Shownotes

Theresa May’s 2017 general election manifesto had a pledge to require all large employers to publish their ethnicity pay gaps. And then Boris Johnsons election manifesto did not contain anything on the ethnicity pay gap reporting. 

In February this year the House of Comms women and equalities committee (WEC) said in a report that ‘Large companies should be required by law to publish data on employee salaries, following the framework already in place for gender. Research cited in the report suggests that addressing the pay disparity could boost the UK economy by £24billion a year. 

However in March the government peddled back on its commitment and decided against making it mandatory because it did not want to impose additional burdens on employers ‘as they recover from the pandemic’. Instead voluntary guidance is expected to be published this summer for companies interested in reporting.

What about the impact of the pandemic on people from black and other ethnic minority groups? 

Analysis from BITC 2021 Race at Work survey (24,638 employees surveyed) indicate that ethnicity pay gap data will not be widely published by companies in the UK until 2075 (53 years) without legislation and government intervention. In 2021 only 19% of businesses in the UK took note of their ethnicity pay gap and only half of them published the actual data. 

In this episode of The Elephant in the Room podcast I spoke with Dianne Greyson, the Founder of the ethnicity pay gap campaign on the government flip flopping on legislation, the need for legislation, data collection and actions required to address racial and ethnic disparities. 

As Dianne said, the ethnicity pay gap is not just about making a business case or the right thing to do it is a human rights issue. 

Memorable Passages from the podcast

👉🏾 Thank you for having me. 

👉🏾 Okay sure. I've been in HR for about 16 years. I run two organisations, one is Equilibrium Mediation Consulting, in that space I do generalist HR. I'm also a qualified mediator,. And also I'm an accredited emotional intelligence practitioner, which is something that I've recently obtained, which is quite good. Synergised Solutions is also the company I run and I run that with my colleague Jacqueline Hinds and that's predominantly focused on diversity inclusion.

And we design and develop our own products and everything is all bespoke to the organisation. So obviously with all the challenges and the situations that organisations and individuals are having at the minute, doing D&I work is so important to us. Because we want organisations to make a positive transition rather than just paper over the cracks, so that's really our stance. You also know that I'm the Founder of the ‘Ethnicity Pay Gap’ campaign, which has been going since 2018. That was born initially out of my own personal frustration of yet again knowing that we are in a situation where we are struggling to get fairness, and through my initial anxiety and frustration about it I started the campaign, which is still going today. 

👉🏾 Total craziness. So we could just quickly touch on the gender pay gap and I understand only 24% of organisations now have reported their pay gap. In terms of why organisations haven't even thought about the gender pay gap is because, in my opinion, they don't see it as important as the gender pay gap, where it should be on exactly the same footing. It's not even a poor relation it's even worse than that. And I think that because the government have not picked up the urgency of doing this, organisations don't think it's important to do it. And with the ethnicity pay gap, organisations have been reporting and is now 50% less than it was in the past.

👉🏾And yesterday, as you alluded to, the government have said, "oh, actually we're not going to do this straight away. We will do it, but not going to do straight away. For those organisations that want to do it, we're gonna help you. And the reason why we're doing it is because we feel that because we've gone through COVID, we don't want to put any pressure on you", which is absolutely ridiculous. And I can't really say or demonstrate my frustration with this right now. I feel just so annoyed with the government for saying that, because all they've done is they've made organisations say "oh, well the government has said, there's no rush, so no rush"

👉🏾 As I said in the beginning, I've been campaigning for four years, and I'm just going to give you another statistic, there was a research that came out recently that said that Black, Asian and other ethnic minorities won't get pay parity until 2057. So, I'll probably be dead by then. I don't accept that. So I'm calling on people to really take action here, but we'll talk about that further down the line. 

👉🏾 I don't think, as I said, there's no interest in dealing with things that don't relate only to white people. I'm afraid to say, you know, they can quickly react to those things. Right, if it's to do with talking about race, they suddenly get into a tailspin. Because their thought process has always been that way, they can't stop themselves. So they immediately just carry on like they used to, whereas they've got to stop and go, okay, we are in a different environment, things have grown and developed, people need to grow and develop. So, therefore, we need to think about what are the consequences, what is the, as you said, intersectional situation that is causing all these gaps and let's look at it like that. But they won't do it. And that's why we're here today. 

👉🏾 Well for individuals, I was thinking about that, I was thinking it's not about it being a benefit, it's about doing what you're supposed to. So if organisations did what they were supposed to do, the individuals who are affected will be in a better place, which will mean that they will have better spending power, which will mean that they will contribute to the economics of this country.

👉🏾 So for them not making the effort to close the gap, not even narrow, to close it completely, it is causing individuals who look like me and you, complete stress and anxiety and the lack of ability to progress. So they might be just renting a flat, buying a place, getting basic things because they're not getting the money that they deserve. And if they carry on in this way, the negativity of all of this, it will have an effect on the community. Because if you suddenly find out that you're getting paid less than your white counterpart, you're not gonna be happy about that, and that unhappiness will spill into your home, and go into your community cause that's the way life goes. And I think we need to recognise there has to be some solid action to make sure that everybody is paid fairly, everybody is able to contribute, everybody's able to go up the ladder without any hindrance.

👉🏾 Absolutely. And I've always said that you know, this is a human right. The human right to be treated fairly. And when people recognise that, they should be moving forward to take action quickly. 

👉🏾 Disgraceful, embarrassing, frustrated all the above quite frankly. I just think they should really talk to people like myself and others who could really have informed the result of this, but that just shows you what their intention was. Their intention was to do nothing. That's what that told me. I'm not gonna do anything and when I do do it, I'll do it in my own time. Not because it's the right thing to do because it's in my own time and you've made me do it. So, you know, that frustration is at a high volume. 

👉🏾 It is exactly like that, and the fact that they came out yesterday said what they said, it shows that was their intention. So they set the groundwork last year and now they followed it up yesterday by saying, "oh, well, we'll do it, but not right now because we don't think we need to do it because you know, we want to look after our poor organisations, they're suffering clearly and we don't wanna put anymore burden".

👉🏾 What about the burden of the people? The burden of the lack of having enough money to survive. They try to separate the money against the people, but you gotta recognise people are suffering or having hardships because they're not being paid fairly. You cannot separate the two, but they try to separate the emotion, cause they think, well people just think about the money and money is one of those things that xxxxxxxxxx overly about. But when you start bringing in the people and the emotions of people and the fact that those who suffer this unfairness are also the people who are suffering during COVID, frontline workers, all the evidence is out there that Black, Asian and other ethnicities are dying quicker and it all correlates. 

👉🏾 It's enough of an excuse. I mean they've got the gender pay gap done, right? I'm sure during a period of time when that was happening, there wasn't as much technology out there to help to support, now there is a lot more technology. Yes, data is important, but it's also what you do with the data. So you can collate all this data, but it's not the matter of showing the data and telling everybody what it shows. If you don't have the action behind it and make sure that you do something about it, it's almost a waste of time. 

👉🏾 And if you don't have the resource in your organisation, you can look at getting external resources to help to support you. I know of organisations that do that, and it's not difficult to find. So those types of excuses I won't accept, because it's not good enough. You're putting a barrier to the success of moving forward and getting people in the right places. 

👉🏾 Yes, but we're not France, I think in France, you can't do that, this is the UK. I always say to people as a black woman working in an organisation. If I worked in an organisation, if somebody in HR said to me, oh Dianne, I noticed that you haven't filled in the form to tell me, what your origin is? The reason why we need it is because we are going reporting on our ethnicity pay gap and we want to make sure as an organisation that we are paying everybody fairly, that is the reason why we need to get your data, would that be okay? My answer is not gonna be no, because if there is a chance, even if it's a small chance that they can recognise I'm actually being paid less than my white counterpart then I want to know about it. 

👉🏾 You know what I mean? So that doesn't wash with me, It doesn't wash at all. It's a weak argument. And you know, I encourage organisations to make sure that they speak to people it affects because only then are you going to get proper results. If you're just gonna be an organisation that's going to do everything from a high level and then you are going to tell everybody after, that is not beneficial. Get the people, involved so they know what's going on and how they can help to move things forward. If they're not gonna take that type stance, they're gonna struggle.

👉🏾 Yeah, I suppose you could cite maybe PWC as one. And, I say that, but yet I'm not saying it with a hundred percent guarantee that they're doing it perfectly. You know what I mean? Because I don't think that really exists, but from what I've seen, they've demonstrated to me that they understand a bit more than others in terms of how it should be done and why it should be done. I'm not using them as a beacon to say that everyone rush ing to them but as one that I know of. 

👉🏾 Okay, so initially when we first spoke, I said to you that the reporting is now 50% down. So in terms of what you mentioned there, clearly it needs to be mandatory because there isn't the impetus, there isn't a reason for organisations to do it really. And again, as I said before, the government has now said, it's okay, don't worry. If you are struggling, we'll help you. Which means they can take as long as they like. So there's no time scale for action to do this. They're just saying, oh well if you wanna do it, we can help you do it. And that shows me that mandatory is the way that it has to be, because like gender before gender became mandatory, the percentage of them doing it was very limited. So the so-called evidence that tells you mandatory is the way to go, so there is no excuse. And not only making it mandatory, but also there should be some guidance around what is expected, ie, organisations should demonstrate that they've one, done the mandatory reporting, but two, they have devised some sort of plan action to close that gap. Because as I said previously just reporting the data is not enough.

👉🏾 Yeah, exactly.

👉🏾 Yeah, I couldn't tell you who, but I know they exist and it’s what I had said previously when race is involved, everybody goes into a tailspin and they immediately revert back to negative thoughts and processes like, no, I don't want to do this. Well, I suppose we could just say, well, the gender pay is there pay gap is being dealt with. So there shouldn't be any excuse for the ethnicity pay gap. And It's almost as if they feel that well, you know, we've got the gender pay gap and that should be it. But we've done some research, and blacks women that took part in it said that the 52% have suffered ethnicity pay gap. So they're suffering ethnicity pay gap and also suffering from the gender pay gap. 

👉🏾 Sure. So, as I said, the ethnicity pay campaign has been going for about four years now. And we have been encouraging people to talk about the situation and also to encourage the government to make it mandatory for companies to make sure that they do the ethnicity pay gap reporting as well.

👉🏾 But as it was last year, Yes, last year, the 8th of January, I created the ‘Ethnicity Pay Gap Day’, which was again to raise awareness, to get people talking and to get people engaged, so they'll have a specific day to get involved and do something that is gonna help the ethnicity pay gap situation. That has been going quite well. I obviously did the ethnicity pay gap again this year and the launch of the research document, which was the impact on black women, regarding ethnicity pay gap, which can be found on our website, www.ethnicitypaygapcampaign.com 

👉🏾 We have lots of supporters who have bought the t-shirt which for me it was about visibility. So I sort of drew reference from the ‘me too’ movement, so that's what I was thinking about at the time, and I thought we just needed a visual representation of solidarity. So I designed the t-shirts that people could purchase and wear, take a photo and share it on social media. Because I think it's a great way of showing solidarity and people will start realising that it's not just me speaking, behind me there are people supporting and that's been a great thing. And we're pushing forward, I'm just now working with an organisation called ShareAction, and I'm an advisory committee member and basically they're going be petitioning the financial sector to start reporting the ethnicity pay gap and that's really kick-starting. Yesterday I posted out some information for people who want to be advocates, to go out and go to some of these board meetings physically or online, and ask questions about ethnicity pay gap and why they're not reporting it or what they're doing to report it. I think that's a great campaign that people should be getting involved with to help to raise the profile. And just because of all that has happened in the last few days regarding this area, we need to step up a gear in terms of activism. Because they're clearly not listening, so we need to clearly move forward and move up a notch to make sure we can get them to listen and get them to recognise we are here on a long haul and we are gonna make them make change.

👉🏾 They could invite me over to have a conversation with them. To talk to them about the importance of it. I do go into organisations and I generally do presentations in terms of explaining to them what it is, what the impact is, what organisations are doing, you know, what you could do as an organisation. And I think every conversation needs to be, bespoke to that client. So, you know, you have to look at the environment that you're in, what other people are doing., If they're doing anything, and even if they are not doing anything you need to be the leader. Someone has to take that first step. There's a lot of information on the ethnicity pay gap site. So have a look at that. As I said previously, if you're worried about the data angle, speak to external organisations who have got experience in that to help, to support you have conversations with your staff networks. I always say, suggest your BAME staff network, even though I don’t like that term but your black and Asian and any other networks you might have in that arena. Get the conversation going, cause you know, the clear thing is communication, if you don't communicate and make an effort to find out more information, you just won't know what's going on.

So it's important that you get involved in conversation. But make sure that you understand what you are getting into before you take the process forward. 

👉🏾 It's absolute pleasure. Very important subject to be speaking about.

Important links Dianne Greyson: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dgreyson/?originalSubdomain=uk

https://ethnicitypaygapcampaign.com/index.php/about-us-2/

https://www.synergisedsolutions.com/otherserviceofferings

https://ethnicitypaygapcampaign.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/EPG-RESEARCH-REPORT-2022.pdf

https://www.voice-online.co.uk/news/uk-news/2021/01/07/campaigner-dianne-greyson-pens-open-letter-to-senior-officials-to-end-the-ethnicity-pay-gap/

Links Ethnicity Pay Gap UK: