Compass Group UK, the UK’s largest food and support services company, has published its first ethnicity pay gap report, as part of a combined gender and ethnic minority pay gap report. The negative ethnicity median pay gap of -7.9% reflects a higher representation of ethnic minorities working in locations and roles which are paid higher wages.  Its median gender pay gap has continued to reduce, from 16.6% to 12.6% - which is lower than the UK national average of 14.9%.

Compass employs approximately 45,000 people across the UK and the report covers all UK entities including Compass Group PLC UK employees. Last year Compass launched “Our Social Promise”, a commitment to support one million people from less advantaged and under-represented backgrounds. The company has set a target to be representative of society* at all levels of the organisation, from a gender, ethnicity and socio-economic perspective by 2030.

The company has put in place a roadmap to help achieve greater equality and improve representation – providing its employees with development tools and progression opportunities, offering the first rung on the ladder to many thousands of people, supporting the communities in which it works, helping the next generation and advocating fairer pay for all.

Some of the programmes which seek to improve equity and inclusion comprise of: investment in D&I programmes, development of talent and enhanced training, mentoring and apprenticeship programmes, graduate schemes and further support for career progression through its industry leading “Career Pathways”. The Group is already seeing some positive impacts from these measures and its recent employee survey indicates that the vast majority of its colleagues believe that they have equal opportunities to develop their career at Compass.

Report highlights include:

Ethnicity

• Ethnicity median pay gap is -7.9%. This reflects that a higher representation of ethnic minorities are working in locations and roles which are higher paid.

• 29% of our graduates come from minority backgrounds
• 20% of apprentices coming from ethnic minority backgrounds

Gender

• Representation of women at management levels has increased by 7% since 2019.
• The current cohort of graduates is 73% female and apprentices are over 50% female including in culinary (which historically is under-represented)
• The median gender pay gap has reduced by a quarter from 16.4% to 12.6%, which is below the national average of 14.9%. In addition, the median bonus gap has dropped by three quarters from 29.4% to 7.1%. 

Robin Mills, Managing Director, Compass Group UK & Ireland said: “Publishing our first ethnicity pay gap report is a positive first step. Transparency and accountability are essential as we seek to increase our representation among our senior management in relation to ethnicity and gender. We are really encouraged by the insights from our first set of ethnicity pay gap data and look forward to measuring our progress going forward. We are also pleased to see the progress we have made in relation to our gender pay and female representation in our senior management teams.

“We are very clear on the actions we need to take to keep increasing representation in relation to ethnicity, gender and socio-economic backgrounds at all levels of our business. We are passionate about providing opportunities for everybody and the food and services industry is ideally placed for people to have fulfilling careers, whatever their background. This report provides a good foundation for us to continue to build upon.”