Positive signs for employers measuring inclusion

A new report compiled by Inclusive Companies shows a very encouraging picture of organisations not just employing a specialist in EDI but actively measuring inclusion within their workplace with 97% of employers surveyed declaring this.

This year’s IT50 report attracted its largest number of submissions to date, up 25% from last year and is an annual benchmark of the current state of EDI in UK workplaces.

The IT50 Report is based on responses that reflect over 750,000 members of the UK workforce from new junior joiners to those on executive boards. Furthermore, the organisations which took part cover a diverse range of public, private, educational, housing and charity sectors.

Paul Sesay, CEO of Inclusive Companies and creator of the IT50 Report, says, “What is evident is that, in current times of adversity, when external pressures could so easily divide a workforce, the best organisations understand the EDI agenda is more important than ever.

Positive outcomes

The report shows that more companies than ever before are employing LGBT+ people, while 93% of organisations have internal LGBT+ networks. In fact, there is a significant increase in employee networks groups with Faith seeing the largest rise since 2021 of 11%.

And despite the fact it’s not a legal requirement to report on ethnicity pay gaps, the report showed an increase of 14% since the 2021 report with 41% among participants now reporting this.

Areas for improvement

The report shows nonetheless shows several areas of concern.

Forty-five per cent of organisations have fewer than 10% of their employees from underrepresented communities, up 7.5% on 2021.

LGBT+ representation is the least-reported data at Executive Board level with 41% of organisations not collecting this data – a significant rise from 27% in 2021.

And disability is the least-reported protected characteristic across overall workforce data. Just over 22% of all organisations did not have data for disability representation across their workforce, which is an increase of nearly 5% since 2021.

“I would ask employers to look across their workforce and tell me can they hand-on-heart say different groups of people are represented and if not, why not?” continues Sesay. “What are the barriers to you, as an employer, in inviting people with these characteristics to join your organisation? And what are the barriers to creating an environment within which these employees wish to stay?”

The full report can be seen here.

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