PwC pays black, Asian and ethnic minority workers 13% less than white employees
Black, Asian and ethnic minority workers (BAME) at professional services giant PwC in the UK earn about 13% less than their white colleagues, the firm’s annual report reveals.
The company explained that while BAME workers statistically earned less, it could in part be explained by the fact that the majority of them were employed in junior and admin roles.
In a report, PwC said that it had published the figures in an effort to “shine the spotlight on ethnicity in the workplace and encourage organisations to take action”.
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Kevin Ellis, chairman of the group, which has offices across the world and employs almost 18,000 in the UK, said: “We need to start looking beyond the narrow lense of gender, otherwise true workplace diversity won’t be achieved.”
The issue of pay gaps has been a hot political potato over the summer with the BBC coming under fire after it was revealed star male presenters were earning well over their female colleagues.
From next April, firms employing more than 250 people will have to reveal the mean and median gender pay gap in hourly pay as well as the mean and median bonus gap.
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They will also have to publish the proportion of males and females receiving a bonus and the proportion of males and females in each pay quartile.
PwC revealed its BAME pay gap is currently 12.8% and the BAME bonus gap is 35.4%.
“The more transparent we are with our diversity and social mobility data, the more we hold ourselves accountable to achieving real change,” added Ellis.
He stressed that BAME and non-BAME employees were paid the same for doing equivalent jobs.
“Our priority is to do all we can to retain our junior BAME talent and improve rates of progression to senior management levels,” he said.
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“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.”
The firm posted record revenues for the year of £3.6bn but also said Brexit had dented profits which had seen senior partners take a pay cut.
Profits dipped 1% to £822m, contributing to an 8% fall in profits distributed to each of the 953 equity partners at the firm. This brought the average profit per partner to £652,000 – down an average of £52,000 per partner.
