The brand new 2022/2023 Inclusive Top 50 Report shows West Midlands Fire Service, Capgemini and Touchstone leading by example in ED&I

While leading employers show inspiration in inclusivity, alarm bells should be ringing as report reveals:

• Age networks FALL to 41% within organisations
• 60% of companies report fewer than 50% female employees
• LGBT+ representation is the least reported data at Executive Board level

West Midlands Fire Service, Capgemini and Touchstone are leading the way as the UK’s most inclusive employers, reveals the 2022/2023 Inclusive Top 50 (IT50) UK Employers Report. Placed first, second and third respectively in the IT50 list, their achievements and inspiration are published alongside a comprehensive summary of what’s good and what’s next to be addressed for equity, diversity and inclusion among UK organisations.

Now in its seventh year, the Inclusive Top 50 UK Employers 2022/2023 report is an annual benchmark on the current state of equality, diversity and inclusion (ED&I) in UK workplaces.  This year, a ‘headlines and highlights’ report is also available HERE.

Compiled by Inclusive Companies, the full report comprises data received from all submissions, not just from those organisations who were placed in the Inclusive Companies Top 50 (IT50). In fact, the 2022/2023 report attracted its largest number of submissions to date, with the data considered to reflect over 750,000 members of the UK workforce from new junior joiners right up to those on the Executive Boards of a wide variety of organisations in public, private, educational, housing and charity sectors.

While there is plenty to celebrate in terms of ED&I progression, alarm bells should be ringing for age networks/inclusivity, female representation and LGBT+ representation at executive board level.

Five ED&I areas to APPLAUD in the 2022/2023 report

• More companies than ever before are employing LGBT+ people and 93.1% have internal LGBT+ networks
• 5% of submissions revealed they don’t just employ a specialist in ED&I but are measuring inclusion within their workplace
• Despite the fact it’s not a legal requirement to report on ethnicity pay gaps, the report showed an increase of 13.93% since the 2021 report with 41.38% among participants now reporting their ethnicity pay gap
• Compared to 2021, there has been a significant increase in many employee networks groups with Faith seeing the largest rise since 2021 of 11.03%
• More organisations than ever before chose to participate in the survey an increase of 25% year-on-year

Five ED&I areas to ADDRESS in the 2022/2023 report

• Only 41.38% of organisations have age related networks which is 21% lower than the figure for the next highlighted protected group and represents a fall of almost 4% since 2021.
• Just 39.66% of organisations have more than 50% of the workforce as female, a fall of almost 10% on the 2021 figure.
• LGBT+ representation is the least reported data at Executive Board level with 41.38% of organisations not collecting this data – a significant, unwelcome rise from 27.45% in 2021.
• 84% of organisations had fewer than 10% of their employees from underrepresented communities, a rise of 7.5% on 2021.
• 41% of all organisations did not have data for disability representation across their workforce (an increase of nearly 5% since 2021 figure) making disability the least reported protected characteristic across overall workforce data.

“What is evident is that, in current times of adversity, when external pressures could so easily divide a workforce, the best organisations understand the ED&I agenda is more important than ever,” says Paul Sesay, CEO of Inclusive Companies and creator of the IT50 Report. “To move things forwards, I would ask employers to look across their workforce and tell me can they hand-on-heart say different groups of people are represented? If not, why not? 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 Top 10 inclusive employers in 2022/2023 are as follows:

(you can see the full Top 50 Employers here www.inclusivecompanies.co.uk/inclusivetop50/2022rankings)

• West Midlands Fire Service
• Capgemini
• Touchstone Support
• West Midlands Police
• Bupa
• UK Power Networks
• Royal Orthopaedic Hospitals NHS Trust
• ASOS
• Hastings Group
• Yorkshire Building Society

 “We are immensely proud of achieving first position in The Inclusive Top 50 UK Employers List 2022/23 and this recognition provides an external measure of our progress across all areas of diversity and challenges us to think differently and to constantly innovative to drive inclusion forward. The impact on our organisation has been considerable while externally we know it’s having a positive impact on attracting the diverse talent we need to thrive as a modern organisation. We have had several applicants mentioning our Inclusive Companies membership as a reason they were attracted to apply to join West Midlands Fire Service.”

Tristan Dugdale-Pointon, Diversity Inclusion Cohesion Equality Business Partner at West Midlands Fire Service.

“Everyone has a role to play in achieving our purpose and that’s why embedding diversity and inclusion into daily work is on the agenda from the Board room through to employee onboarding. We nurture, celebrate and harness the broad-ranging characteristics of our talented people and our inclusive culture to create an environment where everyone feels they belong, is valued for their contribution, and can develop, thrive and succeed at Capgemini.”

Andrea Metherell, Head of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Wellbeing, Capgemini UK.

“Being ranked as the third most inclusive employer in the UK in 2022/3 is an immense privilege and a true reflection of our brilliant workforce’s drive to make our charity, Touchstone, one of the very best places to work in the UK. As Touchstone works with diverse communities across Yorkshire, we absolutely prioritise that our workforce is inclusive, supportive, thrives and is fully representative of those communities.”

Arfan Hanif, CEO, Touchstone.