The move is a natural next step for the London-headquartered UK firm, which has set its gender and ethnicity representation targets in its annual report for a number of years.PwC was also one of the first large companies to publish its gender pay gaps voluntarily before mandatory reporting came into force earlier this year.Kevin Ellis, chairman and senior partner at PwC, said: “We’re hoping that by reporting our BAME pay and bonus gaps we can shine the spotlight on ethnicity in the workplace and encourage organisations to take action, just as gender pay gap reporting has done for highlighting the gender imbalance we have at the top levels of organisations.“We need to start looking beyond the narrow lens of gender, otherwise true workplace diversity won’t be achieved.“While progress has been made, many barriers still exist in today’s businesses which means people aren’t able to reach their full potential. The more we understand what these barriers are and why they exist, the quicker we’ll be able to work towards creating truly inclusive organisations.”

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Read more about workforce diversity:

• Much of financial sector 'failing on gender diversity'
• Lack of ethnic diversity in boardrooms will hinder trade deals
• True diversity means considering background, says recruiter
• Trust lacking in gender pay audits to close gaps: survey

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Taking the initiative on BAME pay gap reporting

Using the same methodology the government requires for the gender pay gap, PwC calculated its BAME pay and bonus gaps as 12.8% and 35.4% respectively.According to PwC’s analysis, both figures are driven by there being more non-BAME staff in senior higher-paid roles and more BAME staff in junior administrative roles.Mr Ellis commented: “While our analysis shows that we pay our BAME and non-BAME employees equally for doing equivalent jobs, it does reveal that we have an imbalance at the senior levels of our business.“Our priority is to do all we can to retain our junior BAME talent and improve rates of progression to senior management levels. We’re aiming to achieve this through stronger accountability across our business to deliver our gender and ethnicity targets, monitoring our pipelines on a more regular basis and making sure that all of our people can benefit from the most stretching of client engagements.“We are also talking to our BAME employees to understand their sense of working at PwC to see if there are any barriers we can address.”

Building more diverse talent pipelines internationally

Last year, PwC’s global review noted 36% of the multinational business’s long-term international assignees were women – above the average of between 20-25% cited in various studies.For 2017, social mobility data for PwC’s most recent UK graduate intake shows the numbers of recruits from more diverse backgrounds “is improving.” Four in ten (39%) are first generation graduates, 74% attended state school, 14% came from homes eligible for income support and 10% were eligible for free school meals.“Encouraging social mobility and promoting diversity are vital for the future success of the firm,” said Kevin Ellis. The more transparent we are with our diversity and social mobility data, the more we hold ourselves accountable to achieving real change towards our goal of being a truly diverse organisation.”

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