The City Council deploys the new Instruction for the promotion of diverse labor recruitment for reasons of representativeness and effectiveness of contracts for care services for people These recruitments, framed in the Barcelona Interculturality Plan 2021-2030, prioritize tenders with people with knowledge of languages and diverse cultural backgrounds when the service so requires
The hiring of people of diverse origins at Barcelona City Council is beginning to bear fruit in order to improve attention and citizen representativeness.
In particular, the City Council has hired, through awarded companies, a total of 75 people thanks to the new Instruction for the promotion of diverse labor recruitment for reasons of representativeness and effectiveness of contracts for care services to people.
This action is part of the Barcelona Interculturality Plan 2021-2030, which seeks to ensure that all municipal government action incorporates intercultural principles and approach. This plan aims to facilitate the recruitment of labor personnel of diverse origins through the introduction of clauses in the technical specifications (such as, for example, the knowledge of languages by professionals in certain services or the need for certain cultural backgrounds).
For the commissioner of Citizen Relations and Cultural and Religious Diversity, Sara Belbeida, this recruitment represents much more than a simple administrative step. “It is an opportunity to transform Barcelona into a truly inclusive city, where cultural diversity is not only respected, but also valued”, she defends. For Belbeida, this recruitment process, which includes people from diverse origins, “contributes to creating an administration that is closer to the reality of citizens, and able to understand and respond to the needs of all neighborhoods and groups “.
According to Belbeida, this initiative is key to strengthening the sense of belonging. “It’s not just about improving the attention of municipal services”, he says, “but also about ensuring that everyone can see themselves reflected in the institutions that represent them”. “With this commitment, we are making Barcelona a space where diversity becomes a shared wealth and the basis for building a more equitable future for everyone”, she adds.
The main objective of this instruction is to encourage, in the execution of municipal public contracts, the hiring of professionals with knowledge of diverse cultural contexts and languages different and additional to Catalan and Spanish in those contracts for attention to people and service contracts addressed to the public for reasons of effectiveness and efficiency of the service and to achieve adequate representation in public services with respect to the public and users to whom they are addressed.
For this reason, an award criterion for Promoting Diverse Procurement has been introduced to encourage the submission of offers by bidders that increase the minimum percentages of professionals familiar with the various cultural contexts that must be incorporated in the execution of the contract. Beyond this instruction, the Barcelona City Council has a broader strategy in this regard, and the job boards and the calls for opposition from the Urban Guard (GUB) and SPCPEIS have a language test and include, among the languages available, Arabic, Chinese and Urdu.
More efficient services
Also, with the incorporation of these people, we want to gain efficiency in the care services for people and the improvement of communication and attention to the users within the different communities. Also, make municipal services more accessible to all people, regardless of their origin. There are citizens who do not reach services due to a lack of referrals.
Since the entry into force of the instruction, there has been a volume of hired people of 1.221, of which 75 have met these conditions. In this period, the council has created these jobs among people, in particular, the contracts for the management of facilities at the territorial level of the neighborhood, district or city with a significant presence of residents of foreign origin, such as for example a civic center in the Besòs-Maresme neighborhood.
Some of these contracts have been in the Outdoor Playground Service 0-99, in the BCN Interculturality Program, in the Revitalization of participatory processes and in the Service for the promotion of diversity. The department that tendered a larger amount of various jobs was the Department of Social Rights, Health, Cooperation and Community. As for the districts, those that have made the most contracts have been Sants – Montjuïc and Sant Martí.
Diversity in the city
One of the basic indicators of the representativeness of any local administration is the extent to which the set of people who work there – in a broad sense, including outsourced services – reflects the composition and diversity of the municipality in which it provides services. Currently, an important part of the work of Barcelona City Council, within the sphere of attention to people, is carried out through the outsourcing of services through the application of Law 9/2017, of 8 of November, of public sector contracts.
As long as the presence of professionals with knowledge of diverse cultural contexts in the labor market in general, and in particular in the field of public services or care for citizens, continues not to be representative of the current social composition and specifically of the cultural reality of the city, it is advisable to incorporate in a proportionate manner in public contracts, especially those for services aimed at citizens, a special execution condition for the promotion of the recruitment of professionals familiar with diverse cultural contexts.