CIPD Ethnicity Pay Gap Report

As part of our commitment to the Race at Work Charter, we’ve been voluntarily reporting ethnicity pay gap data since 2019. Our latest report mirrors the 2022–23 reporting cycle for mandatory gender pay gap reporting, using a snapshot date of 5 April 2022. We’ve published this report in November 2022, to coincide with the publication of our annual report and accounts for the year ending 30 June 2022.

Our commitment to closing the ethnicity pay gap

In October 2018, we signed the Race at Work Charter, which sets out seven actions to improve the representation of all employees at all levels in organisations. One of these is capturing ethnicity data and reporting progress. 

We first published our ethnicity pay data in our 2018–19 annual report and have published a dedicated ethnicity pay gap report since 2020. With four years of ethnicity pay gap data, we continue to report and we choose to go behind the headline figures. We do this because we are committed to fostering equality, diversity and inclusion within the CIPD and we want to understand how our culture and actions help us close the gap.

We remain committed to the Race at Work Charter. We pledge to keep listening to our own people. And we shape our policies, practices and roles based on what we learn, knowing that creating an inclusive culture within a talented, productive organisation means doing things differently. We also continue to call on the UK government to make this a mandatory requirement alongside gender pay gap reporting, and on employers to do so voluntarily.

Our ethnicity pay gap

The ethnicity pay gap is calculated by taking all employees across an organisation and comparing the average pay of our white employees with that of employees from ethnic minority groups. This means that even though we have clear externally benchmarked salary ranges in place for all jobs, to ensure that everyone is paid fairly for undertaking the same or a similar role, it’s still possible to have an ethnicity pay gap.

After narrowing over the past three years, we’ve seen an increase in our median ethnicity pay gap this year – from 11.2% in 2021 to 14.5% in 2022.

The increase is disappointing but not unexpected, as we have seen a shift in the ethnic profile of our workforce. We’re pleased to report that the median ethnicity pay gap for people joining us was narrower (−8.4%) than that of people leaving us (25.3%) – in other words, the people we recruited from Black, Asian, mixed race and other ethnic groups joined on slightly higher salaries than those who left, and higher than the salaries of white people who joined us. However, more white people joined us this year than people from Black, Asian, mixed race or other ethnic groups, has widened our median and mean pay gaps slightly.

Fluctuations in the ethnic profile of our workforce are to be expected in a small organisation like ours. What’s important is that we continue to see a growing number of applications from candidates from Black, Asian, mixed race, or other ethnic groups. We monitor applications carefully and ensure that our jobs are accessible, flexible and appealing.

Our report explores how our pay gap varies by ethnicity and the long-term actions we’re taking to close the gap overtime.