PwC has published a black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) pay gap of 12.8% in figures released 18 September.
The BAME pay gap increased to 35.4% for bonuses. PwC said that the gap in pay was “entirely driven” by the fact that more BAME individuals were employed in junior administrative roles at the firm, while more non-BAME individuals were in senior roles.
The firm said it had released the figures as part of a “drive towards becoming a fully diverse and inclusive organisation”.
PwC’s chairman and senior partner Kevin Ellis, 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 lense 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.”
In June, PwC reported a gender pay gap of 13.7%, and a mean bonus gap of 37.5%. Research previously conducted by the firm predicted that a gender pay gap would remain in the UK until 2041.
Ellis added: “The progress made on gender shows the importance of organisations openly discussing the barriers and challenges, and learning from each other on how we can all create truly inclusive organisations.
“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.”
Earlier this month, it was announced that PwC and law firm Eversheds would audit the BBC’s pay policies – with a focus on the gender pay gap – following controversy surrounding the salaries of its top-earning stars, which revealed huge pay disparities.