track to achieve this as well. We have used diverse channels to broaden our talent attraction pools and have increased the ethnic diversity of applications received across the Treasury.

Recruitment Process

There were initial improvements made to the process to ensure the criteria and eligibility requirements are clear and the potential bias is mitigated in our processes. The decision-making process was more consistent with the addition of panel chairs. We have specific reporting on this cohort to governance and senior leadership annually.

Development and progression

  • Repurpose elements of our career development workshops for a wider roll out to those seeking to prepare themselves for career progression.
Development and progression
Our career development workshops were rolled out in May 2024, made available to anyone in the Treasury seeking to prepare themselves for career progression. This was an intervention requested and supported by the Treasury Women’s Network which has now been embedded and rolled out for a wider audience.

Cultural capability

Strengthen our culture by building individual and organisational capability

What we said we'd do… How we did...

Training and development

  • Support our Pacific Strategy and launch our Pacific Operating Model e-learning module to help policy analysts apply Pacific cultural capability to their practice.
  • Continue to deliver and assess effectiveness and gaps to improve our suite of offerings.

Training and development

We launched our Pacific Operating Model e-learning module in December 2023 alongside our last Kia Toipoto action plan. The module is available on our Learning Management System. We will continue to promote the learning option to get more participation and awareness (eg, during various pacific language weeks etc).

Tools and resources

  • Run our annual Māori Capability survey to measure our progress against our Whāinga Amorangi plan and hear our people's perspectives.
  • Continue to build our toolkit for our people, eg, mihi whakatau guidance.
  • Support our people to be able to articulate the important elements of Māori perceptions of wellbeing, and the tikanga (values or principles) that underpin He Ara Waiora, a framework that gives a uniquely Aotearoa perspective to measure wellbeing.

Tools and resources

We ran our annual Māori Capability Survey and were pleased to see improvements across every question category. Our Senior Advisor Māori Capability has recently reviewed our Cultural Capability offerings and the progress we’ve made against our Whāinga Amorangi plan. These findings and recommendations have been incorporated into our forward work programme and Cultural Capability course schedule for 2025.

We supported our people’s cultural capability through resources and toolkits, eg, mihi whakatau guidance. The Te Ao Māori Strategy team developed and launched an e-learning module to support our people’s understanding of He Ara Waiora, a framework that gives a uniquely Aotearoa perspective to measure wellbeing.

Data-led monitoring and reporting #

To enhance and improve the quality of our workforce data to support effective monitoring and progress reports

What we said we'd do… How we did...
  • Continue to monitor the gender and ethnic make-up of candidates throughout various stages of the recruitment process, across our organisation and leadership levels, and across our analyst/advisor level roles.
  • Continue to monitor salaries of same or similar roles for gender and ethnic pay gaps, through our annual remuneration round and quarterly reporting to senior leadership.
  • Begin to implement the public service’s new Four-Point Plans for increasing rainbow and disabled peoples’ representation in the public sector, in consultation with our relevant internal networks and employee groups (we anticipate starting with step one: visibility through improvements to data collection).
  • Work with the Rainbow Network to address gaps or inconsistencies in IT systems related to name or gender marker changes.
  • Ensure equity is an overarching principle to any changes to our remuneration system.

We improved internal ethnic pay gap reporting and reporting on recruitment pipelines for ethnicity and gender. This has also allowed us to provide expanded gender and ethnic pay gap reporting to our governance committees and senior leaders.

Our data tells us that we achieved our 40:40:20 gender balance target across our leadership levels, improved our ethnic diversity in bands 19 and above, and worked with our employee-led networks to increase the diversity on our interview panels. Furthermore, our pay gaps for the same or similar roles remain negligible.

Our data tells us we continue to have gender balance within our analyst/advisor and senior subgroups, and we have increased the percentage of women in principal roles from 26.85% (as at Sept 2021) to 37.5% (as at Sept 2024) - which is pleasing but signals there is more to be done.

We have some further opportunities to address the inconsistencies in our IT systems related to name or gender marker changes in tandem with our Rainbow Network. This has been noted in our forward Action Plan and the network’s work programme.