PwC’s bid to improve diversity is not woke. It’s shrewd business

Culture warriors will hate what PwC is doing. I can almost hear them, as I write this, fulminating about the “woke accountancy” firm on the back of the measures it is taking to improve diversity.

Let me explain: The business already voluntarily reports its ethnicity pay gap along with the mandatory gender pay gap reporting that is required of all employers above a certain size. But this year it has also added disability pay gap reporting and has provided a number based on its employees’ socioeconomic background too.

We’re doomed, I tell you, doomed. Before too long you won’t be able to get in the office cafe for all the bally wheelchairs and there’ll be guide dogs sleeping in the corridors. Britain will soon be on its knees, swamped by a tide of political correctness, if this catches on.

Please.

It isn’t just that what the firm is doing is morally on the money – the pursuit of equal opportunities is described as ‘woke’ only by miserable reactionaries and rent-a-gob provocateurs – it’s smart business.

But before we get into that, let’s look at the numbers from across the piste.

The firm’s gender pay gap is still too high at 10.1 per cent, although it’s down from last year’s 11.6 per cent and the improvement is, obviously, welcome.

It gets better with ethnicity. The pay gap has turned negative here with the final number coming in at minus 0.3 per cent, compared with 3.5 per cent last year.

Now it should be said that there is no room for complacency, but it is proof that pay gap reporting can work and might offer an example of how to improve for other businesses to follow.

When it comes to disability there is a lot more work to do. Only 4 per cent of the firm’s workforce defines itself as such, against an estimated 12 per cent nationally.

The figure is complicated by people’s unwillingness to declare their disabilities, which, given the difficulties disabled people can face in the workplace and the prejudice they experience, is understandable.

Still, that’s too low. And the pay gap – 16.8 per cent – is far too high.

The same is true when socio-economic background is taken into account. There the gap is 12.1 per cent. So the posh kids still have it better. You only need to look at the poor governance Britain is enduring to see how much of a problem can be created when people from a certain class are allowed to fail upwards.

PwC says the data should enable it to improve its record and that it is working on plans to do so. Based on my experience with disability, I think it could stand to do more on that front but I’m willing to wait and see whether the announcements it has made, such as running training and improving awareness of adjustments that can be made, bear fruit in next year’s figures.

So to why addressing these issues is not woke but simply good business.

Pay gaps are created because certain groups find it harder to get hired to senior roles – it’s illegal to discriminate on various grounds when it comes to how much you pay people in the same role.

Unconscious biases, historical practice, a system weighted against certain groups all contribute to them.

This hurts the bottom line. Talented candidates who miss out on promotion may go elsewhere. If the senior ranks all look the same, the chances are that they will all think the same, or at least similarly. Firms can therefore miss out on perspective, skills and life experience.

At a time when talent is hard to find, and with labour shortages becoming an ever more pressing problem across the economy, it also makes sense to enhance the size of the pool of candidates you can select from at every level.

This makes clear that PwC’s moves are not so much motivated by wokeness as they are by self-interest, albeit enlightened self-interest. In the long term, enhancing its diversity at every level will improve the quality of the business and boost performance. There is empirical evidence to back this up too.

The culture warriors can chunter if they want. They probably will. But in business it’s the bottom line that counts. If PwC can further narrow its pay gaps and open up to a wider pool of candidates, the latter will surely improve.