NHF releases ethnicity pay gap data for the first time

The National Housing Federation (NHF) has for the first time released data on its ethnicity pay gap, as part of its drive to improve Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) across the organisation.

As of April 2021, the organisation had an ethnicity pay gap of 2%. Unlike with the gender pay gap, there is currently no legislative requirement for organisations to release their ethnicity pay gap. This makes it difficult to understand how the NHF compares to other organisations nationally, but this data will form the basis upon which the NHF will strive to make improvements.

This data is released alongside our annual gender pay gap data which this year is 13%. This is a deterioration from the last time the NHF published its pay gap in 2019, when the organisation had a 0.4% pay gap in favour of women. It is a slightly smaller gap than the projected national gender pay gap, which according to the latest government data is 15.5%.

The NHF is much smaller than the organisations with 250-plus employees that are required to publish their pay data. This means that small changes in personnel can have a major impact on its pay gap. However, it is of course disappointing to see a change in the wrong direction and the NHF will be consciously taking action to close this gap again as swiftly as possible.

The NHF reports also highlights that while 18% of its staff are from Black, Asian and minority ethnic groups - which is a higher proportion than the UK population - it falls below its own target of 30%, which better reflects the diversity of London where the majority of employees are based.

The reports’ release is coinciding with work the NHF is doing on an ‘EDI data tool’, which allows its members to measure Equality, Diversity and Inclusion within their own workforces, and compare them to the populations they operate in.