Introduction
Cambridgeshire County Council (the Council) has been reporting on the ethnicity pay gap (EPG) since 2020. They have begun to see marginal changes in their median pay data and rates of engagement from ethnic minority staff with their focus on attracting, supporting, appreciating and developing staff through their equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) initiatives.
The Council employs around 4,700 people, including relief staff with contracts similar to NHS bank workers. Around 79% of the workforce is female. As a county council the staff provide services in areas across the whole of Cambridgeshire, these services include social care, public health, education, finance and IT. The Council is also a part of Cambridge and Peterborough Integrated Care System (ICS).
In March 2024, the Council released their annual Gender and Ethnicity Pay Gap Report for 2023 which found their mean EPG was 5.6% while their median EPG was 5.8% (Cambridgeshire County Council, 2024). These compared to 3.1% (mean) and 6.2% (median) in 2022. The report also revealed that in 2023 ethnic minority staff were earning £0.95 less on average an hour than white employees and highlighted underrepresentation of women and ethnic minority staff in senior roles.
While staff at the Council are under no obligation to disclose their ethnicity, 69% did so voluntarily and of these 88.84% identified as white. The Council decided to group their data into 'white' and 'non-white' when reporting, to ensure the anonymity of respondents.
Interventions
The Council has implemented multiple interventions as part of wider EDI work that will contribute to the reduction of the ethnicity pay gap and other disparities.
- Introduced mandatory EDI eLearning for all staff.
- Introduced inclusive and compassionate leadership training, promoted by their chief executive, which includes educating colleagues on the impact of bias in recruitment.
- Reviewed their 2023 employee engagement survey and used the thematic results to support efforts to reduce their ethnicity and gender pay gap. One example of this was the establishment of an internal anti-racism steering group with oversight of the organisation's approach to addressing racial inequity and increasing accountability for a strategic and targeted approach to advancing race equity.
- Creating organisational 'Spotlight Awards' to show recognition and appreciation to staff members, with the aim of improving how staff are valued and improving retention.
- Reviewing the results and measurable impacts of their pilot 'women of colour in leadership' programme, and exploring approaches to embedding this as part of the Council's future development offer.
- Monitoring the diversity of their apprenticeship programme and using targeted communications, including publicising case studies of current apprentices, so the programme is reflective of the diversity of the council's workforce.
- Having a linked 'People Strategy' (workforce strategy) and EDI strategy, which has a significant workforce element to it. This enables specific oversight of the EDI strategy and ensures there is always an inclusive approach within the workforce strategy as well as enabling them to bridge any gaps.
- Reporting on the progress of the EDI strategy action plan to the Communities, Social Mobility and Inclusion Committee for elected members. The committee has acted as an external sense check on internal approaches to tackling disparity.
- Strengthening their internal EDI governance structure with the formation of an EDI leadership forum and working group, EDI staff forum and staff networks, all of whom contribute towards EDI actions the Council takes including the development and improvement of employment policies and practices.
- Having virtual monthly EDI conversations within the Council that focus on a new topic at each meeting. This gives colleagues a chance to share their lived experience with others through a learning lens and has helped build connections across the organisation.
Impact
The Council has seen a culture change related to EDI, resulting in more engagement, giving staff better insight into what is happening within the workforce.
The Council saw some positive marginal changes in their ethnicity pay gap in 2024. Although the mean had increased from 3.1% in 2022 to 5.6% in 2023, the median has decreased from 6.2% in 2022 to 5.8% in 2023 (Cambridgeshire County Council, 2024).
The increase in the mean pay gap could be attributed to the make-up of their senior leadership team - more action is required to improve diversity at these levels, and there are actions in their workforce strategies focused on supporting career development and inclusive recruitment practices. The median decrease could be due to higher disclosure rates. The Council's staff ethnicity disclosure rate has increased to 75.47%. in March 2024, compared to 66% in August 2023. Similarly, 54% of staff responded to the staff survey, compared to the national benchmark of 40%. This has provided a higher degree of confidence in the results, which will be used as a baseline by which to measure impact.
A rising disclosure rate is a sign that staff feel more confident to disclose their ethnicity. This could be as a result of efforts to raise awareness of the importance of EDI, through interventions such as monthly EDI conversations and through the increased leadership focus on EDI. Regardless of people's motivation to self-disclose, the Council now has a better understanding of its workforce. Similarly, a higher response rate to the staff survey indicates that staff want to, and feel comfortable enough to engage with the organisation in this way.
The Council has worked closely with their staff networks in developing the staff survey, particularly in relation to the demographic categories used. It also utilised these networks to promote the staff survey to members.
Challenges
One of the challenges for the Council is resource and funding for EDI initiatives and staff networks. The EDI team are a relatively small team but one that has been seen to have a significant impact. The organisation has sought to prioritise and protect the work in the face of increasing financial challenges for local government.
It has also been challenging to get staff to engage with the range of EDI initiatives. Although there is great buy-in at a senior level, often it is the same senior people engaging each time. Staff working in frontline services are often extremely busy with heavy workloads and do not have the time to engage, consequently the Council are not hearing about their experiences as much.
Engaging with staff and delivering consistent messaging across all teams throughout a large geographical area is difficult. It is often the case that there is a very clear message from the senior team, however, due to differences in communication styles and the engagement of individual managers, delivering unified messaging across the entire organisation can weaken the message. There is currently work underway to create consistency through improved training for managers.
It has been difficult for the Council to track tangible outcomes directly back to the EPG. Instead, they have used EPG data alongside other workforce data sets to identify and prioritise actions to support ethnic minority staff more widely. The EDI team are exploring ways to track outcomes against EDI initiatives going forward.
Learnings for the board
- Measuring pay gaps is challenging and failure to understand the underlying causes of disparity can lead to putting incorrect measures in place just to achieve the desired figures. While they are important, pay gaps only represent a single way of looking at things. It is important to take a human centred approach and listen to the experience of people that are directly affected, using this insight to create actions that will have long-term impacts.
- Having specialist resources allocated to analysing employee data can help massively. The Council has recently allocated a few members of staff from the policy and insights team to support HR with data analysis and insight. They are able to bring their skills and expertise to help examine the data in a different way, for example embedding and creating HR dashboards and embedding diversity data into reports.
- Every board member should be proactive in seeking out and listening to the experiences of their workforce. This builds awareness of lived experience and creates a greater sense of board engagement and accountability across the organisation.
- Strong internal communication between leadership and ground teams is crucial in making sure everyone is aware of any work that is underway around EDI improvement. Lastly, it is important to remember that every organisation is different, and what works for one may not work for another. The better you know and understand everyone in your own workforce, the better you will know what actions to take to ensure impactful change.
You can learn from other organisations, but you have to ask what is our organisation about, what are peoples experiences in our organisation and what might change things in our organisation?
Head of workforce policy and wellbeing