Ethnicity and the ethnicity pay gap

Addressing disparities

While we’ve made strides, Black representation remains low at two percent across our US and UK workforce – reflective of UK professional services yet below the broader US and UK working population. We recognise the need to strengthen our recruitment and retention efforts for Black talent.

Diversifying leadership

Our partner population now includes 10 percent minority ethnic representation, up from seven percent in 2021. This includes eight percent Asian, one percent Black, and one percent US Hispanic representation. We are focused on building a strong pipeline to enhance future minority ethnic leadership.

Supporting high-potential talent

Inclusive recruitment

Our new skills-based assessment framework and technical tests, introduced in 2024, ensure a consistent, inclusive, and bias-free process that evaluates talent based on capability and merit.

Onboarding for success

We’ve tailored our onboarding process to ensure we meet the needs of minority ethnic employees, creating a more supportive integration experience. We now provide the right information to our people at the relevant time, to support their integration into our firm, whilst also catering for the varied needs of our diverse workforce.

Mentoring interventions

Launched in 2024, the Minority Ethnic Mentoring Programme provides visibility into career opportunities and connects junior and mid-level minority ethnic colleagues with senior sponsors, helping them to build deeper relationships and networks in the firm, develop their personal brand, seek out new work opportunities, and advance their careers.

Being more effective through targeted initiatives

Data-driven interventions

Our diversity dashboard introduced in 2023 continues to help us to monitor recruitment, attrition, project allocation, performance, and progression, allowing targeted interventions throughout the year where we identify acute need.

Promoting cross-cultural awareness

Reverse mentoring

Our relaunched PA Reverse Mentoring Programme (PARM) connected over 100 people in 2024. The programme is now aligned to our career framework and development goals while at the same time allowing senior leaders to gain insights from junior colleagues.

Conversations that matter

We’ve delivered new learning workshops in 2024 aimed at shaping and shifting the way we think and behave. These ‘Big Conversations’ take the form of conversations and storytelling on meaningful topics such as race, ethnicity, and lived experiences and offer our people the opportunity to practice inclusive behaviours in a safe space.

Community building

Our RISE (Racial Inclusion & Social Equity) Network celebrates Black, Asian, and minority ethnic cultures, fosters inclusion, and celebrates the benefits of ethnic diversity. Within the network are a number of thriving faith communities, which allow our people to connect with others with shared identities and provide a forum for our people to learn more about religion and belief. Over 2024, RISE and the faith communities have delivered over 40 events for people at PA.

Building cultural knowledge

Our RISE Network has built a Knowledge Bank, a dynamic library of lived experience, stories, written articles, and video content focused on background, culture, and heritage. The library is available to all people at PA to broaden their cross-cultural awareness on a range of topics and identities.

*Collecting diversity data
Self-identification on our HR system is voluntary, with 75 percent of our US and UK employees (70 percent in the UK and 96 percent in the US) currently sharing ethnicity data to enhance demographic reporting and inform our initiatives.

The ethnicity pay gap is the measure of the difference in average pay between colleagues that have declared themselves as being from a minority ethnic background versus being majority White. We report based on self-declaration rates. Currently 70 percent of our UK population have declared their ethnicity.

When looking at individual ethnicities, we’ve seen a decrease in both the mean and median ethnicity pay gap for those from Asian, Mixed, or dual heritage or Other ethnic groups. The exception is a modest mean increase in the mean pay gap for those from Black backgrounds, which is contrasted to a small fall in the median pay gap.

Pay gap by ethnicity

These are measured as average pay between those identifying as part of a particular ethnic group in comparison to majority White.

In 2024, 95 percent or above of each ethnic group received a bonus, with near even rates between majority White and minority ethnic people overall.

Percentage of people receiving a bonus broken down by ethnicity

We attribute these changes to the impact of our work on race and ethnicity in recent years. Our junior minority ethnic representation remains strong, and has been for a number of years. We are now seeing many of those progressing into mid-level ranks, with a two percent increase in representation in these roles (which are higher paid) between 2023 and 2024. Our Black pay gap negative increase is an inadvertent short-term impact of us skewing representation towards more junior ranks, versus lower levels of representation in both mid-level and senior ranks. To correct for this, we need to double down on our efforts to ensure that Black employees progress through our organisation at a representative and equitable rate. 

Within our data there remains signs of disparities between ethnic groups – highlighting the fact that delivering race equity within workplaces remains nuanced and complex. Our pay gap is significantly smaller for those from Asian backgrounds when compared to those from Black, mixed ethnic backgrounds or other ethnic groups. Looking at minority ethnic representation at all levels of seniority, people from Asian backgrounds make up 40 percent of our minority ethnic population. Furthermore, at more senior levels, this representation disparity is more pronounced at 80 percent.

Breakdown of our mean ethnicity pay gap by role

While I’m encouraged to see progress, there is more we need to do to reduce our ethnicity pay gap. We need to focus our efforts on developing talent from within our organisation towards our senior level (and therefore highest paid) ranks, while also ensuring we strive for more ethnically diverse hiring.

We also need to continue to ensure we provide equality of opportunity and bias-free, meritocratic systems within our organisation that allow the full breadth of ethnic diversity and people from all backgrounds to thrive at PA.

The median gap calculation

The gender pay gap shows the difference in the average hourly pay between all men and women in the organisation, expressed relative to male earnings. The gender pay gap is different from equal pay, which deals with pay differences between men and women who do the same jobs, or work of equal value.

The ethnicity pay gap is the measure of the difference in average pay between colleagues that have declared themselves as being from a minority ethnic background versus being majority White.

We already have equal pay across PA. We conduct equal pay audits annually, benchmarking the salaries of those who do the same jobs or work of equal value, and analysing results for bias before correcting any inconsistencies.

We use similar calculation methods to calculate our mean and median ethnicity pay gaps.

We confirm we calculated our gender pay gap in accordance with The Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017.

The Office for Equality and Opportunity (OEO) advises organisations to report on pay gap data using information employees have provided for payroll purposes. This is a binary field (male or female). We are committed to respecting how an employee identifies in terms of their gender. We follow current OEO guidance on pay gap reporting in cases where an individual identifies as non-binary (not identifying as either male or female). This allows for employers to omit non-binary individuals from gender pay gap calculations.