Getting to grips with ethnicity pay reporting

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so good afternoon everyone uh my name is leslie richards and i head
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up the seagate in wales and i'm delighted to be hosting this afternoon session which is part of our anti-racism
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stays on the agenda series of webinars as you'll know cipd supported the
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government in its consultation on mandatory ethnicity pay reporting an essential tool for employers looking
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to address ethnicity pay gaps in their workplace recent ons data highlighted the
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importance of tackling inequalities finding that most of the minority ethnic groups analyzed earned less than white
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british employees in 2019 employees are also increasingly keen to work from organizations that are taking
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action on inequalities today i'm joined by a panel of experts
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we're going to look at different aspects of this topic principles around which ethnicity pay
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data to report the benefits for employers of addressing inequalities
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and how to develop an action plan to address ethnicity pay gaps including making a strong case for voluntary
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ethnicity pay reporting and securing senior leadership buy-in
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so welcome to charles cotton senior performance and reward advisor at cipd
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sandra kerr race director business in the community and raj jones head of diversity equity
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and inclusion at sodexo uk and ireland thank you very much for taking the time out to join us this afternoon
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before we hear from our speakers i just want to cover some practical details the session is being recorded and will
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be available on demand via the webinar section of the cipd website later on this afternoon where you can
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access all previous webinar recordings and sign up for future ones
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you'll see that you've all been muted to submit questions to the panel can you
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please use the q a box not the chat box because that won't be checked
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but you can use the chat box to network with fellow attendees and if you're going to do that please
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remember to use the all panelists and attendees drop down to make sure you're sharing with everyone
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i'd also like to draw your attention to some of our benefits
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and in particular some of our additional resources you may already be aware of that can support you
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in your role cipd has a practical resource hub on the website dedicated to tackling racism in
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the workplace we're adding resources to that all the time including our latest guide for uk
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employers on the topic of ethnicity pay reporting so please do check that out
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and finally cft members in the uk and ireland can also access our new well-being hub and
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helpline together with award-winning workplace well-being provider health assured we
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now provide cipd members with free help and support 24 7 365 days a year via
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telephone or online consultations with qualified therapists members can access the phone number and
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the online services by the membership benefits webpage and you'll see more details about this at the end of the
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session so now we're going to move on to the content of this session
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charles will be offering the cipd perspective and our calls for mandatory reporting
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sandra will then be delving in more into the business case so why it's important and the impact it can have
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and then raj will offer us a bit more of a practical case study into the approach that sodexo took to reporting and
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ethnicity pay we're then going to open up questions so please send these through as we go along
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as they occur to you we are going to aim to get through as many questions as possible
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um we may not be able to focus too much on individual questions but what we're trying to do is going through is pick up
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on things so uh that's it from me for now and um i'm
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gonna hand it to charles to get us going thanks charles
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thank you leslie and good afternoon to everybody who's joined this webinar
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i'm going to be briefly talking about the cipd's position on
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ethnicity pay reporting so in slide two of my presentation
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it shows what the cipd is calling for which is that all large employers
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report pay by ethnicity like how they disclose pay data by gender currently and it also shows
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a copy of the of the guide that we came out with a few weeks ago which is free
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to download from the cipd website now slide three of my presentation
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explains why we're calling for this is because we believe that pay disclosure
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as well as narrative reporting and action plans are important tools of the employer's
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fairness strategy now i'm not going to go over the moral case and business advantages for creating a racially
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inclusive working environment these have already been covered by previous cip webinars as well as our own
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guide so i'm going to focus on what we could be doing rather than why we should be doing it
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the cipd wants large employers to publish data pay data by ethnicity this is because we
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want to get to see the same level of corporate attention that's happened because of gender pay
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gap reporting that being given to this issue as well the voluntary approach has been working
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so far our research found that to date just 13 of the uk's largest firms have reported
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on this issue albeit this represents an increase of six on the previous year
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this jump probably reflects a recognition of the interest increasing interest in this issue from stakeholders such as
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employees customers and investors one possible explanation for the lack of action is that employers might not know
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how to go about collecting analyzing and reporting pay information by ethnicity
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or then to go on to write a narrative explaining why the figures are what they are and creating an action plan
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detailing the steps being taken to manage and mitigate these gaps so to help the cipd has produced
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guidance which i'll talk about shortly however as we recognize in my next slide
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unless employers disclose this information then many will not senior management will ask hr
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why he wants to put the organization under the spotlight when others aren't for this reason we're calling on the
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government to legally require all large employers to disclose pay information by
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ethnicity from april 2023 this is something that
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many employers are already doing at the moment for gender pay gap reporting in addition we want the government to
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require employers to also produce a narrative and action plan
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we want narratives and action plans because the figures are not an ending themselves but a starting point for a
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conversation about why this situation exists and what can be done in response
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it should be noted that large plcs already have experience of writing a narrative when they explain their pay
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ratios between the ceo and their employees while we recognize that how much a
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person gets paid doesn't reflect just what's going on in the workplace for example it can
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reflect schooling or the availability of child care an action plan will allow us
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to focus on what we can do rather than what we can't now in slide 5 of my presentation we
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look at how to help employers report their figures and take forward their
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fairness strategy the cipd has produced a guide we didn't want perfect to be the enemy
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of god by that i mean that we were concerned that a focus on getting the perfect
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system for ethnicity pain reporting could divert attention away from the energy that actually was needed to
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actually do stuff report some ethnicity so our guide recommends that employers
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follow gender pay gap reporting in terms of defining who to include and what to include and when to report
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recognizing that gender pay gap reporting isn't perfect either in addition rurika and that employers
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produce two further statistics namely the proportion of employers of an employee's workforce that have disclosed
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their ethnicity and the proportion of an employer's workforce that are from an ethnic
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minority these two extra stats will help stakeholders to better understand the situation for
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example if ninety percent of the workforce have disclosed their ethnicity then that pay data should be more
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reliable than if only forty percent have similarly for ethnic minorities make up seven percent of an employer's workforce
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then this stack can be used for when comparing to what's going on the region where the employer is based for example
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how does this figure compare if the proportion of working adults from a minority in our area is four percent or
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ten percent in our guide we cover both how to encourage more employers to disclose
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their ethnicity and how to drill down into the data such as looking at it by
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various official ethnic uh ethnicity categories we also look at the various benchmarks
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that you can use to assess your situation now we recognize that ethnicity isn't just evenly distributed
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around the country so in many instances the data will be limited and we would not encourage disclosing information
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that would help uh identify the remuneration of individuals we also look at how to produce a
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narrative to accompany the numbers explaining why the figures are what they are and an action plan explaining what
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the employee intends to do over the coming years in terms of people management activity such as reviewing
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its recruitment and selection approach reviewing its benefits policy over time we would like to see
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employers reporting on the reward outcomes for all their employees so we can see for example the relationship
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between pay ethnicity and age now the next slide of my presentation
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explores the six core principles our guide uses when selecting the most appropriate information to
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include in ethnicity pay reports briefly these are one align ethnicity
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pay reporting of gender pay gap reporting but recognize the differences this will help minimize the additional
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work and bureaucracy for hr and payroll but there are differences reporting on ethnicity which will need to reflect
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most notably uh the large number of categories required beyond the male female groupings
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on gender secondly ethnicity representation is important as
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and strongly linked to ethnicity pay gaps so we recommend that employers report on
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their ethnicity group representation breakdowns in each quartile as well as their pay gaps by quarter which many
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employers already doing voluntarily on gender recognize the value and simplicity
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sorry recognize the value of simplicity and clarity while a single gender pay gap figure can be criticized provide for
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providing no indication of how it can be reduced has been very successful in securing attention and action
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fourthly focusing on action data analysis are interesting and necessary but only insofar as they
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support effective action to address any gaps identified
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fifthly start and improve employers vary in their experience ability and the resources they can
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devote to ethnicity pay reporting our recommendations focus on what we believe employers should be able to
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calculate and analyze while suggesting more detailed categories breakdowns and actions that could be done
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finally combine comparability in data with tailing of analysis and actions
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there should be an a minimum of core information communicated in every employer's annual ethnicity pay report
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however additional analysis such as my detailed ethnicity category my stage in
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the employment cycle by ethnicity and gender etc is crucial for employers to
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fully understand and address any ethnicity pay gaps evident in the statistics
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finally my final slide reveals our public policy calls for government we want government to require our all
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large employers to require to report and pay by ethnicity as already due
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for by gender by um from april 2023 we want this because relying on
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employers to do this voluntarily learning result in a few employees taking this issue seriously
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we want more employers to be required to publish a narrative an action plan explaining the situation and what the
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steps they are going to take in the future both for ethnicity pay reporting and gender pay
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gap reporting this will allow employees investors and customers to assess the commitment of
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the employer to managing developing and rewarding people in a fair way and
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tackling discrimination and disadvantage overall we recognize the complexities
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involved but just because something is hard doesn't mean you should avoid doing it thank you very much
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thank you charles and before we move on to sandra
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who's um going to look more at the business case why it's important
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and the impact that ethnicity reporting can have i can just see there's one question in
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the chat which should be useful to take now um it's easy when honest what is
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considered to be a large employer in terms of head count so i guess we're going to keep referring
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to large employer through the rest of the sessions yes at the moment
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the gender pay gap report requirements as well as the ceo pay
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ratio requirements applied to large organizations and those are those with
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250 and or more employees so that's our definition and it's the
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official definition used by the government's office for national statistics
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okay so sandra we're going to come to you now um for you to tell us a little bit more
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about how we should be doing it and why is she doing it thank you very much leslie thank you for the opportunity to
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talk this afternoon about ethnicity pickup reporting i feel like this has been going on for a long time
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um so just a bit of a story in 2015 we published a race at work survey we
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launched it in celebration of 20 years of action on race at business in the community and we wanted to
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get some evidence really to help employers think about progression because many were saying well even if we
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get you know ethnic minorities in the workplace we really struggle to progress into senior levels so the survey was
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written very much with progression in mind to try and understand what are the challenges what we found from that with
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survey was when we asked the question of ethnic minority people so black asian mixed race um
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all in ethically diverse people 70 said they really wanted to progress
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but when we looked we know when we look at organizations representation they tend to be at the bottom
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we also looked at the educational profile we found that were more likely to have degrees phds so there was energy
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and drive to do the writing but no evidence of that changing so that was the first kind of shocker
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that there was such a strong drive to progress and what but it wasn't realized in the
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workplace we also found out things about people's desire for mentors sponsors
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fast track so again huge um willingness to put the work in but still not working
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um and one of the course reaction we made in 2015 was the government to do a review and race in the labour market
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what we saw at the time was david's review was underway um gender pay cap
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reporting was um you know kind of pretty well in the bag and nothing much was happening on ethnicity
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um baroness mcgregor smith who was cheering the women in business council we were asking can we use a similar
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muggle we never say her but we said you know along those lines she was commissioned to do the mcgregor smith
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review i think probably the best person at the time she was one of and still is probably the only
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ethnically diverse woman ahead of a footsie uh organization and came with it very
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much from a business perspective and consulted widely we worked closely with her she had worked with us before
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on nbitc so we use the survey to help her shape what that
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that review would look like which was why the the race at work survey is a perfect national benchmark really to
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hear the voices of employees on this and the data is telling us that their people
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want to feel valued they want to feel included they want to be paid and feel like they're being paid at the right
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amount and that's part of it so one of the big findings from that review was 24 billion per annum
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would be the economic boost to the uk economy if we could tackle those disparities and that would include
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people being promoted recruited progressed paid at the right amounts and
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we know that when we think about the demographic shift that we'll find out in april 22 what that actually looks like
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that when we track progress we'd also be thinking about that 24
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billion becoming even a larger amount so good for the uk and good for the economy and right now in the
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bouncing back we want to bounce back better of course and inclusively and potentially we can spring forward
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financially by tackling all these labor market disparities why would we not do that so really i'm important and then
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the second thing i think that has come to the fore actually through the pandemic is with the um
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disproportionate impact on the ethnic minority communities it has flagged where maybe sectors are
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over-represented and i would say employers need to look at what i'd call internal occupational segregation to
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ensure to look at where employers are deployed within their organizations because often if they're not in their
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high paying springboard roles those will affect the um the results as to pay gaps
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and progression and of course this is not a silver bullet um we know so this um the delay
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why it's oh it's difficult and it's complex um we know this that's not an excuse not to progress
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look at the pandemic that was difficult we didn't say oh let's not do anything because it's terrible we now have a vaccine and trying to kind of navigate
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our way out of it i think what really matters is that we actually take
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take demonstrate that this matters and we are committed to taking action and i commend
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the cipd for saying actually let's put the guy out let's do the alignment agenda many employers are doing it
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anyway it doesn't need to be an exact science because we know when we think about the whole
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challenge of progression in the workplace challenge of retention having the culture right there
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is not a silver bullet there's not one measure that you can take you need to take a basket of measures but this one
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is really important because it's a big indicator of the economic health um that
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of your employees and how you are contributing to those and not i do want to flag a couple of other
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things that as i say have come to light more so um with the pandemic when we started
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talking about economic downturn and some of those challenges when we had the last one in 20 2008
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two years on uh black and asian people only 60 um 60 had no savings at all
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um much higher housing costs particularly from people from black representation um and some
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communities with multi-generational households lots of invisible things going on in the workplace people don't
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need to not be paid the right amount to so it really matters that we get this
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right um for not only fairness but just you know just humanity really to ensure people
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getting the right pay that they need so some things for employers also to think
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about is obviously diversity what i call diversity and design conversations and need to have the right people around the
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right table at the time at the right time and i would say that needs to be in any action plan and
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narrative what an employer is do to to do that and where you can um i think
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when you're pulling together your uh ethnicity pay data is have diverse
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people around the table involved looking at the data looking at the narrative talking about the stories what is the
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impact how we're going to make progress so that it's the organization is seen to be taking
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this seriously um i put there's another note that i was thinking about some
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things that i think really matter with employers so progress recruitment
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is one so charles already talks about demographic data for local uh to benchmark against there are
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stubborn disparities in the labor market about how people access work but also i think employers
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as part of their plans need to building retention strategies to ensure that people who
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start if you're graduates you're starting the right pay so tracking that and also
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whatever you need to do to invest in the software or the data to ensure that you can actually track the progress of your
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uh pay gaps as you go and think about what the impact of new hires that we'll do on the
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data because we know it can be uh skewed if you have you could have lots of people you know
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and i think charles kind of alluded to this working in your organization so you might have great representation but if they're all at the
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bottom and you might have a two percent pay gap but who cares if there's no one at the top so it really matters up when
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you're telling the story you're as transparent as possible in painting the picture about where you
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are and what where you need to be and i would say they're really important stakeholders obviously the hr
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professionals here your talent management your learning development your employee resource groups all of
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those people need to be consulted around the table um to
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be assured that you are on in the right on the right track with what you're doing and that you're being as transparent as possible
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and where we are at the moment so with business in the community so we the the mcgregor smith review we ran the 2015
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that the 2018 survey which unearthed the 11 um of the employers republic um publicly
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uh declaring there or capturing the ethnicity data we have a race at work survey report coming out
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in october where we will be able to produce some progress on that not the way it needs to be because
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mandatory reporting is the only way we're going to get 100 um responsiveness on this but we also
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um it's going to demonstrate um evidence on some of the other kind of key issues and i think if i was going to talk about
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why do i care about this why do i think it matters it's because it will bring this to the
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attention of leaders at the top table have to talk about it every year at least
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and you can't just wait until that year you have to talk about it in year to discuss what do the numbers look like
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why are they like that what are we going to do and i think um we we are currently working with base
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to work on voluntary guidance interestingly in response to the credit report
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for everybody to increase from their ethnicity pay gap reporting and we'll
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update you in due course on that so i'll stop here
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thank you sandra i can see the questions are flying in so keep those going um so the final
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presentation from our panel is from raj jones who's going to
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tell us how this works in practice so um over to you raj
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thank you so much jones and i head up diversity equity and collusion for sodexo uk and ireland and we published
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our efforts to pay report first time this year alongside our gender pay report and i'm just going to share some
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more practical lessons from pulling the data through to publishing what we've learned along the way and some reflections as well
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first of all just a little bit about sodexo because we're not necessarily a well-known brand then we're a very large international organization so we provide
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services across three areas on-site services so that could be your school's university support and sporting venues
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hospitals etc we also provide benefits and award services and personal and home care services so we do hard and
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soft different cleaning and catering and also um property maintenance for example
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um in 2020 19.3 billion euro consolidated revenues we employ globally
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420 000 employees and in the region i'm responsible for uk and ireland that's 30
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000 28 000 which are in the uk who we're reporting on for our pay reporting
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purposes we operate in 64 countries and we serve approximately a million
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consumer 100 million consumers a day so we at sodexo in uk have been a strong
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advocate and strong believer in the benefits of reporting early onset we have next slide please
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and we believe transparency is a good thing and it drives progress we've been very vocal in our support and
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made a number of public committee commitments to reporting predominantly back into 2019 so we've mentioned our
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own public sector pledge we've one of centuries for the business and community base at work charter
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and we've also worked very closely with normal foreign power and signed an ethnicity pay mandate calling for it to
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be initiative requirements and following the black lives matter protests from the men of george floyd last summer we
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signed an open letter in sunny times recognizing that we've got more to do in this space and we're really going to
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offer efforts essentially but why report now move on to the next slide
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i think two key reasons progress over perfection we are we need better data our
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disclosure is 75 we are running employee sensors at some points here to get better data but actually why wait and we need to
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start somewhere which was doing so it shows how we're performing currently and enables us to implement where our systems and
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processes are not operating in that way so that we can redesign this everyone's
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benefits and as i said we believe transparency is good it promotes action internally and encourages constructive
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connective dialogue externally as we're doing today next slide please
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so we use the same methodology as gender pay and we have in the past governments testing different
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methodologies but we thought this was the right method to take and it and we don't
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give us a good insight into where we're at currently um obviously we've only can do the
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analysis space and those shared ethnicities so anyone hasn't been taken out of the data sets so that's why our report is based
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on a 75 disclosure rate we chose not to just do white versus being recognizing that in high
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disparities amongst different ethnic groups and therefore have compared the earnings and takeouts of white police
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against black colleagues and again against asian countries and against ethnic police as well to redraw down our
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data and see what it's telling us um for gender pay we are required to
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report against five legal entities um for gender we can't do that unfortunately at the
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moment for ethnicity because our disclosure rates vary from agencies to entity so one in
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the abundancy at the moment currently has a 14 disclosure rate that data set is too small that's the
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risk of identifying people and also skewing the data so from the purposes of ethnicity pay we have pulled all the
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entity data together and produced the overall figures next slide please
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just how we could be helpful to look at the makeup of our organization and how we compare to the external market
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we're actually in a very fortunate position that our black and asian minority ethnic population is 14 overall
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and 61 white that is highest by the uk labor market of 12.8
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but actually when you look at where those people are in our business they are unfortunately concentrated in the
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lower page roles around 20 percent are enough frontline positions as we call them as we move up
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into mandarin and see leadership positions i see level organizations that drops off dramatically
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and then you'll see the comparisons versus all different ethnic groups as well it gives a really good benchmark aware at the moment
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next slide please um
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interesting because of where we have concentration and also where we have gaps in our data for our senior leaders
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both our mean medium pay gaps are actually quite small and for some groups we actually
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reported a positive pay gap um let's say this represents over over
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representation on frontline around 20 percent and the rounded representation in mandarin see relationships like two
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percent what we did find a big gap understandably unexpectedly so it was
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around our bonus pay gap so across all ethnic groups comparing it to white colleagues there's a 50 bonus pay gap which is huge
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we did try and run a report and look at the numbers just for our top 140 leaders where we
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found such a small data set to screw the data and didn't give you reliable results plus given the low
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representation in our top leadership that was a real risk of identifying people as well so it's not something we
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could publish externally but so you can use internally to help us perform our action plans
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um as the requirement to publish ethnicity page figures is front tree we don't feel this rely on external data
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benchmark against but we are committed to publishing going forward every year online agenda so at least we'll have our
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internal benchmarks to see how we're progressing um i think we've also been very careful um
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given the gaps that we have in disclosure these numbers may not be a true reflection and therefore careful narrative is
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required as it could fluctuate year on year the nature also of our business is that we win business we lose business we
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have people coming out of organization all the time and that quality of the data um
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can vary with shooting staff over as well so yes it looks great and though our pages
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are quite small but are they really true reflection and actually let's be prepared for them to go up up and down
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as well so being very careful in our narrative next slide please
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so what have been our lessons and reflections from going through this process which took us several months i would say a lot to referring as well
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before we felt really comfortable to go ahead and report some leaders and stakeholders will be on
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council with reporting that's to be expected it's not reason not to do it but work with them bring them along
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process explain the data where the pinch points are and what the data is showing
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we've got to start somewhere you know we want to give up disclosure rate we're going to be doing its employee sensors
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but we know we're never going to have some data for ethnicity that's unrealistic we look at some of the
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best practice from other organizations their disclosure rates around 85 to 90 you want to aspire to that
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um but we'll never get 100 so let's not wait let's start making some progress
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i have found it we found it really helpful in terms of getting external guidance and endorsements so business
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community for example other partners other organizations that have published as well looking at their data how
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they're presenting their data what their findings have been really beneficial and the journey they've been on
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really partnering with keep people internally so rewarding obviously in terms of crunching the numbers and the detail behind the numbers our
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origins employee network is our ethnicity network as well so we help working them in how we communicate the
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findings of that report and actually what that means for us going forward it's also really important other people
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in the business can talk about the report and articulate it there's a lot of time working by hr leadership team so
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you can really understand it and explain where our pinch points are where we've got opportunities to close the gaps as
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well i'm really critical that we work with eternal cons and pr team as well to tell us narrative and tell the story we're
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one of the first in our industry to publish but we don't want to pat that back we want to be quite humble because we know
33:55
we've got work to do so we're very careful in the narratives and story we're putting out there it's not a celebratory thing we've got issues we've
34:01
got problems we need to fix this puts a spotlight on it what we're going to do about it and let's be truthful and
34:06
authentic in our messaging it's really important really important that we focus on telecoms as well in particular so we
34:14
published internally first of all as i said we didn't want to be a pr exercise and spent a lot of time and investments
34:20
to really explain what the data was saying so i filmed some short explainer videos about
34:26
the figures and what saying so i use the example for every one pound a white person earns oh that polly
34:33
for example and like all the different ethnic groups and just really break it down make it really simple because this isn't everyone's
34:39
everyday language if you don't natural reward really helping people in our business understand it particularly
34:46
given the focus in the last 12 months around racism and exclusion 10 pay gap as well that's
34:53
not going to be helpful in terms of their experience so really invest in your people
34:59
i always find it's really important to remind you it's not about equal pay analysis we have separate processes in place to make sure people pay eating
35:05
fairly for doing the same rules this is a separate nurse it's separate data
35:11
it's really important that we have an action plan in place that's owned and understood by the business it doesn't
35:16
just sit myself or the whole team this change is going to happen it's owned by the business and the business
35:21
understands what they need to do what their role is not from the top down so we as well as presenting the figures
35:28
presenting what are we going to do to change that and actually focusing on representation and the employee
35:33
experience is where we need to pay attention it's not just about getting better numbers it's about the experience
35:39
otherwise we'll just leave so it's not a numbers game and we do all those things that in turn
35:44
close the gap but let's focus on that gap itself and we have future aspirations to
35:50
overlay the gender and ethnicity data and then to extend other demographics like asia's trials and exchange as well
35:55
this is a starting point for us but we felt it's helped communicate our intention
36:01
authenticity and um to be transparent and to recognize we've got work to do but we also are very committed
36:07
to change as well if we just go into the final slide
36:15
we have alongside the paperwork published our action plan industry ethnicity which comes with three key buckets so ensuring
36:22
leadership team is engaged and held accountable so we are going to take targets to improve the representation of black
36:28
asian and minority individuals in management and leadership positions we will develop a school path to try and
36:34
measure that progress and we will make sure there's education learning in that as well we want to
36:40
support the attraction development and growth of our people so we've been we are reviewing our
36:45
processes and policies understanding whether somebody's biases that stopping people from coming to work for us or
36:51
progressing what we can do to remove those um target development programs such a mental coaching sponsorship are in place
36:58
it will continue to be a key priority as well as career pathways as i mentioned before we've got great diversity in our
37:04
frontline population but they're not progressing through the organization so how can we help them what are the blockages how we've given clear guidance
37:12
and pathways to develop in our business and profiling normals and network opportunities people can see the people
37:17
like themselves in the business at all levels it's really critical and lastly but really importantly
37:24
elevating the voices of our people so we run a series of listening sessions following um
37:30
george floyd's murder we need to continue to do anything to listen to people um respond to what they're telling us
37:37
and also stereo storytelling left experiences make sure everyone can understand what people's lived experiences are maybe that safe space a
37:44
psychological safety for open diagonal and positive intent and educational learning and all this is
37:51
really really important um so those have been our experiences i think overall it's been received really
37:56
well that we've done this but it can't be a talking shop people want to see action what we're going to
38:02
do thank you
38:11
thank you raj thanks for that so we're moving into the q a session now
38:18
um we've got quite a few here so i can see two in the q a box which i'm
38:24
going to link um somebody has pointed out that
38:30
there needs to be an exception added to gdpr because as of now no one in europe can actually
38:36
file the ethnicity of their employees and asking how we would go about that
38:42
but there's a there's a question connected to that
38:48
so i don't know um i don't know how you feel charles about taking this one i'm
38:53
keen to understand how this initiative will be guided by the cipd on the requirements for organizations to carry
39:00
out data protection impact assessments prior to conducting any ethnicity pay
39:06
analyses well gdpr doesn't stop organizations
39:12
from cut asking this information to be disclosed what is gdpr does um
39:19
have restrictions and how you can use it in terms of um
39:24
i suppose potentially doing the analysis which then could identify an individual
39:30
and of course you know we wouldn't want that because it would be against gdpr
39:37
secondly if you are collecting this information you have to kind of collect it in a safe
39:43
way and you have to be able to store it in a safe way um but you know again you have
39:48
to you ask or you capture a lot of um personal information anyway from in
39:55
payroll systems and hr systems so the way that you are store collecting
40:01
and storing this information is not going to be significantly different from the other way from the other data
40:06
that you are collecting and storing anyway i think what's important is explain to
40:13
people why you were collecting this information it's to help the organization ensure that the way it
40:20
recruits people or selects people trains and develops them and rewards them is fair
40:28
and ethnicity is one lens that you're going to be using to evaluate that um gender is another but
40:34
you know over time hopefully as you get more better information you'll be able to look at other characteristics so for
40:40
instance um caring you know if you've got a elder caring responsibility or
40:46
child care responsibility what kind of impact does that have um on how you are you know rewarded
40:54
and recognized in the organization all the training and opportunities that are you know available to you
41:01
thank you let's jump in here sorry sandra yes come on yeah so the gdpr
41:06
um in april uh this year uh we did a piece with hogan levels law firm and
41:13
they did for legal councils and they did some missed buffeting around gdpr so people want to because those will be
41:19
they would be the ones that would stop you um the legal kind of you know advice that
41:25
you have in organization so they put something together um with us to actually help employers
41:30
understand that they don't have to be afraid of that and i have spoken to bay's officials oh and this official's
41:36
cabinet office nebuchadnezzar said oh no no that's we've been around the houses that's not the thing so um i think we can be assured that
41:44
there is a way to do this properly and i think charles has really set that out but if the legal firm say it's okay
41:50
you can be assured that it's okay yeah for us it said exo we're writing justifications for each category of data
41:57
showing how we're going to use the data so there is ways you can do it absolutely
42:03
thank you everybody um there's another question and again linked to these two questions linked
42:09
around the same thing which i know we have we have touched on i think all three panelists have touched on this but
42:15
um somebody has said in the chat in the q a smes make up around 99.9 of all
42:22
businesses in the uk so are enormously important important to the uk economy and 96 of the uk's
42:28
businesses have fewer than 10 employees there are only 13 000 businesses registered in the uk that fit the
42:35
definition of the size that's the average is calling this to apply to so any results are only going to be
42:41
indicative not definitive um and i think all three of you touched on that there is a specific question
42:48
um again around the capturing of the data since data is voluntary how does enforcing such reporting take into
42:55
account these disparate facts um raj i can see you nodding do you want
43:00
to uh take that question yeah i think we just could be very
43:06
transparent reporting what is the data based on we're not going to get 100 as i mentioned so it's always momentary but i
43:12
think it comes back to when you're asking for the data trying to build that culture of trust and help you understand why you're
43:18
asking for the data and how it's going to be beneficial so we're very clear that's going to help us
43:23
target our interventions much more closely and be much more measurable in what we're trying to do so i think to
43:29
try to film that culture of trust is critical but also be realistic i live in any organization
43:39
sandra charles yeah i'm so i mean capturing ethnicity data and you know the top of my list i had here was trust
43:46
i think there's something about transparency so frequently asked questions when people do ask what's going to happen with my data either
43:52
being as transparent putting it out there on your internal platforms this is what happens this is who has access this
43:59
is how we're going to use it i think also incentives i mean employers have used incentives donating to people's
44:05
charities and things to get them to fill it out because sometimes it's just about i need to go around and do that opposed
44:11
to i have an opposition to it and also um getting multiple stakeholders involved some people will
44:18
be inspired by the leader saying this is really important some will be inspired by the network by trade unions or
44:23
different um people actors within this kind of whole ecosystem that you can use to say yeah
44:28
this really you know why this matters and the power story so people telling stories as to actually why this has
44:34
happened then how it really affects people's real lives and the power of data if the data is not
44:39
there how can we even um you know improve what we feel is or perceive as a
44:44
problem so i think that the messaging around why is really important being open and
44:49
transparent and demonstrating that actually the leaders really care about this and you know they they keep celebrating
44:56
the drum beat of progress so um you know why do you talk about you know the impossibility of a hundred but some
45:02
have got like 90 up into the high 90s now another you know one organization i
45:08
know they had like 26 and really did internal campaign to say you see how
45:13
great we are on gender we want to be great on ethnicity too is why we want your numbers you know so
45:20
really just you know being open and saying look people i think oh you're going to do gender stuff well we've got the numbers
45:26
and look what we do when we know we want to do this on gender we want to do some ethnicity disability so part of that
45:33
i'm building that and that links to the people feeling like okay then you really care about me i'm going to trust you and
45:39
give you my data to help you become the best organization in the world
45:44
thank you sandra um we've got a question around um
45:50
transparency in the public sector so nhs employs over 1.4 million people and is
45:56
doing great work on reporting on race pay disparity through the workforce race equality standard
46:02
civil service employs 500 000 people and it's not doing so well on transparency and reporting and the question is and
46:09
maybe sandra i can direct this one to you is it time for government to be an exemplar through modeling greater
46:14
transparency in the public sector absolutely we need to be walking the talk on this
46:21
um because you know the public duty requires them to be as transparent as
46:27
possible about who's employed what people have paid and it
46:32
is important and i i would say but let's not use that as an excuse for them to
46:37
say okay let's get our house on board and let's take five years before we then ask the private sector what this needs is
46:44
public sector voluntary sector third sector and perhaps it's everybody together it is
46:50
time and as i say back to the size of the prize if we can improve this it
46:55
actually improves not everybody in everybody's working lives but also the economy as well so yeah i mean
47:02
there's no point trying to say oh no they're too busy no they need to be up front walking the talk and that would start
47:08
with i would start with house of commons house of lords all of them you know let's get some transparency going
47:16
um there's one question in the box and then i've got two more here um
47:22
which would neatly finish us up so let's take the question in the q a
47:27
um box can the panel share their thoughts on the use of the language acronym bain um it is used in the cipd guide and it's
47:34
being talked about on this call today but um this colleague is saying she's more
47:41
recently heard that we should be referring to just minority minority ethnic um
47:48
raj do you want to start on that one for me i try and avoid the collective use and term pain because it can hide
47:55
disparities and try and be wherever possible very specific and what group i'm referring to and if i can't spell
48:00
that unfolding use the acronym um i also try and avoid minority ethnic or sometimes the word
48:06
minority it's my word doesn't just highlight the exclusion and they're already feeling as well and talk
48:12
about mixed ethnic groups as well um i think it's context
48:17
why are you friends of mine what is it referring why are you trying to play but where you can be very specific especially i think when you're
48:24
doing things like paid reporting because otherwise we do do it right for spain that will hide disparities as we found
48:30
a representation that will hide disparities i think possibly be very pacific it would be my advice
48:36
okay thanks um charles there's one in here now around um
48:42
the split for reporting which is the white and vain um it would be helpful asks kate
48:49
richards if uh we could know the split for accuracy of reporting year on year as people are starting to actually do
48:56
this work any views any advice well the cipd
49:03
you know we're not being definitive about the information that organizations should report in their
49:10
narrative um you know as mentioned in our guiding partly
49:16
as sandra mentioned one of the recommendations from the cred
49:23
review was that baze would come up with its own guidance so we didn't want to kind of
49:28
come up with guidance saying this is the way you should be doing it and then phase a few months later hopefully
49:34
then come up with another set of guidance would be totally different from what we were suggesting that said
49:40
there's only a certain what number of ways um you can kind of analyze or
49:45
report this data so hopefully any change and any um guidance from bayes would be
49:51
massively different to what we're suggesting now but yes i mean
49:56
one of the you know additional statistics would be saying well this is the proportion of the um
50:02
of the workforce in our organization that's from an ethnic minority
50:08
and you know you should also by asking people to give their um
50:16
you know their ethnicity you should be able to work out
50:21
you know what proportion are you know british white or what proportion of that so it's
50:26
anything to stop you kind of going in more granular um it's just that we wanted something
50:33
to try and just jump start activity because at the moment i think people getting so concerned about doing
50:40
it perfect that actually nothing really is happening and you think well you've got to start somewhere let's just
50:46
do let's start with this and you know i don't think anybody's going to be saying well
50:52
they've done it the wrong way or they've done it the right way it's just to just start thinking in your organization
50:58
let's have a look at what you know do gaps exist and if so why and you know
51:04
we recognize that it may not be um anything necessary to do with
51:09
the workplace it may be what's going out in society as well but you know unless you start attempting to kind of evaluate the
51:16
figures you're not going to get anywhere
51:23
i think you might be on mute leslie i'm on mute because it's quite there was like it sounded like i don't know a
51:30
spitfire going down my road a minute ago so it quickly went off um so i'm going to address this one to
51:36
raj um because you have you know shared with us how you've gone about ethnicity pay
51:43
reporting and you said that you'd also have done the gender reporting now do
51:48
you think that large employers should go beyond gender and ethnicity to review how they're doing when it
51:54
comes to other protected characteristics in principle yes absolutely
52:01
i think we need to board the focus and we need to be in sectional of our focus as well not look at those in isolation and overlay data wherever possible
52:08
yep i think as i say it helps identify where your challenges our pitch points are and drives the dialogue
52:14
progress andrea do you want to add anything on that point yeah i mean can i say it
52:20
look i'm sure people are using software to calculate these pay gaps so yes please let's go intersectional let's use
52:28
um let's modify characteristic the biggest challenge is getting your employers to trust you that you're actually really going to use it for some
52:35
great stuff and as soon as you can showcase what you've been able to learn
52:40
through insight to get people enthused and encouraged about it um but yes um because the whole agenda
52:48
it is about inclusion and that means including people when we come when we talk about being paid the right amounts
52:54
you know no matter what their characteristics so absolutely
53:00
thank you um just before i ask this final question i can see that some um
53:05
some colleagues have dropped some really useful links that have been that are relevant to some of the questions that we've had this afternoon and some of the
53:11
answers those have gone into the chat so if you're not keeping an eye on that
53:17
there are there are some useful links there including you know the question we
53:22
asked a few minutes ago about um writing and talking about ethnicity and race so um we've we've got time for just
53:30
this one last question and um i don't know where it's where i'm going to send this one but it kind of
53:36
spurs the circle and things brings us back to where we started what do you think all three panelists are the
53:44
chances of large employers being required to disclose pay data by ethnicity within the next few years
53:52
uh sandra you're on the spotlighted at the moment you can go first i think writing's on the wall um in that
54:00
it's going to happen um because it makes sense the business you know
54:06
community have said yes um everybody realizes that this is the
54:11
right thing to do um in stages yes but i i can't see this
54:17
people saying oh well just forget it because actually if anything there's going to be a great call for more characteristics to be covered so i think
54:24
it's just a case of when um rather than if
54:30
great so our time is actually up there unless charles and round have anything to add
54:36
to that um that last question all i was going to add that you are seeing it pushes anyway
54:42
i mean you've got employees aren't looking for this information you've got investors looking for this information
54:48
you've got customers and whilst you know art this the present government
54:53
hasn't shown much um activity there's stuff going out in um
54:58
you know in in the nations i mean look at what's going on in scotland look what's going on in wales you know you probably know about all the initiatives
55:05
that mark drake that has launched in wales and around this topic so progress is is being made
55:13
great thank you so um it it amazes me how we always end up
55:20
no matter how many questions we've got and how many people we've got talking we always end up bang on time with an hour
55:26
so uh well done there everybody um thank you to our experts thank you sandra
55:31
thank you raj and thank you charles um i'm sure you will agree they have
55:37
given us a lot to think about and a lot of really good guidance and pointers as to how to go about this
55:42
thanks to everyone who submitted a question um we we got through them all as um
55:48
hopefully gave you the answers you were looking for the recording is going to be available on demand later and um
55:56
the link to that was posted in the chat but if you can't if you missed that it's in the in the
56:01
on the webinar page of the website um and the slides will also be available and then a final reminder about the
56:09
well-being support for members in uk and ireland the telco helpline um as provided by health assured
56:16
and of course the tackling racism in the workplace hub other than that thank you very much for
56:22
joining us look forward to seeing you again and
56:28
have a good afternoon everybody thanks bye