The 2022/2023 Inclusive Top 50 (IT50) Report shows a very encouraging picture of organisations not just employing a specialist in EDI but actively measuring inclusion within their workplace with 96.5% of employers surveyed declaring this.

Compiled by Inclusive Companies from data received from organisations entering its Inclusive Top 50 (IT50) List, this year’s IT50 report attracted its largest number of submissions to date, up 25% since last year. That in itself is encouraging as it shows many more employers prepared to stand up and be counted for their efforts in equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI).

The IT50 Report is based on responses that reflect over 750,000 members of the UK workforce from new junior joiners to those on executive boards. Furthermore, the organisations which took part cover a diverse range of public, private, educational, housing and charity sectors.

 Other encouraging outcomes from the IT50 Report reveal:

• More companies than ever before are employing LGBT+ people.
• 1% of organisations have internal LGBT+ networks.
• A significant increase in employee networks groups with Faith seeing the largest rise since 2021 of 11.03%.
• 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 this.

“What is evident is that, in current times of adversity, when external pressures could so easily divide a workforce, the best organisations understand the EDI agenda is more important than ever,” says Paul Sesay, CEO of Inclusive Companies and creator of the IT50 Report.

Not all good news
While there is plenty to celebrate in terms of EDI progression, alarm bells should be ringing for the lack of age networks/inclusivity and low representation of underrepresented communities including female, LGBT+ and disabled people, particularly at executive and board level.

The report shows these areas of concern:

• Only 41.38% of organisations have age related networks – 21% lower than the figure for the next highlighted protected group and a FALL of almost 4% since 2021.
• 84% of organisations have fewer than 10% of their employees from underrepresented communities – an unwelcome rise of 7.5% on 2021.
• 60% of companies report fewer than 50% female employees.
• LGBT+ representation is the least reported data at Executive Board level with 41.38% of organisations not collecting this data – a significant rise from 27.45% in 2021.
• Disability is the least reported protected characteristic across overall workforce data and 41% of all organisations did not have data for disability representation across their workforce (an increase of nearly 5% since 2021 figure).

“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 and if not, why not?” continues Paul. “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 IT50 Report HERE.