Bullying has been a persistent problem for the civil service. Between 2015 and 2019, the proportion of officials telling the Civil Service People Survey they had been bullied or harassed in the 12 months leading up to the annual poll hovered stubbornly at 11-12%. However, this figure dropped to 8% in 2020 – when Covid forced the vast majority of teams to work remotely – and the reduction has persisted in the years since.
Discrimination has followed a similar trend, with the proportion of civil servants saying they had been discriminated against dropping from 11% in 2019 to 8% in 2020. Again, the poll has not since seen a return to the pre-Covid figures.
But while clear trends have emerged across the civil service, looking at the data in more granular detail shows the picture is far more nuanced. CSW worked with academics from King’s College London – Michael Sanders, professor of public policy and director of KCL’s School for Government, and research fellow Julia Ellingwood – to look at how experiences of bullying and discrimination compare across demographic groups in the civil service.
In their analysis of the figures, Sanders and Ellingwood also looked at inclusion and fair treatment scores for different groups. These scores are based on four questions asking whether civil servants feel they are treated fairly and with respect by the people they work with; if they feel valued for the work they do; and whether they think their organisation respects individual differences – such as differences in cultures, working styles or backgrounds.
Gender gap
Until 2016, the proportion of male and female civil servants saying they had been bullied in the prior 12 months was roughly equal. But since 2017, the researchers found, there has been a statistically significant gap between the two, with women more likely to say they had been bullied. This gap has persisted despite the civil service-wide fall in reported bullying since 2020, with 7% of men and 9% of women saying they had been bullied in the 2024 survey.
Discrimination has followed a similar pattern. In most years up to 2014, male civil servants had been slightly more likely to say they had been discriminated against; since then, the reverse has been true, with 7% of male and 9% of female civil servants saying they had experienced discrimination in 2024.
The last two years of data go further and provide some insight into the experiences of transgender civil servants – who are far more likely than their cisgender colleagues to say they had been the target of bad behaviour. In 2023, 19% of trans women and 15% of trans men surveyed said they had been bullied, compared with 8% of cisgender respondents. By 2024, those figures had fallen to 15% and 9% for trans women and men respectively, while the number stayed steady for cis civil servants.
But in the last two years, trans women have reported a rise in discrimination – from 20% to 24% – while trans men have reported a fall, from 17% to 12%. Again, the stats for cis officials stayed steady at 8%.
This divergence could reflect “the wider discourse” around the rights of transgender people, which has focused overwhelmingly on trans women, according to Sanders and Ellingwood. Over the last decade and a half of the people survey, women have reported a slightly stronger sense of positive inclusion than men. The gap was widest in 2013, when female civil servants’ inclusion score stood at 77% – four percentage points higher than for their male colleagues. However, this gap has narrowed over the years and had completely closed by 2024, with both groups scoring 81%.
Trans civil servants bucked the civil service-wide trend on inclusion, which has plateaued at 81-82% since 2020. Inclusion scores for trans women and men fell from 77% and 78% respectively in 2023 to 75% for both in 2024.
Sexuality stats
In 2009, 19% of LGBO – lesbian, gay, bisexual and “other” – civil servants said they had experienced discrimination, compared to 12% of heterosexual staff. By 2024, this seven percentage-point gap (which widened slightly to nine in 2010) had narrowed to five percentage points, with 13% of LGBO respondents saying they had been discriminated against.
Bisexual civil servants experienced higher rates of bullying and discrimination (both at 13%) than their lesbian and gay peers (11%). Civil servants who fall into the “other” category – which includes asexuality – fared worse still, with bullying at 15% and discrimination at 19%.
It is not possible to cross-reference data on gender and sexuality in the people survey, which could enable researchers to compare trends among, say, lesbian and gay civil servants or bisexual women and men. Sanders says research he and fellow academics have carried out at King’s – including looking at student data – has revealed “very big differences” within the LGBO grouping.
Straight civil servants have consistently had higher inclusion scores than their lesbian, gay, and bisexual colleagues, and those with “other” sexual orientations. However, the gap has been gradually narrowing over the last decade and a half as scores have risen for both groups. Inclusion for LGBO officials stood at 78% in 2024 – three percentage points lower than for heterosexual civil servants, compared to seven points lower in 2009, but still “statistically significant”, according to Sanders and Ellingwood.
Again, the granular data highlights substantial differences in the experiences of civil servants within this LGBO grouping. Gay and lesbian officials had the highest inclusion scores in this group (80%) and those with “other” sexualities had the lowest (76%).
Health check
The contrast in survey feedback is starkest when looking at responses from officials with long-term limiting health conditions – defined as having a physical or mental health condition lasting 12 months or more that reduces the ability to carry out day-to-day activities. These officials are more than twice as likely as their peers to experience bullying and discrimination.
This finding matches the observations of the civil service’s biggest union. “We know from our own internal records that instances of discrimination are highest when it comes to our disabled members,” says Diane Ebanks, head of equality at PCS. “They are – by far – the group most likely to raise grievances and to escalate to a review of their personal cases by PCS’s legal team.”
As with other groups, reported bullying rates dropped in 2020 – from 22% to 17% – while discrimination fell from 24% to 21%.
The more severe a health condition was reported to be, the more likely officials were to say they had been treated poorly. Nearly a quarter – 22% – of staff with a condition that had “a lot” of impact on their day-to-day activities said they had been bullied in 2024, and 28% said they had been discriminated against. Among those with a condition that had “no impact” on their day-to-day activities, these figures fell to 9% and 8% respectively.
Positive inclusion scores for chronically ill civil servants have risen steadily since 2010, following the overall trend – but have remained significantly lower than those of their counterparts without long-term health conditions. In 2010, inclusion for chronically ill civil servants stood at 57%, rising to 72% by 2024 – six points lower than for non-chronically-ill officials. Among those with the most limiting conditions, this 2024 figure dropped to 63%.
Minority report
Less stark but still persistent is the finding that civil servants from ethnic-minority backgrounds experience significantly more discrimination than their white colleagues: 11% in 2024, compared with 8%. The gap has narrowed, but slowly – 15 years earlier, those percentages stood at 17% and 12% respectively. The trend is similar for bullying: a four percentage-point gap in 2009 had narrowed to two by 2024, when 10% of officials from ethnic minorities said they had been bullied.
More granular data shows reported bullying was highest among the “any other ethnic group” category (13%), followed by staff with mixed heritage (11%), in 2024. Around 10% of Black and Asian civil servants said they had been bullied. Breaking down the data further, civil servants in the “white: Gypsy or Irish traveller” cohort were most likely to say they had experienced bullying, at 17%. They also reported the highest rate of discrimination, at 18%, and the lowest inclusion score, at 68%.
Inclusion scores have been rising gradually for both white and ethnic-minority staff since 2011 – but have diverged since 2018. Last year, inclusion for civil servants from ethnic-minority backgrounds was 80% – two percentage points lower than their white peers. More detailed demographic data shows that while inclusion was highest among the “Black or Black British: African” cohort, at 83%, it was lowest among Black civil servants with Caribbean heritage (75%) or any other Black, Black British or Caribbean background (72%).
What next?
The drop in bullying that came with the onset of the pandemic was “a big surprise”, Sanders says. “Everything else we measure about the workforce – wellbeing, anxiety, happiness, physical health – gets worse during the pandemic, but this one thing gets better.”
Ebanks at the PCS union says having the option to work from home “will have had a positive impact, as it can remove staff from negative environments and perpetrators”. While staff at most departments have returned to the office in some capacity, many are spending more of their time working from home than they did before Covid hit (see p.8).
In their analysis of the data, Sanders and Ellingwood have said the drop in bullying and discrimination since 2020 – and how it has been achieved and sustained – “warrants considerable additional attention”.
How might senior leaders in the civil service go about this? “The first thing I’d like to see is a more qualitative study looking at civil servants who have been in post for more than five years and getting a sense of what their experiences have been, and to see if there’s anything particular that happened, and anything that we can replicate and take forward,” Sanders says. Ellingwood’s PhD is on this subject and the researchers would be keen to help, he adds.
Sanders says he would love to see the raw data behind the people survey. “We could see so much more if we could see that, but we’re also just super grateful that the civil service publishes what they do,” he says. But he says he would love to be able to cross-reference the more granular data on responses from different demographic groups. At the moment, “we can’t really look at intersectionality, which is clearly an important piece of the puzzle here”, Sanders notes. Enabling civil service-watchers to cross-reference responses from people who fall into multiple marginalised groups would paint a much richer picture of civil servants’ experiences, he says.
Ebanks agrees that there should be a “concerted and genuine attempt to understand why these issues are so persistent”. While there has been a drop in bullying and harassment since 2020, the numbers are “still too high”, she says. “Discrimination toward those who are often vulnerable and considered fair game by those with power or influence is not new. Knowing that our members are being targeted due to their protected characteristic is shameful and should not be acceptable in any place of work,” Ebanks adds. “We would particularly encourage efforts on management training to establish working cultures. This should be cascaded down to all staff so that they see and believe that there is a necessary change to come, and that it is taking place.”
A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: “We want the civil service to be a great place to work, which is why we regularly seek feedback from staff and have improved how departments respond to and report bullying, harassment and discrimination.”
Work includes the launch of an organisational readiness assessment tool to identify and fix internal work environment inefficiencies; the expansion of the annual Speak Up campaign to encourage whistleblowing; and updated line-management standards.
The Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy 2022 to 2025 committed to a review of progress on handling bullying, harassment and discrimination across the civil service. Its findings will inform the upcoming Civil Service Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy.