Yorkshire Water has revealed that its mean ethnic pay gap is 3% and after becoming one of the first companies in the county to publish, has encouraged others to follow suit.

The firm is committed to being one of the most transparent companies not just in the water sector but throughout the country - earlier this year it announced it was going to release the majority of its operational data by 2020.

The ethnic pay gap figure appears in the company’s first workforce diversity report which is published today. In addition to the figure for Yorkshire Water, the report also includes the pay gap for its customer service business Loop, which is 6.6%. The combined mean ethnic pay gap for the two businesses is 17.9% and the median is 27.6% due to the size populations in each organisation and the difference in salaries.

As well as the pay gap figures, the report shows how the workforce breaks down at all levels by gender and ethnicity. It also details differential recruitment and promotion performance across both these dimensions. The company has also published a limited amount of data relating to disability in the workforce.

In the report it recognises that although its data on gender is comprehensive, information on ethnicity and disability is less complete as a number of employees have chosen not to disclose.

The report mostly shows data tables without a narrative or explanation as Yorkshire Water wants to let the data speak for itself and then enter into an open dialogue with its colleagues in the business, the communities from whom its workforce is derived and with other stakeholders.

Overall workforce is "overwhwelmingly male"

The figures also show that overall, Yorkshire Water has an overwhelmingly male workforce (67%) apart from back-office functions and contact centre. The company said it will need to do more to improve gender diversity in the core service delivery and engineering functions in the business.

However, at the most senior level, the data for its executive team for 2016/17 shows 25% of the members are female and this has now improved to close to 50% with recent appointments.

The report sets out the utility’s set of diversity objectives. Yorkshire Water said part of the purpose of the consultation both in and outside of the business is to ensure that the objectives are the right ones and that they meet the expectations of colleagues and stakeholders alike.

The report says:

“Once we’ve completed that dialogue we’ll commit to a new set of objectives and then publish our progress against them on an annual basis.”

Yorkshire Water - we will work on the completeness of data in order to improve

The company is also looking at releasing its disability pay gap in the future and although Chief Executive Richard Flint is pleased that Yorkshire Water has taken a lead, admits there is still more to be done.

“We made a commitment to take a leading position on openness and transparency and this report is an important part of that commitment,” he said.

“We intend to have an open dialogue with other large employers, such as local authorities, so that we can align our efforts to improve the diversity of our workforce with theirs and ensure we are working collaboratively.

“However, we know we must not rest on our laurels. We currently have no data on any of the other protected grounds such as religion and belief, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership or pregnancy and maternity.”

Yorkshire Water said it will work on the completeness of its data in order to improve and will also launch a plan to raise awareness of the importance of self -declaration amongst its colleagues and will engage with them so that they will do so confidently and safely.

Keen to make the use of technology, Yorkshire Water will also be making use of data analytics tools which will can help it to provide some of the missing ethnic profile data.

Richard Flint added:

“Our priority is to substantially improve our data so that next year’s report shows an even more comprehensive picture. At the very least we would expect to show comprehensive disability data and also calculate our disability pay gap once the level of available data makes that a meaningful statistic. We will progressively extend that coverage, in line with improved self- declaration until we cover all the protected grounds.”