Minority ethnic employment in the Scottish social housing sector: evidence scoping review

Executive Summary

Background

This report presents a scoping review of the literature and empirical evidence on minority ethnic people’s employment in the Scottish social housing sector. The 2016 ‘Race Equality Framework for Scotland’ and a ‘Fairer Scotland for All: Race Equality Action Plan 2017—2021’ (REAP) set out a series of actions to address racial inequality for minority ethnic communities in Scotland and address the different barriers they face (Scottish Government 2016a; 2017a). The intersection of employment and housing is a key area for the successful implementation of these actions, in line with the focus in Scottish Government’s ‘Housing to 2040’ (Scottish Government, 2021d); a specific action is included in its route map to explore minority representation in the housing industry, and social housing providers are significant actors in this effort (Scottish Government, 2021e). The ‘Tackling race inequality in employment: statement’ highlighted systemic issues, including institutional racism, perpetuating race inequality in recruitment practices and in workplaces, and the need to improve practices such as data gathering and analysis to monitor progress against measurable outcomes (Scottish Government 2021b). ‘A Fairer Scotland for All: An Anti-Racist Employment Strategy’ published in response (Scottish Government 2022a) provides practical advice and guidance to support and encourage employers to improve their policies, practices, data collection and usage, and workplace culture to support delivery of the aim for Scotland to become a leading Fair Work nation by 2025. In 2023, the Scottish Government published ‘Anti-Racism in Scotland: Progress Review’ (Scottish Government 2023a) to report on the commitments contained in the REAP and the ongoing strategic work within to better address racial inequality.

In 2021, as part of this ongoing work, the Scottish Government published an evidence review ‘Housing Needs of Minority Ethnic Groups’ exploring the needs and experiences of minority ethnic people in Scotland (Scottish Government 2021c). This work is intended as a companion to that review.

Aims

This evidence scoping review aims to provide an overview of the evidence base on the minority ethnic employment in the Scottish social rented sector; identify gaps in the evidence; suggests areas where further research could be useful. Two research questions informed the development of this review:

1. How many people from minority ethnic backgrounds are employed in the housing sector in Scotland, and to what extent are they employed in jobs that are appropriate to their qualifications and experience?

2. What barriers do minority ethnic groups face to employment in the social housing sector in Scotland?

To address these questions, the review aims to explore: levels of labour engagement in the social housing sector; potential discrimination against minority ethnic groups in social housing sector roles; and the degree to which minority ethnic individuals’ skills, qualifications, and experiences appropriately match their jobs in the context of their educational attainment. The review was also interested in whether literature existed that could give insight into what influence minority ethnic groups employed in the Scottish housing sector may have on the provision of housing and housing services for minority ethnic groups.

The evidence base

This review focuses on literature published in English between 2016-2023 and covers the whole of the UK, because there is a lack of evidence from academic research undertaken in Scotland. The available literature is predominantly made up of dated qualitative academic studies and more recent reports produced by industry bodies. Due to the absence of robust quantitative data sources for data on minority ethnic employment in different areas of housing, most studies are qualitative in that they analyse policy outcomes or conduct fieldwork via interviews and focus groups, though some studies reviewed adopted a mixed-methods approach. Data gathered in 2018/9 by the Scottish Housing Regulator is the most recently available source which facilitated quantification of rates of minority ethnic employment in the social housing sector; the review also considers grey literature produced by housing and construction bodies because these sources enabled inclusion of some further insight quantifying minority ethnic people’s employment.

Findings

Finding 1: There is a lack of recent research and a lack of research which is specific to minority ethnic employment in the social housing sector in Scotland.

Academic research on the topic appeared to slow in the mid-2000s and there is very limited research in the Scottish context; in light of these two caveats, the evidence presented should be treated with some caution, particularly in light of the different contexts, including devolved administration and legislation, different regional concentrations of minority ethnic people in the population and historical differences in the development of housing associations. There is however some indication of renewed interest in the topic, pointed to by the inclusion of a small number of sources from the 2020s onwards

Finding 2: Evidence at UK level seems to suggest that up until 10+ years ago there were specific issues concerning the adoption and enactment of equality as a core value in the social housing sector and although there has been progress in more recent years there is more to do.

What was highlighted at the time of these studies was the dearth of formal structures to safeguard the fair treatment of minority ethnic employees. Since the time these studies were produced, much has changed. However, structural barriers persist and not everyone has access to the same opportunities; people from minority ethnic groups are often stereotyped as having low levels of literacy or educational attainment which can impact on the opportunities available to them. Case studies reviewed in this report highlighted that lack of qualifications is not likely to be a contributing factor. Low retention rates and the scarce number of minority ethnic managers may be partly explained by limitations of organisational cultures which do not embed equality as a practice, the lack of support networks and role modelling, the predominance of discretionary management styles and the lack of minority ethnic peer support within organisations. Despite this, more recent grey literature and academic reviews highlight improvements in the ways organisations in the social housing sector shape organisational cultures, design services and employment practices and collect data to monitor and report on addressing racialised inequalities.

Finding 3: There is some equalities data available but no evidence of lived experience.

There are significant gaps and limitations in the evidence. One of the aims of this review was to quantify the number of people from minority ethnic backgrounds in the social housing sector work force, and examine whether the jobs and grades they carry out match their skills and experience. Whilst it has been possible to provide some figures for minority ethnic staff in Scottish RSLs and LAs to 2019, the type of data available was not suitable to address the question of whether minority ethnic staff were working in roles appropriate to their level of education and skill. The data that exists has limitations in terms of its completeness so should not be treated as anything more than potentially indicative, however it was found that there is an indication that a lower proportion of people from minority ethnic backgrounds may be employed in the social housing sector than average within the population. Further, changes to how data is collected and reported via annual returns on the Scottish Social Housing Charter mean there is no source of continuous time series data against which to assess progress. Authors of more recent sources cited in this review have pointed to the need for more contemporary academic research, and further work to embed systematic collection and publication of staff ethnicity data.

Although there is some evidence of change and good practice, the literature identified pervasive and pernicious barriers for minority ethnic employees. There is a dearth of research based on large sample sizes and quantitative evidence to assess the way equality of opportunity has developed (or stayed the same) in the social housing sector in recent years. Evidence suggests there is still discomfort about talking about race in the workplace, and employers need to be better equipped for, and have more confidence to, monitor and address the issue of race at work and understand its impact. Until and unless robust data can be collected and analysed, and contemporary academic studies are produced which research minority ethnic people’s lived experiences of employment in the Scottish social housing sector, gaps in understanding will remain.