Ethnicity pay gap reporting

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afternoon everybody i can see that uh more people are kind of joining the virtual room
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but i'll get started so we can kick off on time and get through the introductions and
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housekeeping as as people continue to join thanks everybody for joining us today my
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name is katie jacobs from the cipd and i'm delighted to welcome you to the second in this webinar series
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that we hope will help you as people professionals continue to tackle racism in the workplace and
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help you to keep anti-racism on the business agenda even as our news cycle continues to move on a
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bit so hopefully some of you watched our previous series on racism and the challenges for hr
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if you missed that please do go back and watch it because it really was a fantastic series loads
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of great stuff in there you can find it on the cipd website in our first session of this new series
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we covered how the people profession could go about obtaining long-term leadership commitment
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to anti-racism work and embed genuine cultural change in this session we are switching our
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attention to public policy and in particular ethnicity pay reporting joining me to discuss this
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topic delighted that we have a really stellar panel so we've got dr doyan atawalogan she's a
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chartered business psychologist an expert in leadership inclusion and intersectionality
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and newly appointed dean of the rhodes scholarships at rhodes trust we've got baroness ruby
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mcgregor smith she's a noted business leader president of the british chamber of
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commerce and author of the influential race in the workplace and the mcgregor smith review
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which recommended that companies be compelled to publish ethnicity pay data that was a few years ago so we can
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discuss what if anything has changed and last but not least uh peter cheese
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chief executive of the cipd who i expect that all of us know by now so i will say
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needs no fuller introduction than that thank you so much for joining us today as ever i'm just gonna run
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through our very quick housekeeping notes this session is being recorded you will be able to access it afterwards
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um to submit questions and please do submit questions because we want this to be as interactive as possible
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please use the q a tab which you can see at the bottom of your screen use q a tab for questions you want
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directed to the panel but i would encourage you to use the chat function to speak to and connect
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with each other it's always really great to see the chat afterwards and the kind of comments that have been made and the
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connections have been made on there so i would encourage you to to comment as we go along um on anything you hear that you find
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interesting and to a little bit of connection with each other the cipd has developed a new hub
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on our website dedicated to tackling racism in the workplace we're adding resources to that all the
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time so do check it out i want to flag our well-being helpline
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for members in the uk and ireland with award-winning workplace well-being provider health assured
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we are now providing cipd members with free help and support via sessions with qualified therapists
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online or over the phone and finally i wanted to flag our reward management survey
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which this year includes questions on the impacts of the black lives matter movement on reward strategy
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please do fill that out if you're responsible for having influence over reward strategy in your organizations
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and you can find that by our various social media channels so that's enough of the housekeeping
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onto the topic at hand according to 2019 data from the bank of
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england people from ethnic minority backgrounds earn about 10 less in the uk than their white
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counterparts we also know that those from ethnic minorities find it harder to achieve
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senior leadership positions only 1.5 percent of leadership positions in the uk
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are held by black people for instance currently according to business in the community
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only 11 companies are voluntarily capturing their ethnicity pay gap data
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is mandatory ethnicity pay reporting one lever to achieving racial equality in uk
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workplaces what would its introduction mean for organizations and what are the other public policy
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leavers we could pull to improve racial equality in uk workplaces that's the kind of thing we're going to
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be discussing this afternoon please do get your questions and comments in but first off i'd like to ask each of
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our panel to introduce themselves a bit more fully and offer some opening thoughts on the current context racial inclusion
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in uk workplaces and where change is most solely needed so um ruby could i ask you to start kick
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us off good morning everyone it's real pleasure to be here today i
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as in 2017 did a review on races in the workplace so my
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recommendations clearly laid out a number of things that businesses could do to improve the
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participation of individuals from a minority of a minority background
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we all know in business that there are a very very small number of levers you can ultimately pull
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when you want real change we also know therefore that in order to get real change we have to start with data
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and understand where we are today so my review called very heavily for publishing ethnicity paid cap data
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in some way shape or form and we know since then the gender pay gap data has started
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a different set of conversations and organizations it also called for aspirational targets
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it also called for sponsorship and another and a number of other measures but i think certainly my big message is until
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we do what i recommended and what others have recommended in many reviews over the year and we start taking action things just
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won't change thank you thank you
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thanks katie good afternoon everyone um like katie said my background is in
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leadership inclusion and diversity and i've also been since its inception
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academic advisor to the park review and in reflecting for today i
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thought as part of my opening remarks i should share a few ideas with regards
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to thinking about the value of the practice of mandatory ethnic
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paid gap reporting i say let's focus on the practice because i think it's very easy for us to
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think policy and to separate ourselves from that as individuals we might hear that
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as managers leaders um people working in teams and think you
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know what with regards to ethnicity pay gap reporting that's something for the government
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that's something for industry leaders and it's not necessarily something that i can see myself
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working in i think the other advantage of paying attention to
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mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting is whether or not you're making progress in it
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it has the benefit of helping us focus on the system so in addition to um the
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potential risk of disconnecting from policy i think just the concept of having
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mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting makes it real by turning us to
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attend to the systems in which we find ourselves and giving us particular goals to work
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on and what i wanted to do in this time was to share a few examples so just by way of
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context satin we know that a historical perspective
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on present-day inequalities uh tells us that we are immersed in a hierarchical
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system in which uh institutions were originally
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created and favored particular types of people with status privilege and power and we
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know today that management and senior level positions are in some ways
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protected with regards to their access to wealth quality education and career
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trajectories so we know that those positions have been duly compensated
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and protected as a result of historical inequalities that context helps us have a systemic
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view on pay disparity but in order to make it real to make it personal
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the concept of mandatory ethnic uh pay gap reporting quantifies it and that we know from the
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psychology research helps us make this goal achievable goals facilitate a
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disciplined approach to change goals give us interim milestones
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goals give us a sense of urgency we know that just having a quantifiable
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data point is an extremely effective way for organizational and
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and so at one level i ask um our audience to think you know what yeah
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you might think this is not something i can actually kind of focus on right now with regards to my power
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um but having the conversation and aspiring to figures gives you an insight into where you want
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to get to i also want to advocate um a personal
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perspective on this because like i said senior leaders have a um have a personal
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uh role in in actually working towards reducing pay gaps and so
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we know for example and we can probably discuss this more in the discussion that
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for example processes such as mentoring and sponsorship they happen all the time they happen
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informally we know that it's important in order to get senior level talent
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that we you know we need to engage in in mentoring and sponsorship and so there are questions i would ask
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of senior leaders and listening on the call with regards to the effort
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they put in to sponsor back advocate to put their neck on the line
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for people who don't look like them for higher grades and for lucrative projects
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and so i just offer some of these thoughts to say yes it's important absolutely for us to
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think about mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting as policy but i also very much want to
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introduce the conversation around each listener on this call having a role to play in this
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i'm very happy to expeciate further as the discussion continues thank you so much thank you diane and
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over to you peter yeah thank you katie and uh good
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afternoon to everybody first of all real pleasure to have ruby and doing on this uh conversation
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they bring a lot of credibility a lot of insight to this this whole discussion and to to begin with katie's thoughts i
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think there's no doubt in our mind and we've been i think quite uh strong on this as society that
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now is the time for real action on on more fairness more transparency around
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ethnicity we talked about diversity and inclusion all this aspect for a very long time and so that is a central pillar
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of good and responsible business to show what they're doing to create inclusive cultures and workplaces for all
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and of course ethnicity has been one of those more challenging ones and there's no doubt that with the killing of george
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floyd that that has accelerated the anger and concern among so many about the lack of progress
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in action in creating fairer more inclusive workplaces for people of ethnic minorities
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so we we have also come out and said that not only been involved in the government consultations and ethnic pay gap
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reporting but in supporting the work that came out of ruby's review but also that we we really do want to
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encourage this to now move forward into more legislation but i think there are some real
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challenges as well there's no doubt about if we go back to gender pay gap reporting i mean what we found is you think
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that's probably a simpler thing to do in some ways there was still a reaction from i thought too many organizations saying
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oh this sounds rather complicated and how we're going to do it and and my reaction at the time often was well
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isn't this something we should have been doing anyway ethnic pay gap reporting definitely has additional levels of
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complexity on it um and understanding what is meant within the different categories and how far we
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go with understanding different ethnic groups within our organizations is part of that debate but i think also
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as dyan has touched on there's no doubt that regulation and policy can take you some way and as ruby said i think
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both the gender pay gap and ethnic pagan reporting it puts it more clearly on the agenda it makes business leaders pay attention
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to it it makes external stakeholders pay more attention to this stuff including investors in business
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but it is not sufficient of its own and even with gender pay gap we found that arguably too many organizations seeing
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as a compliance issue and i'll give you for instance as to why that might be the case if you're reporting a number with no narrative
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and no action plan related to it then you're rather left with the conclusion as an external reader that you're just ticking a compliance
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box and we know in order to drive these agendas it's a lot more than that it is how you shift
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your cultures and all those other things so alongside any kind of pay gap reporting we also need to see
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more transparency on action plans the narrative behind what organizations
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understand from the data because at the end of the day use another aphorism data is only as
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good as what you understand it to be so in other words it's the insights that you drive from it and that
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would be something that we've been emphasizing both for gender pay gain reporting but we certainly be emphasizing and calling for more
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in policy terms is more need for organizations to give narrative and action plans about what they understand
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with pay gaps on what they're going to do about it but as i said i think it is also this link into the wider transparency of
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organizations on a number of dimensions to show how we're truly tackling inclusion in all its aspects culturally
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and otherwise within our organizations thank you peter thanks all of you for those um great introductions
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um i wanted to start by digging into the why a little bit and then we can go on to the on to the how um so ruby um you
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mentioned that monetary pay reporting was something you recommended pretty strongly in the
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review could you explain a little bit about why you think it matters so much
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i recall when i did my review in 2017 we wrote to the ftse 100 and asked them to explain what their breakdown of
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employees was by pay and by background and of the companies that responded
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which 84 did only 49 actually have meaningful data on their workforces
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and i think that challenge in its own right is that if you actually don't know
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that you know the the issues around pay in the workplace you've never analyzed
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it then how can you ever do anything about it and when we took a look at the data that
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was submitted we found that pretty much across every sector in the ftse
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that did respond that if you were of a minority background and you were
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working for the organization you might get promoted once or maybe twice
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but you certainly didn't get promoted any more than that and after after about two levels of
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promotions the numbers started to fall off a cliff and when you take a look across the
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footsie there are so few people at the senior level of a bain background and until you
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understand why and until you measure it i think it's incredibly difficult
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to put a plan of action around it because you can say you know we can change we can we can
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run unconscious bias training we can we can tell everyone to behave differently we can tell everyone to we
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can look at our recruitment processes we can look at all these things but you need to know if you're having
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any success and if there's going to be any breakthrough in your numbers particularly i think when you take a look around the country
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for many organizations particularly if your city if you're employing people from some of our larger cities
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with birmingham say you have an ethnicity a number say of over 50 percent of uh is being of their uh of their
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population you just don't see that as seeing your levels of business and in birmingham alone and you sort of
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go what what's stopping that and so i think unless we do it and and clearly i've
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recommended everyone to sign up very much the race at work charter that's been launched by business community which and every organization that does
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has committed to publishing their ethnicity pay gap but until you do
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and until the government chooses to legislate um we're never going to know our starting point and
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we're just going to keep talking about theory and not action is my view and given like that was back in a few
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years ago so 49 less than half of the of the footsie 100 were reporting anything and doing any
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thoughts on why is it just put in the too difficult box or is it because it's a sense of something that we don't value is
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important yeah yeah that there is often a there's a fear there's a fear linked to name and
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ethnicity so many more of this of us know this now um lack of race
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confidence poor race fluency a desire for colorblindness while you know kind of denying these um
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differential outcomes within your organization as well as more broadly in society so i mean i am
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encouraged and and i hope uh peter and baroness ruby are as well
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by recent um events which at least give us a little bit more of a permission to use the r word um so i think there's
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a little bit more confidence and there's there's some momentum to um draw on that and you know recently
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the um at the signatures uh asking for mandatory ethnic pay gap
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reporting you know they jumped quite a bit and got to over a hundred thousand now and i'm sure that's um very closely
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linked to a black lives matter so there is a fear but that is easing and uh you know i really want to
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kind of reinforce what baroness ruby said where we we say like there's something around
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there's a power in sitting down and having to be faced with the numbers um there is
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something in humanity in terms of you know how we're wired that gives us a drive that gives us a
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goal and really if that's just that the one thing that or you know there is some indicator of
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progress that we want to make for those reasons um i would say it's certainly worth um uh engaging in
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in that practice and for for many good reasons but at that basic level it gives us an an impetus thank you
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and peter do you think it's something that you see our profession so the people profession pushing and being open to that is uh as
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you said it is a lot of businesses for you it's quite challenging yeah i think it's a it's nice question how much our profession is is pushing
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this enough if i'm honest i mean that because we've all acknowledged the progress has been very slow i mean 11
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we're not even at a tipping point and i think you know business they look to each other then in so many
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different ways and if they could see a majority of organizations reporting on this clearly that they would feel the
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obligations do the same so i think it's a combination of effects i think that is one how do you get to the
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tipping point and i think we're all saying that to get to that tipping point you've really got to push this into the more mandatory space i think
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there's also an honest truth which is as we've all touched on the visibility that organizations have
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had the ethnic makeup of their organizations has been lacking for far too long um and as i said if organizations were
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feeling a bit challenged and getting the data around gender pay gap then it's a lot harder and ethnic pay gap and one of the
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indicators that i look for is is that so the first thing is you've got to know what the ethnicity of your
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people are and you're going to ask them now even that question is not straightforward i mean there are different ways you can define it people
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worry about just a general categorization of fame because that doesn't tell you enough and some people
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and it doesn't tell you enough is the honest truth and some people don't even like those sorts of designations but the
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point is is that if you do not understand it and or if you ask your people and they're not prepared to tell you their ethnic
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um background then that tells you something else it tells you that the people in the organization don't even particularly
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want to talk about this so and i think the sad truth is there are many organizations still in that
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kind of place so the organization saying well it's difficult to get the data and that's the reason why i might resist it
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when actually what it's pointed to is your shared difficulty in getting the data is pointing to some other
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things the people are not feeling safe in your organization to talk openly about race so i think we're all in in the same
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place we've been on this for a while we're going to have to push harder um i think the government will
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introduce more management reporting on this almost certainly and that is going to be a challenge and
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we should be prepared as a profession for that to happen we should be on top of this data and if we're finding our
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people on willing to share their ethnicity then we've got to dig into that and understand why and address those issues
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alongside it with them thank you and mentioning that they're pretty sure that the government has appetite to
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introduce this um ruby any insight on if you think this is going to come in as mandatory especially given uh
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all the other stuff that government businesses are dealing with right now i think it will at some stage i don't
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know when i don't think they they've really said very much about when all their thoughts
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and clearly in this current environment i think there's some initial focuses
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that which which mean that this is not high up the list but it's so important and i also think we
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should think really clearly that once we're through this pandemic in whatever shape or form we are
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as businesses start to rebuild out of where they are today and clearly many
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are challenged it's a good time for them to think about it and think about what they can introduce so you can start to build back
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different forms of businesses and you build this into the structures you start to grow again because one of
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my concerns is is there's never a right time in the middle of a pandemic many would argue is not the right time
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but i think as we start to come out of it it needs to be on the list of things to do
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thank you and doing any any thoughts on that and it becoming mandatory something you see in the near future oh hopefully
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i will optimistic about it yeah but katie can i come in on one of the
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questions that's been raised in the chat i don't know whether it was in response to one of the comments i made
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about um uh i think it was dorothy i might have missed the first name saying my life isn't a
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tick box um you know isn't one for tick boxing and i just wanted to clarify that when i
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was saying that this is something that spurs people into action it really wasn't that at all it wasn't
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it there's no expectation that this is tick box actually it's a kick-start internal data and um just one
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illustration of that um you also uh commented on my work and intersectionality
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so uh one organization i worked with a little while ago was looking at a version
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of ethnicity pay gap reporting and they noticed that uh broadly speaking
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that there wasn't as much of an ethnicity bay gap as they expected between
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uh white employees and black employees um they looked at me
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there wasn't too much of a mix there wasn't too much of diversity disparity and they looked at black and
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there wasn't that much of a disparity and then from an intersectional perspective they sliced it
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by gender as well so they broke uh they looked at their data on white
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men and women and looked at their data on black men and women and they realized that what was
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distorting the pay gap was there was a number of black men who
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were in london and very highly paid so what was happening when you we asked
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a number of different questions of the data was a number of black men for their grade were on really high
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salaries but the white men in that grade didn't stay as long at that level
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were promoted much more quickly and so what that particular inquiry
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revealed to this organization was there was an indication potentially that black men's careers
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would be installed through bonus and extra pay and white men were flying through their
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careers and so i just use this as an illustration to say when we take mandatory ethnic pay gap reporting
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seriously and we add if we want to an intersectional lens it actually gives us additional data to
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pinpoint where some of our challenges might lie that's a really great example i think that ties into
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what peter said his opening comments about not enough to just kind of slap a number on it but really interrogate the data
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look at the stories that it's telling you and put forward a proper action plan
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um got some questions coming through i'm gonna park them for now but i will come to them shortly so please do continue to
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get them in and don't do that thing where you all put them in a 25 past one and then i can't answer anything
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last little bit you're you need to mute this yeah how did that happen
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that's one of my colleagues who's in the background so sorry about sorry about that um i i wanted to ask um
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before i move on to some audience questions about the comparison between um what we've seen happening with gender
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pay gap reporting and ethnicity pay gap reporting so um ruby any reflections on how that's
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kind of changed the the game do you think it's raised a level of conversation at board level
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i think it has i think what happens now is that when you talk about the gender pay gap it's a board level question and before
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we had the gender pay gap yes we talked we've been talking about women for a long long time but no one's talked about shutting you
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know closing down pay gaps and that's the big issue we've all got
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on race as well so it's going to take time to close the gender pay gap
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but it's not about saying everything needs to be done today because because it can't this may take many many years to start
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really changing and every organization has to do what's right for them but i think it has started a proper set
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of conversations on the journey to pay gap not just for boards but also for employees because you've got to
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start to question why some of these pay gaps are so high you know for some industries you would expect them to be high because of
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history because of the way um because of the way the workflow force has always been structured
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but that first that changes it isn't about being critical it's about saying look we can do this because it's the
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right thing to do and economically it's the right thing to do for organizations and and for the and
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for the government so therefore let's put in the measures that will really really help and
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and you know when we talk about women it then leads on to that conversation about does that mean more flexibility
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does it mean more mentoring does it mean more sponsorship do we have to remember that if there are no senior women in our organization
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um that that culturally that may not be working too what do we
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need to do about that but it but the conversations start and then action plans start to get developed and
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that has to be the route we take with ethnicity pay gap as well and peter any thoughts on how you've
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seen kind of the conversation around gender pay gap change and specifically around narrative and action plan
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yeah i'd echo what ruby said i think it has changed the narrative and discussion uh as you said with boards with investors
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with other stakeholders you know prospective employees start to look at this kind of data of an organization saying
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what is what's the story telling me and as i said i think transparency in all these dimensions of workforce is so
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important it's incredible when you think back over the history of corporate reporting where there's been so
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little transparency in any aspect of workforce and yet these are the things that respective employees want to see they're
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also the lead indicators i mean let's not forget the context of this this is about inclusive
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responsible businesses who are open to recruiting all of the people that they need they're broadening their mindsets
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reflecting their customer base and all these other things and as we said reflecting the communities which
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they're part of and yet we've done such a bad job in reporting so much of this so i
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think gender pay gap was a very strong signal from government that they are going to start to take this stuff more seriously
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as i said i think it's been picked up by investors amongst others in this wider debate what's known as esg so
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environmental social governance questions and and i think also during all this lockdown we've seen
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so many organizations saying this is putting people the front and center of the agenda so the now really is a time to progress
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this but we need to so what are the lessons we've also learned from gender pay gap and as i said i think the number one
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well the two points are which which we've already made to some degree one is yes it's put it more on the agenda but
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secondly we have got to get deeper in our understanding of what the number says and what is our story behind it what's
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our action plan that that leads it and i can see a comment on on the chat line about does hr as a profession need
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to up its game in terms of analytics and the answer is yes and we are doing a lot of the cipd's do that because it
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isn't just the broad data it's what other insights is it telling you and finally i'd make an example because
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when you see a big gender pay gap and i think it's true also the ethnicity stuff when you see a big gap thing oh my
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goodness this is terrible so i'm probably going to hide it or try to write some story about it whereas actually the first thing is to
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understand what it is and if you're in an organization let's say gender which has a very high number
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of uh people joining in the lower ranks as women so insane the fashion industry
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then it's going to take a long long time and you could take some pretty abnormal actions to try to fix it in the short
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term if that's what you think you need to do so for example hiring loads of young men into an organization which is
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predominantly in an industry which of course is going to attract women so lots of complexities of that nature
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which is why we need to get the insight to back it up and i think what we've learned from gender pay gap
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is we still got some work to do even on that before we get to ethnic pay gap reporting as well thank you
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i just want to read out a comment which is uh back to back to dawn about the point you were making about tick boxing
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um that the uh the attendee wasn't disagreeing with you just saying that as a woman of color i'm tired of being used
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to satisfy quotas or satisfy tick boxes with very little being done to promote change or
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rearrange the landscape for me or other black people in the workforce it needs to move beyond talk to policies sorry from talking
32:22
policies and onto action which i think is what we were saying um so i want to come on a little bit to kind
32:28
of how you how you do it because that's what a lot of the questions some from practitioners are are coming in and doing would a kind of
32:35
would an fsd pay gap report look identical as a calculation to
32:40
agenda pay get one or their different ways of doing it how would you advise that it's done i um broadly speaking that the the
32:48
steps would be similar just a couple of challenges which we've already kind of hinted
32:54
at um one of the things which we'll come back to i'm sure is about categorization
32:59
and self-identification so i'll come back to that um but once we have the data around
33:04
categorization and or self-identification is a significant plea to break bain down into
33:13
different categories black asia bame black asian minority ethnics i
33:18
put um bail in air quotes because i know um not everyone identifies with that
33:24
term um so one of the ways in which it is a little bit more complicated
33:29
is um we have many more debates about ethnic identification um today
33:37
relative to um different gender identities and i don't want to this is not about one versus the other
33:44
um but there's something about really tuning into for example the fact that chinese men
33:50
earn very differently to bangladeshi woman for example um just to go back to the
33:55
question of self-identification and categorization i know there have been a couple of comments around that
34:00
uh broadly speaking knowing that this is an ongoing process so regular reminders
34:08
quarterly reminders um rather than uh there was someone who talked about launching an initiative in
34:13
in january that i saw in the q a in the chat this is an a long game like i think
34:19
we've mentioned once or twice already so the um the organizations where i've
34:24
seen the self-identification numbers go up they have engaged in an ongoing campaign they have
34:30
been really clear on why they need this data they have really been really clear on the relationship between the
34:37
organizational values and strategy and why they are asking people to self-identify report on their adversity
34:44
and they have um communicated progress so this is what we're doing this is why we're doing this is why it's important
34:50
this is how we're using your data and repeat and repeat um some listeners might be
34:57
familiar with a particular report i'm just going to highlight it because it's a really good case study in it by
35:03
uh nationwide um so the black british business awards uh did the middle research which i led a
35:10
few years ago i think it's 2017. if you just google the black british business awards and the middle research
35:17
the study will come up and there's a case study towards the end that talks about how nationwide went up
35:23
from something like um below 20 to something like above 70
35:29
following some of these steps thank you and ruby can i ask you to add on that and maybe reflect on those businesses
35:36
that you've said are doing it voluntarily by the bitc um commitment there what what is working
35:41
in terms of the how how are they how are they reporting look i think we have to accept that it's a
35:46
difficult thing to report on particularly if you don't have that many people self-declaring but i
35:52
take of you that you've got to work with the data you've got so i will you know i when i when i was
35:57
running my tea we had 83 1 compliance and that was fine you know my
36:04
view was let's report on the numbers you've got and gradually you'll build it as people get to trust it more and clearly i can see why some people
36:10
would be uncomfortable and ask well why do we need to do this but it's to my point until we've got
36:16
data we can't do anything and and i think it's going to be different for different organizations
36:22
but i think there is a tendency to over complicate it because people don't want to do things until it's perfect it's not
36:28
going to be perfect the gender pay gap reporting is difficult enough right that was
36:35
difficult enough to put in place there's been lots of imperfections and even doing that this is going to be difficult
36:42
but it shouldn't stop people doing it i also think if people start to do it voluntarily
36:47
even with huge numbers of caveats about their data at least it's a starting point now i know that one of the issues is
36:53
going to be that a lot of people won't want to publish it because they'll go well hang on data's really bad well everyone's data
37:00
is really bad we just accept it's all bad and that no one's going to look good coming out of this
37:06
and that isn't the point the point is how do we change where we are when we know it's really poor
37:12
and just accept it's going to be pretty dire and then it's how you build on it and the
37:17
more i think you you look at it and you can the thing is is whatever you're going to report in year one
37:23
you can change the way you report in future years you don't think it's good enough it's not that we have to be wedded to
37:29
the number of people the different backgrounds only this sub group this year i think it gets over
37:34
complicated it just would be good to report something whatever it is and even if boards and organizations
37:40
start to change it a year or two later so be it and if you take a look at those that have they're
37:45
all doing it differently they've all got different interpretations i'm not bothered about that because every industry might argue it's
37:52
right and we shouldn't be going for some kind of global amazing you know this is how we do it
37:58
because it will be different by industry it will be different by those that go into different industries i mean i had a
38:04
great conversation with the big four accounting firms where they told me we didn't really have many issues from say the asian community
38:11
and i said well you know i can speak for that because i did chartered accountancy it was something i was really pushed into as a profession
38:18
i said you know that that and a lot lots of my family were also pushed into it as into a profession
38:24
but they knew about it and they thought it could open some doors um the reality is is but you will have a
38:30
challenge with some other individuals for being background who wouldn't consider that a they could go and join you and b
38:37
that you would support them so and there's only say for example one of the big fours only got one black
38:42
partner so let's be honest about this there are so many different ways of looking at it but
38:47
you've got to go with what you know and expect to change each year and let's
38:53
not get too theoretical we just need to report something and how do you get over we had a few people
38:58
asking about um the fear factor that so maybe people aren't reporting because they're scared of what they'll find or
39:04
they're worried about looking bad and do you think just put it out there and deal with it yes of course there are all of that's
39:10
true let's be really honest about this why would anyone want to report something
39:15
that doesn't look great okay that's fine it's not going to look great we all need to get over that we
39:21
can't solve this unless we're prepared to deal with that one point and the idea that everyone goes no we
39:26
can't publish full data or work for a few more years to make things better and then we'll publish it when it's good
39:33
won't achieve a thing we need to publish data as our starting point
39:38
and then and we all know what gets measured gets dealt with in business it's as simple as that um and the mere
39:44
idea that we're going to go around in circles or nice soft initiatives was i
39:49
said in 2017 we kind of done all of that and we need to stop doing it and we need
39:54
to stop being unnerved by what it's going to look like um
40:00
and and i also feel that although employees may be unnerved by it and you
40:06
know do we do do we push for it push for it because at the end of the day until we start
40:12
talking about this in organizations and talk about the data and talk about what we're going to do and start to talk
40:18
about race which clearly so many people still feel uncomfortable about talking about until we do
40:24
all those things nothing will change and we'll still be having webinars in a decade saying exactly the same
40:30
thing and i'm not sure we all want to be on them in a decade with our progress
40:36
thank you really great call to action there about being brave and just to flag a few people asking in the chat about this and the source that doing quoted
40:42
and we put that in the in the chat now um peter i know you mentioned this earlier but we've had quite a few questions about
40:47
disclosure um and how have you got any advice on how to kind of get that get that disclosure up because
40:54
a lot of people feel that they just don't know enough about their employees in the first place yeah i mean i think
41:01
dawn made some very important points on this and energy druid as well first of all the data would never be
41:06
100 accurate i think one of my indicators has said is how many people are prepared to answer
41:12
the question and there could be various reasons why they may not and the worst being that they're just simply not comfortable exposing
41:18
or talking about it because the organization's not comfortable talking about race but it could also be these other things
41:24
and then a couple of people i see a comment on it if you just keep asking me the same damn question i keep filling in the same data
41:29
request and nothing changes why would i keep doing it so i think this is so important we've got to show that the
41:35
data won't be perfect but we're using it for these reasons and then demonstrate the action that you're taking as a result which also
41:41
brings us back to the points we've all made which is about having insight and the narrative behind it and
41:46
and i agree with you i i don't think the date will ever be perfect what worries me a little bit and i think we saw it even with gender pay
41:53
gap is we don't want to give a license for people to massage numbers i mean there was a great series of articles when the gender pay
41:59
gap first came out in the ft because some organizations had started to report a zero mean and median difference in their
42:07
gender pay and the ft in a very ft kind of way said look just for the avoidance of doubt this is
42:14
how you calculate a mean and this is how you calculate a median and the fact that those two numbers could be the same thing and particularly
42:20
zero in their languages highly unlikely so but we have the means to challenge right
42:26
i mean if organizations put out stuff that doesn't look realistic we have the means to challenge them uh
42:33
the employees can challenge them which is why i'm really keen on this sort of multi-stakeholder i do modern business
42:38
which says so we should all have some voice in this and of course it's not just a regulatory thing it's
42:44
investors and financial stakeholders it's employees and prospective employees there's customers and others all saying
42:49
to organizations well you think you're doing a great job your data seems to sell this you're not telling the
42:54
story straight so i think it's part of a wider shift that we've got to have in a more open debate about all these aspects
43:01
of responsible business of which regulatory and policy reporting were all agreeing his part key and ruby i
43:08
think you wanted to make a point there as well i i just think we know that we're going to get low levels of
43:15
self-deflect declaration to begin with we're going to get organizations making
43:20
themselves look better than they are in some cases we're going to get those that just put it all out there and go
43:26
it's too you know we're going to get a whole mixture but until we do it we're never going to know what we're going to
43:32
get so we need to do it and then every year we can start to go well that
43:38
didn't work we can change it and we'll get better but until we do i don't think
43:43
any organization has the right narrative to say you know you can't say we're an equal
43:49
opportunities employer that we provide the opportunities for everyone equally
43:55
when we already know the gender pay gap in some organizations is truly appalling the ethnicity pay gap
44:00
will be let alone when we get onto the challenges around disability and other challenges in the workplace
44:06
it's just it's not equal it's not even but because we can't decipher it
44:11
we can't put interventions in place that work and so it's not just about data it's about
44:17
the entire management of what you're prepared to do with the subject and i just think you can be really
44:24
authentic about this stand up and go we'll publish it even if it looks dire we'll put in some action plans and
44:30
report against them and hold ourselves to account we'll expect our investors to hold us to account we'll change our incentive
44:36
plans to hold us to account we are serious about it and i think employees would be over the moon
44:42
that was a you know that was a group of people that wanted to do it but at the moment all the stuff we've done so far clearly
44:48
doesn't work okay all the nice words all the you know we'll mentor we'll do it it
44:56
just isn't gonna cut through so we do the serious stuff first we need to do all those other things as well
45:02
but we need to have a plan based around data at the heart of it that says
45:09
this is where we are and this is where we're going to get to and if that's going to take us a decade
45:14
it may take us a decade but honesty would be a really good thing and um i think for you ruby and also if you
45:21
don't maybe i'll come to you first what appetite do you see from the senior leaders that you work with to
45:27
to be brave and to because this is a senior leader agenda we're talking about a kind of exec board
45:34
agenda here so i'm enjoying what appetite do you see to be brave and to go for it not not enough
45:41
not enough um as uh baroness ruby was speaking i was thinking about the work
45:46
we did for the frc as part of the parker review this year and we looked at myself and a number of
45:53
colleagues looked at the quality of ethnicity reporting so essentially
45:58
how the ftse 350 was reported was responding to the parker review
46:03
um and you know so we're having conversations around courage we're having conversations about just kind of
46:09
getting out there being explicit being direct understanding that we are not going to
46:15
be perfect which i completely advocate but i just want to i'm just thinking two two experiences
46:21
two related experiences from that piece of work that we found quite discouraging
46:28
um one was the active work it seemed to avoid
46:35
using race naming race race was obvious obsid and conflated with
46:42
nationality with culture with like with all other words uh so a
46:48
footy 350 firm that kind of says it's responding to the park review then
46:54
talking about diversity of nationality and geography you know shows that they're not even they're not
47:00
quite there yet um the other thing which we've kind of touched on but i really want to
47:05
emphasize is this um statement we found too many
47:10
uh uh ftse350 companies would say something along the
47:16
lines of well yes we are an equal opportunities you know employer but you know we're not gonna lower our
47:23
standards because meritocracy is important of course they didn't quite use those terms but there was
47:29
too often a conflation between the notion of diversity being just just a little bit too much to
47:36
ask for because we are meritocracies and that's a myth that's a fallacy that
47:42
actually in order for me to be diverse i actually need to sacrifice on my on my
47:47
talent levels but that um narrative was perpetuating over
47:52
and over and over again so before we even get to a point where an organization is like you know what yeah
47:59
let's record an ethnicity pay gap let's commit let's go out there i think there's some
48:04
really basic things that um even just at the level of report in putting in your animal reports
48:11
don't dance around race don't you know kind of throw off this um myth that um you know in order for
48:19
you to be diverse you're kind of you're you're making some sort of compromise in actuality
48:25
evidence that you're not a merit-based organization is in homogeneity the fact that everyone
48:30
looks the same suggests that it's not based on a meritocracy it's quite the opposite um so just a few
48:37
comments in terms of how much work it needs needs to be done
48:42
and ruby same question to you and maybe to throw in a question that's come from the audience about any advice you can give to organizations
48:48
that are fearful and doing mentioned a bit of a fear factor there about even talking about race
48:54
god i think we've all been scared about talking about race only started talking about it three years ago i hate talking about
49:00
about having to talk about why i'm different i mean look it's a real challenge and i think in the end you just have to
49:06
take the plunge and go do you know what we're going to have to start to have these conversations properly or nothing will change we'll just skirt around the
49:13
issue but it is hard and the best way i think is i mean i got business in the
49:18
community to write a small guide on how you talk about race because so many organizations don't even really like to
49:23
discuss it but i think and for some reason it's been easy to talk about women for so many years
49:29
but but i think we've we've we've got no choice but to tackle it so until until we're prepared to discuss it
49:35
nothing it will change and so i think in the last three years there has been quite a lot of conversations
49:40
about it with organizations but we keep coming back to if you want to change things put a plan
49:48
together of the things you're going to do that are right for your organization and you know so much of this is around
49:55
fit around culture around how do we talk about this how do we feel comfortable
50:00
well if you never surround yourself with anyone that's different to you you're never going to feel comfortable
50:06
so we need to find people you can talk to about it who who can help you with it who have been
50:11
through different experiences you know we talk about don't we organizations needing to be incredibly inclusive
50:17
culturally inclusive well how can you be culturally inclusive if you've only got people from one part
50:23
of one culture that work for you you're not you're you're culturally non-inclusive actually so um
50:31
it's very interesting as to what people even think about the words inclusion but it is a tough subject to talk about
50:37
um but we kind of need to get over ourselves a bit with that really it's there's a lot of other things that
50:42
are tough in life okay if we want to crack race talk about it put a plan together
50:47
deliver on the plan and you know i need you delivery i'm not really sure why we've spent so many years finding this
50:54
so difficult um i don't it's not a comfortable subject but it's one which is easy to crack if
51:01
we're prepared to but boards today if you've only ever surrounded yourself with people of one ethnicity
51:09
you can see why it's so hard for them to do and now you're hearing boards talking to
51:14
talk to individuals within their organizations of color try to try and get in their lived in
51:21
experiences and i'm sort of sitting there thinking well it's all very interesting it's another three years of talking put the data in put in a plan to change
51:29
it as you would with anything else you want to change in an organization stop thinking it's you know we seem to
51:35
skirt round this one's this one's in the too difficult box it's not but of course it is in the same
51:42
way it was probably very difficult to a group of men many many years ago bearing in mind the workplace was
51:48
designed for men because very few women were in it sooner or later they had to get used to changing it for women
51:54
it's exactly the same we just need to get on with it thank you and and peter any advice for
52:00
how the profession can encourage leaders to get on with it because i think a lot of the data collection would end up in the hr
52:06
to-do list um yeah i think it reinforces these points so absolutely get the data where are we as
52:12
an organization in terms of you know these aspects of diversity but i absolutely
52:19
one of the first times i met you you may remember we were doing a joint seminar with a dni group and young i think it was ey
52:25
and i made that comment on the platform i said you know it seems that it's very difficult to talk about race and this black guy
52:31
initially stuck up his hand and said no for you it is because you're white for me it's my lived experience
52:37
so i think what we have to encourage is get let's get the data so we know where we're starting and then open up the
52:42
conversations we're all agreeing which is to hear the lived experience because so many people
52:48
this is why we talk about things like white privilege now certainly white people just do not understand the lived experience of
52:53
people from ethnic minority backgrounds and they should understand it i should understand in the context of the organization so
52:59
opening up those conversations sharing experiences what's working what's not what other things do we need to do
53:04
should we be training our managers differently how do we help our managers to be more comfortable talking about these subjects this is not
53:10
just about what i do it's also permeating that through the organization those are all things which hr of course
53:16
can encourage and support and should be and so this becomes a front and center agenda for the organization
53:22
not just today but for the long term as well because as we're all saying this this is as much about sustainable and
53:28
responsible business as anything i can think of because the more inclusion and diversity have you break the group think you bring
53:34
the different experiences you reflect the communities and customers of which you're part of so let's never forget
53:40
to link these ideas to the reason why it's important for business to take it forward as well because it's also a truth that
53:48
you know some people do think this is compliance thing or it's just a current fad or whatever it might be and i've
53:53
heard many of those questions before too so let's get the evidence of what we look like today but also evidence as to why this is
53:59
important to support our businesses for the future okay i can see a lot of the points around kind of moving to action a
54:05
landing very well people really really uh behind that in the chat and somebody's asked once we've run the report and potentially find an ethnicity
54:12
pay gap what steps can employers then take to address the data and close the gap uh
54:17
doyan thoughts from you sure i think um i i'd be repeating a
54:23
couple of comments i made earlier kind of blending also some of peter's comments around analysis asking questions what is the
54:31
data telling us about certain groups of people in certain parts of our business
54:37
um and that would give us insights into the actions that need to be taken
54:42
um so at senior levels there is um for example um
54:49
i talked about sponsorship the power of the the the impact of sponsorship sponsorship is
54:54
a senior white leader kind of putting their name on the line on behalf of someone
54:59
who is underrepresented um if you find that at that level that you're not getting the
55:06
senior level diversity that you want then that is is is something that we know from the
55:12
research works it happens anyway in insider groups this is just about saying well you know put the effort in it's a
55:19
little bit more than a little effort to do it for people who um are in your outside degree it might be that you
55:27
were finding that at lower levels actually there are particular communities
55:32
who don't necessarily feel that this is the right organization for them and that's one of the explanations of
55:39
your play gap and so you think through well what are the ways in which we need to make sure for example at a team level
55:47
we are equipping managers with specific practical inclusive leadership practices
55:54
so that they are tuning into the diversity of their um of the talent at that level so
56:00
there's lots of different potential evidence-based actions that can be taken
56:05
and the ethnicity pay gap gives you uh additional data to pinpoint what is
56:11
going on and how you can fix it in addition to just paying people more which you should you should pay people
56:17
the same thank you and ruby any thoughts from you on that perhaps anything that you
56:22
did yourself as a ceo that worked i think one of the things we could all do um is
56:29
that one of the big areas which needs to change is the lack of sponsorship of individuals so we all did well in our
56:37
careers because people sponsored or supported us for whatever reason you know two great ceo supported me
56:44
helped me become chief executive it didn't happen just because i happened to turn up and do well it was you know
56:50
there was a lot of work a lot of support in that everyone needs support if you think
56:56
about anyone that gets promoted they are put forward they are mental they are supported and what we need to do here is really
57:02
think around sponsoring as a key element of trying to reduce that gap as we have done with women
57:08
because if we don't then it's not going to change because you can do all the nice stuff but sponsoring really matters
57:14
and that will go down to you know organizations saying we don't just want diverse shortlists we want really good
57:19
candidates we want them to get to that interview for a promotion well prepared and therefore if they
57:26
don't have access to the same support as others we want to make sure that there there's a level playing field by the time they
57:32
get there quite often what's happening is individuals with a main background don't have the networks don't get the
57:38
support therefore don't always get through the interview process because they don't know how to necessarily
57:43
always get through that or to get that dream job so sponsoring is going to be key
57:49
everything around recruitment process has got to change because if you don't have diverse groups
57:55
of individuals who are going to interview you and you don't have panels that are more diverse then you put people at a massive
58:01
disadvantage really just getting there on you know diverse shortlists for women but we certainly don't have them on bay
58:07
and also it's around how you you know for me it's all around how employees do
58:12
get to get promoted if that's if it's the case that we're just not promoting those for being
58:19
background then we have to work out individually in each organization what stops that individual and part of
58:26
it could be they're going to go and work for a team that just don't think they fit whatever fit may mean fit
58:31
such an important part you've got to get on with people but if you've never known anyone of this particular background who doesn't
58:38
necessarily say you know you know who doesn't have the same interests you you get to an interview you try and have
58:44
a chat on how you build a relationship it's quite difficult so that means a huge amount of support and
58:51
training for those in the organization to say look you're gonna have to get used to
58:57
having different types of teams it's not gonna be we all go into a room we can chat for 20 minutes about what we did at the weekend
59:02
because maybe none of us have got anything in common anymore but that's okay what we care about is we really care about what someone can
59:09
contribute to the organization we don't need to have to you know because so much about around
59:15
building teams is around getting on and having shared interests and you know and i remember going for my
59:21
first interview at mighty where they asked where the chairman asked me if i did hunting shooting or fishing and i said you gotta be joking i'm a
59:27
girl from a state school in the north of london who didn't grow up without anything i wouldn't even know where you start
59:33
with those things he kind of got over it in the end but it was a key component for how he hired
59:38
people so we need to understand culturally these things happen
59:43
and are happening all the time and it's no different to a very male uh management team
59:50
simply coming in on a monday and talking about football by the way i live with that for years i haven't got a clue what
59:55
was going on but you know i just kind of listened to it for 10 minutes but it didn't make me feel included um but i persevered
1:00:03
and it's about inclusion and about teams understanding and and by the way senior teams of women may
1:00:10
get this wrong because again they may be biased and want to talk about things the average guy doesn't want to talk about
1:00:15
so we have to think about behaviors in this as well thank you ruby i'm afraid we're out of
1:00:21
time there so i'm just going to quickly bring it to a close thank you so much ruby peter doing some really fabulous
1:00:27
messages i think the main takeaway for the audience is just do it just get on with it let's uh
1:00:32
do something and move from rhetoric to action um thank you so much everyone for
1:00:38
watching for your comments and really great comments going on in the chat and for your questions as well um i think i
1:00:43
covered as many of them as i could and apologies if i didn't get to yours um we have one more webinar in this
1:00:50
series uh it's next monday at the same time 12 30. we're going to be looking at the role of employee networks and how
1:00:55
businesses in hr can best support them so please do join us for that the webinar will be available to watch again
1:01:02
uh if you want or to share it with colleagues um from this afternoon or tomorrow and a
1:01:08
reminder to look out for the cipd reward management survey which includes some questions that are really relevant to today's discussion i saw that my
1:01:14
colleagues placed some of those in the chat but that's it from us this afternoon thank you so much for watching and
1:01:20
engaging and we will see you next time bye