Well-led · KLOE 2
Workforce equity and culture
Is there an inclusive and fair culture that prioritises the safety and wellbeing of staff, supports speaking up and addresses workforce inequalities?
CQC wording, mental health care draft, pages 60 to 64.
Draft, not the current assessment framework
CQC's mental health care draft, published March 2026. The current quality statements remain in use.
CQC draft scope
What this proposed KLOE covers
Scope of this key line of enquiry and topic areas include:
- Workforce diversity
- Workplace discrimination and equitable treatment of staff
- Bullying, harassment and victimisation of staff
- Gender pay gap
- Speaking up culture
- Freedom to Speak Up Guardian, whistleblowing
- Support and wellbeing of workforce
- Agency staff and volunteers
- Caseloads/workload and lone working
- Staff safety (including sexual safety)
- Staff feedback and surveys
- Address workforce inequalities by protected characteristics
How would this apply to your service?
The draft applies one framework across mental health care, but useful evidence depends on your service and people.
Source: CQC, Mental health care assessment framework, draft, 19 March 2026, pages 60 to 64. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
CQC draft rating characteristics
How the draft describes each rating
These are CQC's draft characteristics. CQC says rating characteristics guide judgements, they are not a mechanical checklist.
Outstanding
- Leaders and staff at all levels live the service’s values, which include a strong, shared commitment and effective action towards ensuring that equality, diversity and inclusion are embedded throughout the service.
- Leaders and staff share a steady, long‑term focus, supported by evidence on ensuring high-quality and effective care for all people and communities served by the service.
- Leaders at all levels are held to account for modelling inclusive behaviours and addressing poor culture, with clear consequences where expectations are not met. They demonstrate commitment to equality and diversity, leading by example to actively prevent discrimination and promote anti-racist and cultural humility principles.
- Leaders and staff across all levels engage, understand, and are representative of the communities they serve.
- Bullying, harassment and discrimination are completely absent from the service’s practices. All staff, regardless of background, feel equally valued.
- There is an open, curious and transparent culture where people feel psychologically safe to speak up about anything that gets in the way of providing high-quality care. The service uses innovative ways to ensure that processes for communication and to share information are transparent and accessible.
- Speaking up is embedded as a cultural norm. Leaders actively seek challenge, respond, are visible and demonstrate through their actions that raising concerns leads to learning and improvement, not blame.
- The service’s open learning culture and the high morale and wellbeing of its staff are conducive to the positive experience and outcomes of people and those close to them.
- Feedback from staff, including complaints and concerns, is continuously taken into account to improve services and satisfaction. These are seen as learning opportunities and leaders are held accountable for the commitments they make in this regard. Staff from all backgrounds are certain that their concerns will be listened to and acted on, without any fear of detriment.
- There are consistently high levels of satisfaction across the workforce, including among those with protected equality characteristics. Staff are proud of the service as a place to work, feel psychologically safe and speak highly of its open, inclusive and non-discriminatory culture.
- Staff wellbeing is a high priority for the service’s leadership. The service exceeds its statutory responsibilities for the health, safety and well-being of staff and is a modern employer with a variety of measures to support flexible ways of working to improve staff morale, retention and engagement.
Good
- The service prioritises equality, diversity and inclusion, and proactively identifies and addresses workforce inequalities. Awareness of anti-racism practice, cultural humility and stigma are core strategic principles and are reflected in the values of all staff and leaders.
- The service fosters a culture of compassion, openness, trust, inclusiveness and continuous improvement. Processes for communication and sharing information are transparent and accessible.
- Leaders are alerted to and quickly address any examples of poor culture that may have a detrimental impact on staff and affect the quality of people’s care.
- Recruitment, disciplinary and capability processes are fair and are reviewed to ensure there is no disadvantage based on any protected equality characteristics. Recruitment processes and employment practices are lawful and free from exploitation.
- The service takes active steps to ensure staff and leaders are representative of the people and communities it serves.
- The service actively asks for feedback from staff and people using the service including some feedback that reflects their cultural background. It considers feedback in shaping and reviewing the strategy. Information about feedback and resulting actions is shared in accessible ways.
- Leaders take action to improve where there are any disparities in the experience of staff with protected equality characteristics, or those from excluded and marginalised groups. Any interventions are monitored to evaluate their impact. Leaders make reasonable adjustments to support disabled staff to carry out their roles well.
- Leaders take steps to remove bias from practices to ensure equality of opportunity and experience for the workforce in their place of work, and throughout their employment. Checking accountability includes ongoing review of policies and procedures to tackle structural and institutional discrimination and bias to achieve a fair culture for all.
- There is zero tolerance for bullying, harassment and discrimination. The service supports staff who face discrimination, whether this comes from managers, colleagues or people using the service. There is a clear focus on supporting those with protected equality characteristics and those from excluded and marginalised groups.
- Staff receive personalised culturally-sensitive and non-discriminatory support and feel listened to, valued and involved in decision making. Staff from different backgrounds feel they are treated equally.
- The service meets its statutory responsibilities for the health and safety of staff. Steps are taken to support the wellbeing of staff through resources, rest, and cultivating a positive work environment. There is culturally-sensitive and non-discriminatory support for those who are struggling at work. This has a positive impact on the care they deliver to people.
- There are processes to enable staff to speak up and raise concerns. All staff, including temporary colleagues, can easily access these processes. Staff are empowered and supported to give feedback, raise concerns, and contribute to improvements. They feel confident that they will be treated with compassion and understanding, and will not be blamed, or treated negatively if they do so.
- Where in place, Freedom to Speak Up Guardians have access to dedicated time for their role, up-to-date training, and work proactively with the leaders to remove barriers to speaking up and to improve the speaking up culture.
- There is a culture of speaking up where staff actively raise concerns and those who do (including whistleblowers) are valued and supported, without fear of detriment. When concerns are raised, leaders investigate sensitively and confidentially, and lessons are shared and acted on.
Requires improvement
- Equality, diversity and inclusion are not sufficiently prioritised at this service. Anti-racism, cultural humility and stigma awareness are not core strategic principles and are not always reflected in the values of all staff and leaders.
- Leaders do not always identify or address the causes of workforce inequality
- Staff, including those with protected equality characteristics, do not always feel they are treated equitably. Staff do not all feel their contributions are valued in the same way.
- Leaders of the service do not always engage or ensure they are sufficiently visible or representative of the staff and local communities.
- The culture of the service needs to improve. Processes for communication and sharing information are not always transparent and accessible.
- There is insufficient reassurance that all staff and leaders will not tolerate bullying, harassment and discrimination.
- Speaking up processes may be in place, but they are not sufficiently well advertised or understood.
- Staff are apprehensive about speaking up and are not certain that their concerns will be listened to and acted on.
- Feedback from staff, including complaints and concerns, is not always considered in a culturally sensitive and non-discriminatory way. There is insufficient reassurance that their feedback is used to make lasting improvements.
- Levels of satisfaction with the service vary and may be lower for those with protected equality characteristics.
- The wellbeing of staff is not always sufficiently prioritised. Some staff do not feel psychologically safe. Morale among staff and levels of pride in the service and engagement need to improve.
Inadequate
- The principles of equality, diversity and inclusion are insufficiently embedded in the culture of the service. Inequality is not identified and addressed. Anti-racism, cultural humility and stigma awareness are missing from core strategic principles and are not evident in the values of staff and leaders.
- Staff, especially those with protected equality characteristics, do not feel they are treated equitably. Staff from different ethnic backgrounds report cultural ignorance, discrimination and racism issues.
- There are high levels of bullying, harassment, discrimination or violence, and the service is not taking adequate action to reduce this.
- Reporting systems are not adequate, or do not exist, and there is no reassurance that staff concerns will be listened to and acted on.
- The culture of the service is closed (there is little transparency, trust or open communication) and processes for communication and sharing information are not transparent and accessible. There is no reassurance that whistleblowers will be treated fairly, without fear of detriment.
- Learning is not embedded in the service’s culture. There are high levels of defensiveness and no leadership accountability or ownership of staff feedback and concerns. Staff report feeling psychologically unsafe.
- The wellbeing of staff is a very low priority and there are no measures to support flexibility and to improve staff morale and engagement.
- Staff do not feel pride in their service and would not recommend it to others as a place to work or receive care.
Want to know how your service would fare?
Book a mock inspection run against the draft KLOEs, or call 020 8090 5346 to speak to one of our experts.