EHRC Produces New Recommendations for Reporting on Ethnicity and Disability Pay Gaps

Following the widespread coverage and reporting of gender pay gaps, the Equality and Human Rights Commission has released a report into ethnicity and disability pay gaps. Pay gaps are a measure of the difference in average hourly pay between different groups and the EHRC believe these to be a good indicator of inequalities in access to work, progression and rewards. The Commission is also aware that people who have a disability or are from an ethnic minority background are more likely to experience discrimination in recruitment, promotion and pay reward decisions. They are also more likely to be in part-time, lower-skilled, and/or lower-paid work, and in jobs with shorter contracts, according to a 2017 report.

However, findings from the EHRC suggest that only 36% of private and voluntary sector employers record or collect data on employee ethnicity, and 44% collect data on employee disability status. The employers that do report tend to use binary categories – i.e. white/BAME; or disabled/not disabled. But only 3% of employers publish data on their ethnicity and disability pay gaps.

When asked, just over half of employers (51%) surveyed reported that they felt that there were too many barriers to collecting data on the ethnicity of employees, and 52% felt the same with regard to collecting data on disability. These cited barriers included that data collection is too intrusive, that employees do not want to share the information and that data collection is too onerous. Employers suggested that ways to overcome these barriers could include explaining to employees how the data will be used (70% agreed); developing a way of collecting the information easily through, for example, an online form (58%); and making it mandatory to collect the information (48%).

Through this report the EHRC are calling on the UK government to introduce mandatory monitoring and reporting on the recruitment, retention and progression of disabled people and ethnic minority groups for employers with over 250 staff by April 2020. To prepare for this, they will work with Government to provide practical support and guidance for employers by April 2019 on how to collect, report on and use employee data on ethnicity and disability.

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