Just over half of UK employers face obstacles in collecting data on the ethnicity and disability status of their staff.
According to a Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) report entitled ‘Measuring and Reporting on Disability and Ethnicity Pay Gaps’, just 3% of employers analyse employee pay information by ethnicity, for example.
Even though just over three-quarters (77 per cent) claim that they see workforce diversity as a priority, only just over one in three (36 per cent) kept data on ethnicity. Of those employers who collected information on employee pay, less than a quarter (23 per cent) said the information could easily be broken down by ethnicity.
According to a third (32%) of the businesses questioned, the reason for this situation was that collecting ethnicity data was “too intrusive”, while a quarter (27%) claimed employees “did not want to share” the information.
UK employers with 250 or more employees are now legally required to report on their gender pay gaps, but the same is not true of either their ethnicity or disability pay gaps despite government recommendations to do so. But the EHRC’s findings mean that businesses could face problems when calculating pay gaps in these areas should it become legally necessary, according to People Management.
As a result, the EHRC report, published at the end of August, offered suggestions for overcoming reporting barriers, which included explaining to employees how the data will be used. Some 70% of employers agreed this would be a good idea.
Almost three out of five employers (58%) also thought that developing a way of collecting the information easily, for example through an online form, would help, while almost half (48%) believed that making it mandatory to collect such data would be effective.
Gill Oliver is a business and property journalist who has written for The Daily Mail/Mail Online's This is Money, The Press Association and many national and regional newspapers and magazines.
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Just over half of UK employers face obstacles in collecting data on the ethnicity and disability status of their staff.
According to a Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) report entitled ‘Measuring and Reporting on Disability and Ethnicity Pay Gaps’, just 3% of employers analyse employee pay information by ethnicity, for example.
Even though just over three-quarters (77 per cent) claim that they see workforce diversity as a priority, only just over one in three (36 per cent) kept data on ethnicity. Of those employers who collected information on employee pay, less than a quarter (23 per cent) said the information could easily be broken down by ethnicity.
According to a third (32%) of the businesses questioned, the reason for this situation was that collecting ethnicity data was “too intrusive”, while a quarter (27%) claimed employees “did not want to share” the information.
UK employers with 250 or more employees are now legally required to report on their gender pay gaps, but the same is not true of either their ethnicity or disability pay gaps despite government recommendations to do so. But the EHRC’s findings mean that businesses could face problems when calculating pay gaps in these areas should it become legally necessary, according to People Management.
As a result, the EHRC report, published at the end of August, offered suggestions for overcoming reporting barriers, which included explaining to employees how the data will be used. Some 70% of employers agreed this would be a good idea.
Almost three out of five employers (58%) also thought that developing a way of collecting the information easily, for example through an online form, would help, while almost half (48%) believed that making it mandatory to collect such data would be effective.
Gill Oliver is a business and property journalist who has written for The Daily Mail/Mail Online's This is Money, The Press Association and many national and regional newspapers and magazines.
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Pay gap between UK CEOs and staff widens again
Are gender imbalances in foreign assignments damaging your employer brand?
