The new internal service has been conceived to turn around the situation in the City Council, including municipal public companies, autonomous bodies, municipal societies and contracted companies providing services for the City Council.
The goal is to take on workers born in other countries, with various cultural and linguistic origins and accredited knowledge of different languages and cultures.
Role of the new interculturality service
Different steps will be taken to expand the cultural diversity and origin of the workforce:
- Favour the diversity of candidates in public-sector recruitment calls and public work offers through diversified promotion, the introduction of new merits (knowledge of various cultures and languages) and the creation of indicators to accredit these.
- Set special conditions in the technical clauses of public contracts, taking into account the context and the area where service is to be provided.
- Promote multilingualism among municipal staff through the identification of talent and advice for the different municipal bodies.
- Boost practical placements at the City Council for students of diverse cultural origins, in collaboration with education centres and universities.
- Promote the new figure of auxiliary diversity specialist.
- Facilitate diversity in contracting non-public-sector staff where possible.
- Monitor indicators and analyse the evolution of diversity in the municipal sphere.
The service starts life with a team of three people and the initial budget to set it up is 228,000 euros. It is inspired by initiatives in other European cities, such as the human resources diversification plan in Ghent, Belgium, and the “Berlin needs you” campaign in Germany.
The government measure “Moving towards interculturality. Governance tools and mechanisms” was approved a year ago and some 65% of the 106 actions set out for this term of office have already been carried out. Some 22% of the projects are currently being executed and the other 9.1% will start being implemented in 2023.