The City of Portsmouth strives to create a more inclusive, diverse, and welcoming environment for our employees and the community we serve.

We recognize that biases, actual and implicit, have negative impacts on organizations, employees, and the people they serve, and that biases should be identified and addressed on personal and institutional levels. We believe that our strength and success as an organization comes from engaging and integrating diverse perspectives, fostering a truly collaborative spirit, and promoting equity in the workplace and in our work throughout the City.

To that end, we are committed to working towards:

• Building an environment of respect, dignity, fairness equality, and inclusiveness in our workplace.
• Fostering diversity in our workforce applicant pool.
• Representing a greater variety of lived experiences in our conversations and committees.
• Prioritizing transparency in our practices.
• Adopting proactive policies to train, teach and treat people equally without  discrimination.
• Increasing our knowledge and skills as an organization.
• Our City and our organization is always changing-and while it does, we pledge to grow, to listen and to learn.