The Olympics has seen the UK’s largest peacetime mobilisation of a workforce. From ‘nowhere’, the London Organising Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) has had to hire and train 200,000 people. The workforce includes 6,000 paid staff and 70,000 volunteers (chosen from 240,000 who applied). A feature of this workforce is its diversity. LOCOG had set a target of having between 5 and 7% of its workforce with a declared disability and has about 9% paid staff in this category. With regards ethnicity, their target was 18 to 29%, and it has acheived 24%.
In addition there are 100,000 contractors, who provide services such as catering, cleaning, security, and transport. There was controversy a few days ago, when the one of these contractors responsible for security, was found to have under recrutied. This required the Home Secretary to draft in 3,500 more armed services personnel in order to fill the manpower gap.
Jones and Robinson 