Ethnicity Pay Gap

The ethnicity pay gap shows the difference in average hourly rate of pay between White and BAME staff expressed as a percentage. Of the 243 employee records, 119 staff (49%) were declared as White, 81 (33%) declared as BAME and 43 (18%) were undisclosed.

It should be noted that some roles have had to be excluded from this analysis because either the Ordinary Pay or the Weekly Working Hours were set as 0. These roles included Bank Workers, Board Members, and staff on maternity leave and long-term sick where they were no longer entitled to Company or Statutory pay. These roles have been omitted do not form part of the overall FTE headcount of 243 employees.

Within this report the term ‘BAME” is used to describe all employees who have self-identified as any other ethnic group apart from ‘White British’ within equality monitoring at Origin.

Our Mean Ethnicity pay gap is 11.04%
 
The  mean hourly rate of pay for BAME employees was 11.04%   below the mean hourly rate for white employees, with the gap widening by 3.31% compared to the year before.  

The make-up of our workforce shows a 1% increase in colleagues from ethnic minority background since 2021 (which  was at 32%). As the population of people from ethnic minority backgrounds in London is currently around 40%, the representation within Origin was lower than the total population.

During the financial year from 1 April 2021 to 31  March 2022, there were 105 new starters of which 53% were from white backgrounds and although this was  similar to 2021 which stood at 51%, a higher proportion of senior or managerial roles were appointed to candidates who identified as white as opposed to candidates from BAME backgrounds.

• 2020 - 2021 -  30% Bame employees and 70% white employees
• 2021 - 2022 -  27% Bame employees and 73% white employees

During the year 2021-22, based on the proportion of the total number of roles available, the number of senior/managerial posts filled by white staff increased by 3% compared to the number of posts filled by BAME staff which decreased by 3%.
 
Our Median gender pay gap is 0.97%

The median pay gap which is the difference between ethnic minority staff groups median hourly wage (the middle paid ethnic minority staff member) and the white staff groups median hourly wage (the middle paid white staff member) decreased by 0.97%. This is a positive move in favour of BAME staff. 

Our pay bands

Origin has  243 employee records, 119 staff (49%) were declared as White, 81 (33%) declared as BAME and 43 (18%) were undisclosed. They are spread across the pay bands, which for our reporting are split across four quartiles: this is where all the salaries  are sorted by size and divided into equal quarters.  Origin has to publish the percentage in each quarter:
 

• The upper quartile - the highest paid 25% - 28%  BAME employees , 67% white employees  and 5% undisclosed
• The upper middle quartile – the next 25% - 37%  BAME employees , 43% white employees  and 20% undisclosed
• The lower middle quartile – the next 25% - 43%  BAME employees , 36% white employees  and 21% undisclosed
• The lower quartile -   the lowest paid 25% - 26%  BAME employees , 51% white employees  and 23% undisclosed

The number of employees are evenly split across all 4 quartiles, with 60 employees in the upper quartile and 61 in the other 3 (including the undisclosed).  There are more white employees in the upper quartile (40) than BAME employees (17) making a 57% difference. This has however, decreased by 18% from April 2021 when there was a 75% difference.   

Bonus pay

Bonus pay relates to all non-consolidated payments made in the 12 months preceding April 2022.  

Bonuses were paid to all 5 members of staff in the Sales team of which 4 had declared their ethnicity at the time and the difference between BAME employees and white employees was 34.01%.

What action are we taking on our gender pay gap?
Origin Housing will continue to focus on improving the representation of BAME employees particularly in our upper quartile and specialist positions by:

• We recognise that we need targeted strategies and, as we are doing for gender, we are focused on addressing the pay gaps from several different perspectives: recruitment, career pathways, promotion, coaching, mentoring and leadership development; as well as our culture around flexibility in part-time work and flexible working.
• Our ambition for inclusion is to develop and maintain a fair working environment which seeks to address structural inequalities and where everyone has the opportunity to progress. We believe this is vital to our future success.
• Internal mentoring and our employee staff network groups have helped to give our employees a voice across the organisation so that we can educate each other about our differences and have a say in our company policies and procedures.  Since our internal mentoring scheme launched in 2021, 74% of mentees have come from backgrounds other than White British.  We have also supported the ‘Black on Board’ initiative to encourage more staff from Black backgrounds to move into board positions.  Three people completed the training, and one has now secured a Board role.
• Our new Applicant Tracking System supports anonymised recruitment which helps reduce unconscious bias when making recruitment decisions.  This tool will help us to analyse trends on all protected characteristics data on recruitment, retention, and internal progression, thus identifying underrepresentation and focussing on making our recruitment and development practices inclusive and taking positive action, including reviewing all job advertisements and ensuring they promote diversity and inclusion. In addition, all adverts are run through a bias checking tool which identifies whether there is any bias towards any of the protected characteristics.
• To support our commitment towards attracting more diverse talent in particular at senior level, our new Talent Resourcer has begun to build relationships and share job vacancies with external Diversity groups such as, The Black Professionals Network, Black Women in Leadership Network, and the BAME Hub UK Network.
• Our Learning Needs Analysis will provide an opportunity to identify the learning and development needs and career goals of staff regardless of background, whilst taking into consideration the business objectives of the organisation. The Learning and Development Team are in the process of formulating a work plan for 2023/24 to address any gaps and improve engagement.
• Designing appropriate actions to address the pay gaps requires us to have a deeper level of understanding of the drivers, hence more detailed, accurate and up to date data is paramount. To achieve this, we will be working in collaboration with the Data team over the coming months to increase our data capture and we will be monitoring this against measurable targets to track progress.  This will help us build a diverse and inclusive workforce at all levels of the organisation in order to meet the diverse needs of our customers and communities we serve.

In April 2022 the Regulator of Social Housing reported a 20.28% mean pay gap and a 16.8% median gap. The mean pay gap at Origin is 11.04% and median pay gap is 8.35%.

All job roles are externally benchmarked for consistency and in the context of the external market ensuring that all staff are paid the rate for the job role regardless of ethnicity. Pay awards are unaffected by length of service and other factors and therefore do not have any impact pay levels.