According to the most recent EHRC report "data deficit" hindering career progression of ethnic minorities and disabled people. The EHRC suggests/argues that :
It should be working with the government and other organisations to provide guidance for employers on collecting, using and reporting on employee ethnicity and disability.
by April 2020, employers with over 250 employees should be legally obliged to report on ethnicity and disability in recruitment, retention and progression and analyse their findings in an action plan.
A similar model to mandatory gender pay gap reporting should be used to tackle unfairness for ethnic minority and disabled staff in the workplace.
Over half of the employers reported that data may not have been collected as to do so would be intrusive or onerous. Feedback from candidates and clients we work with is that they often use ‘prefer not to say’ options when provided as they do not want the data to be used in any form of decision making. We suggest that employers work with their workforce to ascertain the best way of ensuring and agreeing on a solution to the monitoring and reporting of these areas that make people feel as comfortable as possible. For some companies this has been done on exit interviews, pulse surveys and focus groups – this does not however, it does not solve the conundrum of how we monitor it on a national level.