Acas ethnicity pay gap report 2024

As part of our strategic ambition to promote diversity and inclusion in Britain's workplaces and ensure our own reflect the values and diversity of modern Britain, we have voluntarily published our ethnicity pay gap.

We believe this transparency demonstrates our commitment and provides an opportunity to identify any existing pay disparities among different ethnic minorities within Acas. With this data we can carry out meaningful analysis to provide insights into the factors contributing to the pay gap and develop strategies to address them effectively.

The ethnicity pay gap is the percentage difference in the average hourly rate of pay of ethnic minority employees. We calculate our ethnicity pay gap using the same methodology set out in the government regulations for calculating our gender pay gap.

At the time of reporting on 31 March 2024, we had a total number of 1,011 employees. 802 of our employees have openly shared their ethnicity and this represents 79.3% of the workforce. Of those who have shared, 699 (69.1%) are white and 103 (10.2%) are from an ethnic minority background.

Throughout 2023 to 2024, we have continued our efforts to create an inclusive and diverse organisation. Ethnic minority employees made up 10.2% of our organisation. However, it remains less than the UK ethnic minority working population of 19.3%.

The figures below show that we still do not have 100% sharing of ethnicity data, and we are working hard to improve this.

The overall representation of total number of staff is:

• 10.2% of our workforce identify as ethnic minority
• 69.1% of our workforce identify as white
• 4.4% of our workforce have preferred not to state their ethnicity
• 16.3% of our workforce have yet to share their ethnicity

We look at both the mean (average) and median (middle) for pay gap reporting.

The mean pay gap is the difference in average hourly pay, adding all pay rates together and dividing by the total number of employees.

The median pay gap is the difference in hourly pay between the middle paid (the person at the middle point if you were to line all employees up from low to high pay) white employee and middle paid ethnic minority employee.

Looking at staff who are eligible to be included in the calculation (staff who are not receiving full pay are excluded), the table below shows the proportion of staff by ethnicity in Acas.

This gives us a mean and median ethnicity pay gap between colleagues who identify as white and those who identify as ethnic minority, as follows:

• our mean (average) hourly pay gap for ethnic minority staff is -1.01% (ethnic minority colleagues earn a mean of 1.01% more than white colleagues)
• our median hourly pay gap is 1.65% (white colleagues earn 1.65% more than ethnic minorities in median hourly pay)

These show an improved mean pay gap of -1.01%, down from -1. 63% in 2022 to 2023, and a slight increase in our median pay gap to 1.65%, compared to 0% in 2022 to 2023.

The table below shows which quartiles staff in each ethnicity group fall into.

The data also shows we have many staff in the highest earning quartile (Quartile 4) who prefer not to share their ethnicity and a large proportion of colleagues in the lowest earning quartile (Quartile 1) who have not yet shared. This lack of information makes it difficult for us to understand the disparities and inequalities that may exist within our workforce and therefore we are focusing on fostering inclusion and transparency to cultivate more sharing from staff.

In the 2023 to 2024 financial year:

• the mean bonus pay gap is 23.5% (white colleagues earn a mean of 23.5% more than ethnic minority colleagues in bonuses) – this is largely driven by senior civil servant colleagues being on a different reward and recognition platform
• the median bonus pay gap is 0%

Note that if we remove senior civil servants from the dataset, the mean pay gap changes increasingly more in favour of ethnic minority staff at -1.01% and the median pay gap is 1.65% in favour of white colleagues.

With senior civil servants removed we can see that ethnic minority colleagues earn a mean of just over 1.0% higher than white colleagues, almost double that with the senior civil servants included, suggesting that senior civil servants are bringing the white mean pay up. The median pay difference is 1.65% in favour of white colleagues, as the median value is little affected by outliers.

The Acas Senior Leadership team is committed to fair pay irrespective of ethnicity.

We will continue to build on actions and initiatives aimed at eradicating the ethnicity pay gap, including:

• continuing to foster an inclusive and open environment that encourages employees to share their ethnicity data – in the last year we have maintained a 79% declaration rate, we want to encourage more staff to share their ethnicity data and will continue to run campaigns to raise awareness of the benefits of sharing this data and ensuring employees feel comfortable and confident to do so
• after a deep dive into recruitment practices and identifying where we are losing ethnic minority candidates in the recruitment process, creating an action plan to increase attraction, recruitment and retention of ethnic minorities, which will address any biases that may contribute to the pay gap
• working in conjunction with our Diversity and Inclusion Forum to develop strategic actions in support of ethnic minority staff and to integrate diversity and inclusion into all management processes
• creating a new development offer for all staff, but particularly targeted at our employee networks, which provides opportunities to apply for Civil Service development and leadership programmes to support career progression to senior roles
• supporting employees from underrepresented ethnic groups with their applications where needed, through our people coaches and the Race Network
• continuing to monitor pay to identify pay differences and take targeted action where appropriate, within Civil Service pay controls
• continuing to take a proactive approach towards monitoring our reward and recognition system allowing us to focus on the opportunities all staff will have to demonstrate their contributions ensuring fairness across all grades and ethnicity
• continuing our approach to anonymise the job application process to reduce the potential for bias and piloting a new learning programme for hiring managers on our bulk campaigns
• continuing to use recruitment panels which are diverse in terms of ethnicity
• focusing on different recruitment processes, in line with Civil Service Principles, that allow those with limited employment history to actively demonstrate their skills at interview
• rolling out a new performance development system which helps ethnic minority employees progress in their careers through a clear conversational approach, which encourages line managers to have an open ongoing dialogue with staff on development and progression