How to develop and publish your action plan

The focus for your Workforce Diversity action plans should be to identify your biggest representation and pay challenges and co-design solutions with your employees. 

Steps to take

• Gather pay and representation data on as many groups as possible: For advice on data collection and analysis see Appendix 1.
• Engage with diverse employees, unions and ELNs: through kōrero, talanoa and engagement surveys, to gather experiences on workplace accessibility, culture, safety, and fair employment practices. 
• Reflect on your data and feedback to identify positive progress, and your biggest remaining challenges
• Co-create actions that are meaningful and achievable to address your biggest challenges
• Set measurable goals and timelines 
• Be transparent: Publish your plan, share and communicate it clearly with your employees

What to include

We encourage organisations to be accountable and share their progress, even though reporting is not compulsory. Workforce Diversity action plans should be succinct while including the following information:

• gender and ethnic pay gap data, average pay by gender and ethnicity
• overall workforce and leadership representation by gender and ethnicity
• data and employee feedback that supports you to tell the story of your biggest challenges and your progress
• planned actions to embed existing gains and target remaining challenges 
• what you aim to achieve by the end of the plan period
• the stakeholders you engaged with to develop your plan (including employees, unions and employee-led networks)
• any evidence you have linking your diversity efforts to improvements in service delivery 

In addition, organisations are strongly encouraged to report on broader DEI indicators where possible including:

• data on pay and representation for disabled employees, tanagta whaikaha māori, employees who identify as neurodivergent and employees who identify as part of Rainbow communities, or your plans for improving data for these groups
• access to opportunities and rates of progression for different groups
• cultural competence, bias and te reo and te ao learning undertaken by employees and leaders
• impact of DEI efforts on policy development, service delivery and customer outcomes

Agencies and entities may also consider:

• Differences in indicators across groups
• Internal data on complaints, bullying, and harassment (not for publication)

Available data

For agencies and entities that submit payroll data to the Public Service Commission as part of the Workforce Data collection, the majority of gender and ethnicity pay and representation metrics will be available in the ‘sense check’ document that is produced as part of your agency’s submission.

From June 2024, the Public Service Commission added an extra sheet into the ‘sense check’ to provide these figures already calculated and made confidential, ready for inclusion in your Workforce Diversity action plans, or other public documents.

Format for your plan

To help reduce and manage your reporting requirements we encourage agencies and entities to publish succinct Workforce Diversity action Plans.

You can consider a table outlining your main data, describing progress since your last plan, your remaining challenges and planned actions with measurable goals and timelines – see table below.

Agencies and entities could also present this information in a one- or two-page A3, which can be useful as it provides space for a small number of key graphs.

Publish your plan

Agencies and entities that elect to produce a plan are encouraged to send a link to your 2026 Workforce Diversity Action Plans to DEI@publicservice.govt.nz by 31 July 2026.

Note: Agencies and entities have signed up to the Accessibility Charter which requires all information intended for the public to be accessible.

Accessibility guide – MSD.govt.nz