Signing up to Change the Race Ratio FAQs

Who from a business needs to sign the confirmation of support letter

• Change the Race Ratio is a public commitment to increase representation on board and leadership teams.  We therefore require a member of the board (Executive or non executive) to sign and commit the business to the campaign 

Who can attend Change the Race Ratio Events

• We provide resources for Chairs, Senior Independent Directors, CEOs and convene small groups for safe space discussions to support progress and share best practice
• We provide workshops and knowledge sharing events for HR and ED&I Leaders who are responsible for the ED&I strategy for the organisation
• We also provide, and work with partners, to provide training and development opportunities for Race Network Leads or equivalent 

We report our progress to the Parker review already?

• Our campaign is the only campaign to adopt and champion the Parker Review and its targets
• Joining the campaign sends a public message to your external stakeholders including your investors that you take achieving the Parker target and board diversity seriously
• We provide updates to the Parker Review regularly on campaign and signatory progress
• We provide a peer community and access to resources to help meet your Change the Race Ratio and Parker review commitments

We don’t fall under the remit of the Parker review is the campaign for me?

• Whilst we have adopted the Parker target for commitment #1 this can be adapted to suit firms outside the remit.  We ask that such firms set their own stretching target and time horizon for their board.
• The remaining commitments are relevant for firms of all sizes and the labels of exco and exco minus one can be adapted to fit with your firm's leadership and leadership pipeline naming conventions
• Our signatories represent a true cross section of the economy in all its definitions and legal structures.  They have a shared common goal of wanting to collaborate and share best practice to drive change
• The campaign will help to support firms to be ready for the proposed ‘comply or explain’ listing rules change 

How do the representation targets work if we’re an international business?

For UK Listed / Head Quartered Companies

• The strong preference would be for this target to apply across this group irrespective of where individuals are based
• We recommend using the same cohort and definition as you applied to you Parker review target
• Where including internationally based colleagues is challenging for reasons of data collection the campaign commitments can be limited to UK-based management team

For non-UK Listed / Headquartered Companies

• For example, a UK-subsidiary of a US-listed parent company may opt to join, and set targets in respect of the UK subsidiary rather than the global firm
• Similarly where firms are structured so that they operate a clear UK-focused executive team, then organisations may opt to set targets in respect of the UK-based management team where this is more practical

Consistency and transparency is key to setting targets and reporting.

We ask that organisations should clearly disclose the approach adopted, and report progress on a consistent basis to ensure a like-for-like comparison

How would the requirement for ethnicity pay gap reporting apply for global companies

• For the campaign we would expect companies to disclose this data for UK-based employees. Companies may opt to expand this to cover additional jurisdictions / the whole group on a voluntary basis
• It is accepted that there are multiple jurisdictions where collating ethnicity data is challenging / not possible, and therefore companies will not be able to provide this data for such countries

How would the requirement for ethnicity pay gap reporting apply for SMEs

• We encourage and expect all businesses regardless of size to be collecting workforce ethnicity data
• We recognise that for smaller businesses publishing pay gaps raises challenges around anonymity. We therefore recommend that businesses with a workforce in the UK of less that 250 staff should collect ethnicity data but there is no requirement to publish externally     

How does the campaign report progress

• On an annual basis we will issue a data request to signatories, typically in the first quarter of the year
• We publish an annual report on signatory progress, sharing publicly the aggregate data and highlighting action through case studies 

Did you find the answers you were looking for?  If not please contact us on the website and we will be happy to answer your question directly