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

4. The importance of tackling minority ethnic inequalities in employment

Despite legislation setting out non-discriminatory practice, UK survey data consistently shows differences in labour market activity and outcomes between white and ethnic minority groups and a sustained ethnic penalty in earnings for some ethnic minority groups (Shankley and Finney 2020). The most recently published Annual Population Survey results from 2023 showed the employment rate for the minority ethnic population aged 16 to 64 was estimated at 62.0 per cent. This represents a gap in the employment rate between minority ethnic and white people aged 16 to 64 years of 13.8 percentage points. Differences between the employment experiences and positions of non-white groups can also be substantial and nuanced (Shankley and Finney 2020).

4.1 Recommendations to address racial inequalities in the workplace

The most recently available large scale review of the position of ethnic minority groups in the labour market is the McGregor-Smith review (2017) commissioned by the UK Government. It highlighted the continued disadvantage of minority ethnic groups seen across measurements including activity, employment, self-employment and earnings.

Having highlighted the significant challenges ethnic minority groups continue to face in the labour market and in workplaces, the McGregor-Smith review recommended 26 improvements to address inequalities. These included: publicly publishing data for all listed companies and businesses on employees race and pay band; providing free unconscious bias training; producing a governmental guide on how to talk about race in the workplace; challenging school and university selection bias; transparency on career pathways with induction for new employees on the career ladder; pay and reward guidelines and how promotions are awarded; senior managers making their job history available internally to all employees to explain how success has been achieved; and reverse mentoring in which senior managers and board members learn from individuals from diverse backgrounds to better understand their specific challenges and the potential for positive impacts of diversity (McGregor-Smith Review 2017). Some of these recommendations mirror the findings on the barriers to minority ethnic employment in the housing sector detailed in the research presented later in this review.

As part of delivering against the Scottish Government’s Anti-Racist Employment strategy the first stage of an anti-racism workplace training framework is in development, with the final framework due for completion by the end of 2025. The framework will be designed to enable employers to assess their training needs, develop their own learning pathways and access good quality anti-racism training for all levels of their organisation. Guidance detailing how to apply positive action under the Equality Act 2010 and Public Sector Equality Duty is currently in development. Due to be completed by the end of 2024, the guidance is intended to encourage employers to make greater use of this measure as a means to improve the representation of ethnic minorities in the workplace.

4.2 Measuring change

Business in the Community (BITC) produce a Race At Work survey in partnership with YouGov, to examine the progress being made across the UK employer landscape against the recommendations of the McGregor-Smith Review (BITC 2015; 2018; 2021). Each wave is based on YouGov panel data which is weighted to be representative of UK employees to allow tracking of attitudes and experiences of white and BAME staff over time. In the 2021 wave, 1,509 of responses within the total sample of 5,181 related to Scotland and further work is being undertaken by the research team to enable nuanced analysis by location and sector. In addition to the YouGov component, BITC supplement this by gathering evidence through an additional survey distributed as an open public link which receives 17-18,000 responses in each wave.

All three waves of the survey found that the majority of people in UK workplaces were not comfortable talking about race at work. There was little development in the number of people comfortable talking about race in the workplace between 2015 (37%) and 2018 (38%) and the reports noted that whilst UK workplaces are more comfortable talking about age and gender, employers needed to develop more confidence discussing race at work and aim to better understand how it has an impact (BITC 2015; 2018). Minority ethnic employees were also found to be less likely than white employees to feel that their colleagues were comfortable with talking about race at work. The 2021 wave showed some improvement in reported comfort with talking about race at 41% (BITC 2021), and the 2021 wave also found a shift in employees reporting their employers are helping them to talk about race, increasing from just 22% in 2018 to 33% in 2021. Ethnic minority employees’ confidence in line managers was also found to increase between 2018 and 2021, however mentorship was found to be decreasing and in 2021 29% of Black and 27% of Asian employees still reported witnessing or experiencing bullying or harassment from their managers, evidencing a mixed picture of progress. The 2021 wave also found a reduction in mentoring schemes and fewer manager reported a performance objective to promote equality and diversity at work. This led the report authors to call for embedding these objectives by formally linking them to performance rewards and improving practice around capturing and publicising ethnicity data to meaningfully track progress against targets (BITC 2021).

4.3 The importance of capturing and publishing equalities data

Discussion of capturing and reporting data is prominent within other recent UK and Scotland level literature, including reviews and publications of guidance, which suggests increased awareness around embedding practices to drive transparency and accountability through improving data quality and publication of equalities monitoring results (McGregor-Smith Review 2017; EHRC 2018; Menezes et al 2023). In 2023, the Scottish Government published Scotland’s Equality Evidence Strategy 2023-2025 which sets out their approach to improving and strengthening Scotland’s equality evidence base.

Researchers at the Centre for Collaborative Housing Evidence (CaCHE) recently undertook a review of the policy approach to race equality across the housing sector as a whole in England, Scotland and Wales (Robinson et al 2022). Their approach involved desk based research to identify, collate and analyse publicly available information and evidence, complemented by 20 semi-structured interviews with policy and practice stakeholders and a review of the historical evidence base of research, analysis, evaluation and good practice on race equality and housing from the 1970s to the 2000s. They found a lack of attention to ethnic inequalities in housing within contemporary research and analysis, a shortage of data to facilitate robust quantitative analysis at different geographical scales and of different ethnic groups, and lack of systematic monitoring of performance on race equality. The authors note that the Scottish Government recognises these deficits in the 2021 Race equality: immediate priorities plan and acknowedge that they make it difficult to assess progress in mainstreaming race equality in housing service provision and tackling inequalities across the housing sector as a whole (Scottish Government 2021f). One action the CaCHE study suggests is that a more explicit commitment to performance monitoring and evaluation, including publishing this information, needs to be made as part of an equality-informed regulatory regime (Robinson et al 2022). The importance of the SHR monitoring, assessing and reporting compliance with the Equality Act 2010 and Public Sector Equality Duty through developed processes for data collection, use and sharing has been emphasized recently by other authors (Menezes et al 2023).

In 2021, the Scottish Housing Regulator (SHR), Scottish Federation of Housing Associations (SFHA), Glasgow and West of Scotland Forum of Housing Associations and the Association of Local Authority Chief Housing Officers (ALACHO) jointly published national guidance to support social landlords with equality data collection indicating increased focus on this priority within the Scottish social housing sector (SFHA 2021; updated April 2022).