Ethnicity pay reporting: A guide for UK employers

The moral case for pay fairness across all ethnic groups is self-evident. However, the CIPD Pay, performance and transparency 2024 report found that even though 40% of large organisations had carried out ethnicity pay gap analysis, not all had published their analysis.

While ethnicity pay reporting has been voluntary up until now, the Equality (Race and Disability) Bill includes a commitment to require all large employers in England, Scotland and Wales to publish data by ethnicity. The government has completed a consultation on how best to report this information, before it becomes the law, and you can read more about the CIPD response to this consultation. Workplaces can start preparing for reporting now, and this guide outlines the current guidance around voluntary reporting that can still be followed until any changes come into force.

The CIPD recommends large employers publish annual ethnicity reports based on three key components:   

• A uniform set of eight commonly defined statistics to profile pay by ethnicity.  
• A supporting narrative to explain the nature and causation of any pay differentials and gaps by ethnic group evident in their statistics.  
• An action plan of initiatives defined to reduce and remove any such gaps over time.