Report: The Value of Diversity

This report analyses the relationship between workplace diversity and the financial performance of UK firms, as well as the cost of discrimination to the UK economy. This Involve report prepared by the Centre for Economic and Business Research (CEBR) focuses on ethnic, gender and sexual orientation diversity.

Key findings

• The economic cost of workplace discrimination to the UK economy is £127 billion: £123bn due to gender discrimination; £2.6bn due to discrimination against ethnic minorities; and £2bn due to discrimination as a result of sexual orientation.
• The UK’s most diverse workplaces (across gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation) are 12 percentage points more likely to financially outperform their industry average than the least diverse firms.
• Firms with the most developed diversity policy are 15 percentage points more likely to financially outperform those with less focus on diversity.
• White people earn on average between £67 and £209 more per week compared to similar qualified individuals of a different ethnic background.
• The unadjusted gender wage gap multiplied by the number of female employees yields an estimate of £136 billion of lost labour income. Accounting for full time and part time work patterns, reduces the amount of lost labour income to £50 billion.