At the start of this year, we at Change the Race Ratio teamed-up with BusinessLDN to call for mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting for large companies, with the aim of shining a light on where unfair treatment exists, and paving the way for interventions to address it. A few months later, as part of the King’s Speech in Parliament over the summer, the Government outlined plans to enshrine the full right to equal pay in law, with ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting set to be made compulsory for big firms over the coming months.
Ethnicity data collection is a fundamental requirement for ethnicity pay gap reporting. In the UK, we operate under the principle of self-declaration, meaning that businesses are able to ask employees to share their ethnicity data, but employees are under no obligation to do so.
For many firms, collecting ethnicity data is one of the biggest hurdles to being able to report ethnicity pay gap data. At a recent BusinessLDN roundtable, we had a rich discussion around how to drive up disclosure rates. Some of the key insights shared were:
1) Get your workforce on board: describe the ‘why’.
Gathering accurate workforce data isn’t always easy, and achieving good rates of disclosure requires trust, transparency and a leadership team who are comfortable talking about race.
So, if you’re planning on collecting data from your workforce, start by building trust. How? By being transparent and upfront on the ‘why’ of the data collection, clearly explaining the reasons you’re doing it and the benefits for everyone in the business; more informed business decision-making for example.
2) Make disclosure straightforward
Making it simple for employees to access and complete questionnaires or any relevant forms required, and keeping the instructions straightforward, is crucial to help avoid this feeling like an additional task, rather than embedded in day-to-day behaviours.
It is also important to keep in mind that not all employees are based at a desk and screen – they may work in a warehouse or assembly line, for example. Employees who are in desk-based roles tend to fill out the surveys as they have easier access to systems and internal communications, so it’s just as vital to communicate firmwide to reach as many people as possible and offer flexible ways to complete surveys in order to achieve a good representation of data.
3) Plan your communications strategy in advance
Building the right comms strategy from the start can make a difference between achieving a high disclosure rate and a data collection exercise that never gets off the ground.
It’s important to explain why having robust data can benefit everyone and build a fairer workplace. By letting employees know what companies aim to do with the submitted data, and that limited people with certain roles have access to it, can help encourage more people to participate and disclose their information.
It’s essential to work across departments to make sure that the forms are reaching the right people, at the right time. And if you have capacity to do so, check in and evaluate the campaign every couple of weeks to tweak messaging if you need to.
4) Anticipate barriers to disclosure
There may be instances where some employees have a real opposition around data disclosure with a sense of why they are keep being asked for information.
By anticipating what the barriers to disclosure are likely to be before starting to collate data, organisations will be in a better place to understand employees’ concerns and address them upfront.
5) Find your data collection champions
While it’s important that your CEO and senior leadership team articulate why data collection is important, your employee networks and line managers are more likely to have a greater impact when it comes to spreading the message about disclosing ethnicity data.
Involvement from different employee networks can help build trust in the process of individuals providing data. An example being through video blogs, as through vlogging employees can articulate why disclosure is important to them, and how it ties in with the organisations broader equity, diversity and inclusion conversation. Getting line manager and leadership ‘buy in’ from the start helps build ‘data collection advocates’, keeping the momentum going through the data collection exercise.
Visit the Change the Race Ratio website for more information about getting inolved in the initiative.