Top Ten Companies for Race & Gender 2013

Opportunity Now and Race for Opportunity, the gender and race campaigns from Business in the Community (BITC), published ‘Action and Achievement’ on 15th November 2013, the results of the UK’s most comprehensive benchmarking survey into how organisations are performing on gender and race equality, diversity and inclusion in the workplace.

The report is based on an analysis of data submitted by Opportunity Now and Race for Opportunity member companies across a range of key areas, including career progression, recruitment, supplier diversity, and senior management and board representation of women and ethnic minorities. BITC then uses the data to assess how companies are progressing on improving racial and gender diversity and which actions show a correlation with positive outcomes. The report also includes examples of best practice trends in gender and race progression in the workplace.

On gender, the analysis found that the benchmarking companies with the highest number of women in leadership roles are twice as likely to have gender-focussed objectives in their diversity strategies. Benchmarking organisations with single rewards structures for all employees also have more women at middle and senior management levels. Finally, there is a positive correlation between a high representation of female managers and the uptake of flexible working.

Flexible working was also beneficial to Black, Asian and Minority Ethic (BAME) employees, with organisations that offer flexible working more likely to promote BAME staff. The analysis also found that organisations with unconscious bias training for recruiters were more likely to hire BAME people and women, and that the organisations performing best on BAME leadership were most likely to have clear targets, set internally. Additionally, networks played a significant role in BAME progression as organisations with more BAME managers and senior managers were more likely to have a BAME network, with the most advanced organisations having BAME networks with a budget and a focus on professional development and business opportunities.

BITC has also published four unranked lists of the top 10 best performing public and private sector organisations on the two protected characteristics of ethnicity and gender:

Top 10 private sector organisations for ethnicity

BT plc
Enterprise Rent-a-Car
Eversheds LLP
EY
KPMG LLP
National Grid
Nationwide Building Society
Pertemps Recruitment Partnership Ltd
PwC
Sky

Top 10 private sector organisations for gender

BT plc
DHL Supply Chain
Enterprise Rent-a-Car
EY
KPMG LLP
National Grid
Nationwide Building Society
PwC
Royal Bank of Scotland
Royal Mail Group

Top 10 public sector organisations for ethnicity

Crown Prosecution Service
Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)
Genesis
HM Revenue & Customs
Home Office
Leicestershire Police
National Audit Office
Ofcom
Royal Air Force
Royal Navy

Top 10 public sector organisations for gender

Environment Agency
Foreign & Commonwealth Office
Genesis
HM Revenue & Customs
Home Office
Leicestershire Police
National Audit Office
Ofcom
Royal Air Force
Royal Navy

Sandra Kerr OBE, Campaign Director of Race for Opportunity, said “In modern Britain, where one in four primary school children is from a Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic (BAME) background and one in eight of the workforce is BAME, it’s unsustainable that just one in 16 business leaders is from an ethnic minority. Race for Opportunity aims to square the pyramid so there are role models to inspire this generation, and our top 10 organisations are helping to do just that. I congratulate them for making a strong commitment to improve the ethnic diversity of their workforce and all the effort and hard work they’ve put in. The best-performing organisations had many things in common, but it’s now up to other organisations to follow their lead. It’s only by learning from each other and working together that we can achieve true diversity in the workforce.”

Click here to read the BITC Benchmarking Report 2013.
Visit www.bitc.org.uk for further information.