Employees identifying as severely/profoundly deaf: FOI release

FOI reference: FOI/18/01913
Date received: 14 July 2018
Date responded: 27 July 2018

Information requested

How many people does the Scottish Government currently employ that were severely or profoundly deaf in both ears prior to appointment? This excludes people with age related hearing loss.

How many people has the Scottish government employed in the last ten years that were severely or profoundly deaf in both ears prior to appointment? This excludes people with age related hearing loss.

Response

• The Scottish Government is committed to removing barriers to employment for disabled people and to reduce by half, the employment gap between disabled people and the rest of the working age population.

• While our aim is to provide information whenever possible in this instance some of the information you have requested is not held by us. We are unable to provide details of health conditions prior to appointment as the data we hold on applicants and the data we hold for employees is processed separately. We therefore cannot associate the details given to us by current staff at their time of joining the Scottish Government with any details they provided on their application prior to their inclusion on our HR system.

• We do not record the nature or severity of hearing impairment. Additionally the reason for hearing loss is not held on our system and therefore we cannot provide details specifically excluding age related hearing loss.

The following table contains the numbers of staff employed by the Scottish government who have self-reported as having a disability that they identified as hearing impairment. It includes those currently employed, those who have been employed over the past ten years and those who have updated their disability status subsequent to employment.

	Current Employees	All those employed since 2008	Those with updated disability status since being appointed*
Core Scottish Government Directorates	49	29	7
Agencies and other departments†	15	15	2
Total	64	44	9

Notes to Table

• Where disability status has been updated since joining the Scottish Government this does not necessarily indicate a new or changed disability status versus status prior to appointment. Staff may choose to update or provide their details at any time and for a variety of reasons. There is no obligation for anyone who works for the Scottish Government or who is applying to do so to disclose a disability or to give specific details of their disability at any time.

† This includes executive agencies, non-ministerial departments and non-departmental public bodies to which the Scottish Government provides an HR service and for which it therefore holds staffing information. Further information about government structure can be found at /about/how-government-is-run/

For details of total staffing numbers as well as total numbers of staff who self-report as having a disability please see our workforce publications, available at https://www.beta.gov.scot/publications/workforce-information/

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses