Te Tari Taake Inland Revenue wants to be representative of all the communities we serve. We are committed to building an inclusive workplace free from inequalities, where everyone feels valued, respected and supported to reach their full potential.
Our Commissioner Peter Mersi co-leads Papa Pounamu, the initiative that sets the diversity and inclusion work programme for the Public Service. The areas of focus are:
- Te Urupare i te mariu – Addressing bias
- Hautūtanga ngākau tuwhera – Inclusive leadership
- Te whakawhanaungatanga – Building relationships
- Te āheinga ā-ahurea – Cultural competency
- Ngā tūhononga e kōkiritia ana e ngā kaimahi – employee-led networks.
To make meaningful changes in these focus areas, and build on them further, we have set 3 goals:
- Inclusive workplace
- Diverse workforce
- Leadership and accountability
These goals are supported and reinforced through focused work on gender and ethnicity pay gaps. Here, we also align with Kia Toipoto, the set of actions to help close gender, Māori, Pacific Peoples and ethnic pay gaps in the Public Service.
We are seeing the impacts from our focus on increasing diversity and inclusion:
- Over this year, 86% of staff who responded to our people experience survey felt ‘mostly included’ or ‘really included’ in their day-to-day experience at work.
- Our people tell us they like our flexible, supportive and inclusive environment—this is helping to attract people to work here.
- Gender and ethnic pay gaps have continued to fall.
- Our different people networks are helping to improve our services.
There’s more detailed information in our current roadmap for increasing diversity and inclusion at
An updated roadmap will be available online from November 2023.
We link in with wider initiatives
Te Kawa Mataaho, the Public Service Commission: Code of Conduct; Model Standards; Papa Pounamu programme for diversity and inclusion; Kia Toipoto action plan on closing gender, Māori, Pacific and ethnic pay gaps
Te Manatū Whakahiato Ora, the Ministry of Social Development: Accessibility Charter
Aotearoa New Zealand Skills Pledge
Citizens Advice Bureau’s work on digital inclusion.
Commitment to equal employment opportunities
Te Tari Taake Inland Revenue is committed to identifying and eliminating bias and discrimination in our policies and practices. Our work programmes across diversity, equity and inclusion, Māori-Crown relations and our people strategy are designed to ensure everyone receives fair and equitable treatment.
Unconscious bias
Unconscious bias can impact us all—we acknowledge the importance of our people identifying and knowing how to address it. Training is a core part of induction, with guidance for all leaders to embed learning about unconscious bias into how we work.
76% of our current workforce have completed unconscious bias learning.
Our learning has been updated with a refresher module to specifically address bias in recruitment. We’re also reviewing guidance for hiring leaders and recruitment panel members.
Gender and ethnic pay gaps
Te Tari Taake Inland Revenue has been working over a number of years to ensure gender and ethnicity are not a determining factor in what people get paid.
The drivers of our pay gaps relate to representation. This means that, although we have diversity within our frontline roles and lower paid roles, diversity reduces in higher paid, more senior or influential roles.
Our average gender pay gap has fallen from 17.7% in June 2022 to 16.0% in June 2023. On average, there is no gap for both men and women in the same or similar roles.
However, women are less represented than men in roles earning above $116,000. Since 2022, their representation has decreased in roles earning between $170,000 and $209,000.
Where the average salary differs within roles, this can be attributed to factors such as experience, age or length of service.
Te Tari Taake Inland Revenue has a much higher proportion of women in lower paid roles than men.
We began analysing the ethnic pay gap in 2020 - we’ve found it is driven by representation, the same as for gender. Our employee ethnicity range closely reflects that of Aotearoa.
Recruiting, developing and retaining diversity
We continue to build our people’s awareness of bias in decision-making, work to develop diverse talent into senior and technical roles and help leaders recruit diverse talent at all levels.
A relatively low turnover, particularly in senior and influential roles, means a shift to equal gender and ethnic representation will happen over time.
We’re looking at the ways we seek and select Māori and Pacific Peoples to join us. This includes working with our internal people-led networks to understand the different experiences people have here, and barriers to development and career progression.
We partner with Tupu Toa and Te Tari Mātāwaka, the Ministry of Ethnic Communities to increase diversity amongst our young graduates—we’re working to further develop our graduate network.
We rank in the top 2 of New Zealand’s graduate employers in Government and Public Service. Our most popular graduate role is the position of Graduate Policy Advisor.
Our group that works with business customers is introducing its own graduate programme, with recruitment starting in Feburary 2024.
Te Tari Taake Inland Revenue promotes inclusive leadership throughout our people practices. This involves addressing bias and building inclusion into equitable pay, career development and progression opportunities.
We provide tools and guidance for leaders to develop their understanding of how to be an inclusive leader. Leaders are required to complete training in areas such as mental health and addressing unconscious bias.
93% of our people leaders have completed unconscious bias learning.
Our recruitment systems and processes have been refreshed this year to ensure leaders know how to create an inclusive experience for candidates.
As part of our performance approach, leaders are supported to help their people achieve in ways that work for them through tailored coaching and development.
Building relationships that create honesty and trust among our people, and that encourage diverse perspectives, help to improve things for our people and customers.
As noted here, new organisational behaviours put whanaungatanga (relationships) and manaakitanga (lifting up) deliberately at the centre of how we do things every day.
These concepts matter especially when people from our organisation team up to work on priorities, sometimes at short notice. They also underpin the way our teams work in communities, as you can read about here.
The approach at Te Tari Taake Inland Revenue to building Māori cultural capability comes under our wider te Tiriti o Waitangi strategy, Māhutonga. You can read about Māhutonga here.
Becoming a Tiriti based organisation
This year, we’ve supported leaders to keep driving cultural competency learning with their teams, celebrate language weeks including New Zealand Sign Language Week, and practise basic cultural elements regularly.
Mana Āki online learning has been available since May 2021. Mana Āki was developed by Hīkina Whakatutuki, the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment. It gives teams ways to reflect on how we think about and interact with colleagues and customers from different cultures. We’ll continue to review, promote and add to our cultural capability learning over time.
5.9% of our people have completed Mana Aki learning as at 30 June 2023. 21.3% have either completed or have actively used it.
18.2% of our current staff have engaged with Mana Aki over the last 2 years.
Employee or people-led networks play a significant role in making our workplaces inclusive. The networks foster many opportunities for our people to grow connections, create a sense of belonging and build their capabilities.
The networks have thrived and contributed to some critical organisational decision-making. For example, development of our new organisational behaviours, workforce planning, technology changes, and initiatives for health, safety, wellbeing and learning and development.
The Diversability Network is helping us to build a welcoming environment for people with visible and invisible disabilities. 7% of our people indicated they have a disability in the 2021 Te Taunaki Public Service Census.
He Toa Takitini Rainbow Network helped us get reaccredited with the Rainbow Tick in September 2022. The Tick recognises our continued mahi to be a safe place where people from the rainbow communities can feel they belong.
The Rainbow Tick Organisation, which reaccredited us, commended work such as our initiative for validating a customer’s identity when their voice does not match their expected or assumed gender.
Using plain language and making our communications clearer has also been a key focus as it helps both our customers and people when our information is easy to read and understand.
Te Tari Taake Inland Revenue currently provides executive sponsorship and financial support to help these networks deliver their annual network plans:
- Tagata Pasifika Network
- He Toa Takitini Rainbow Network
- Wāhine Tūhono Women’s Network
- Diversability Network
- Multicultural Network.
We also support Ngā whānau Māori o te Tari Taake—the whānau from around Aotearoa. You can read more on their work here.
Becoming a Tiriti based organisation
Over recent years, Te Tari Taake Inland Revenue has been working with Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) to understand more about the challenges some customers face when accessing our digital services.
We know that not everyone can or will interact with us digitally. By working with CAB, along with our networks such as the Diversability Network, we've made improvements to both digital and non-digital services. These include:
- introducing a priority service to callers using the NZ Relay service for people with hearing or speech impairments
- improving customer advice when registering for myIR
- increased registration for our Voice ID service (providing additional access, ease and security for 24/7 self-service over the phone).
Te Tari Taake is a digital first, but not digital only, organisation. We’ll continue to focus on the need to design and keep improving non-digital service channels alongside digital ones.
Our efforts to make tax easier were recognised by a finals placing at the 2022 Plain Language Awards.
Following customer feedback, we updated our ‘Income tax assessment from Inland Revenue’ letter to make our messaging easier to understand. A customer who received the letter nominated us for the Plain Language Awards.
The customer nominating us said, 'The tone and language in this letter make me feel good about paying my tax. This letter is a real turnaround from previous correspondence with Inland Revenue.'