FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Wednesday, September 19, 2018
Contact: Mayor’s Office of Communications, 415-554-6131

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MAYOR LONDON BREED ISSUES EXECUTIVE DIRECTIVE TO ENCOURAGE RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION OF DIVERSE WORKFORCE
Executive Directive creates two full-time positions to focus on diversity recruitment, expands harassment and implicit bias training

San Francisco, CA – Mayor London N. Breed has signed an Executive Directive to encourage the recruitment and retention of a diverse workforce for the City and County of San Francisco.

“San Francisco’s diversity is one of our biggest strengths and our City’s workforce should reflect the numerous communities we serve,” said Mayor Breed. “We have successfully instituted a number of important diversity initiatives including anti-bias training and a nationally-recognized conviction history program that have led to our workforce being more diverse than our local labor market, but there is still plenty of work to be done. This Executive Directive will ensure that our City departments have clear, consistent standards for recruiting and retaining a qualified, diverse workforce.”

Despite making significant progress, the City still struggles for diversity in some roles. Some City departments have targeted recruitment programs but there is not currently a consistent set of standards to attract a diverse applicant pool. Furthermore, the City lacks a centralized reporting and tracking mechanism to ensure the workplace is free of harassment, bias, and discrimination, which is key to retaining diversity in employment.

“San Francisco has a diverse workforce we can all be proud of,” said Human Resources Director Micki Callahan. “But with the Mayor’s strong leadership there is more we can do to ensure our workplaces are inclusive and fair for all employees.”

The Directive specifies four actions to be taken:

1. The Department of Human Resources (DHR) will hire two full-time staff members to focus on diversity recruitment, who will serve as a centralized resource to all City departments to support diversity recruitment and ensure outreach efforts are coordinated and effective.
2. DHR will significantly expand its harassment prevention, implicit bias, and cultural communications training to include significantly more City employees.
3. All City departments will begin reporting instances of disciplinary action to DHR so potential problematic areas, divisions, or problem areas can be quickly identified and addressed.
4. DHR will convene a group of stakeholders which represent City departments, labor unions, and stakeholders to continue a discussion of ways the City can improve diversity and equity in the workplace.

The Executive Directive goes into effect immediately.

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