Diverse staff for better citizen services
As part of the new policy to promote diverse recruitment for representativeness and service efficiency in contracts for citizen services, 75 people have been recruited by contracted companies. These recruitments, which fall under the Barcelona Intercultural Plan 2021-2030, give priority to tenders that include people with knowledge of different languages and cultural backgrounds when the service requires it.
Users attended to at one of the counters
The aim of this policy is to promote the recruitment of professionals with knowledge of different cultural contexts and languages, in addition to Catalan and Spanish, for tasks related to citizen services. This is meant to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of public contracts awarded by local authorities, while ensuring proper representation.
The purpose of bringing these people on board is to improve communication and efficiency in citizen services, as well as making municipal services more accessible to all, regardless of background.
To support this, a new tender criterion has been introduced to encourage diverse recruitment, promoting bids from contractors who increase the minimum percentage of professionals with knowledge of different cultural contexts. The City Council has also included language tests in job pools and competitive examinations for the Guàrdia Urbana and the Civil Defence and Fire Prevention, Extinction and Rescue Service, including languages such as Arabic, Chinese and Urdu.
Some of these contracts have been implemented in services such as the 0-99 Outdoor Play Area, the BCN Intercultural Programme, Participation Process Facilitation and the Diversity Promotion Service.
