green park leadership survey

R U N N I N G H E A D

THE GREEN PARK LEADERSHIP 10,000

A review of diversity amongst The UK’s most influential business leaders

THE GREEN PARK LEADERSHIP 10,000

At Green Park we are committed to helping to build better businesses. One part of the secret is to maximise the energy and creativity that comes with diversity of all kinds. The right mix of talent within top teams is vital if firms want to achieve a ‘diversity dividend’.

With this in mind, we have created Green Park Diversity Analytics, a research and advisory body that takes a rigorous approach to the best data available, and couples it with a unique methodology to offer fresh insights into the field of diversity and inclusion.

The Green Park Leadership 10,000 is Green Park’s first published study. It is a ‘root and branch’ analysis of the diversity of the 10,000 most senior employees operating within the FTSE 100, by gender, ethnicity and cultural background. It marks the beginning of a continuing stream of information. We will follow it with quarterly updates on executive diversity in the FTSE 100, as well as regular in-depth analyses of specific sectors and types of job.

It goes further – in scope, in depth, and in specificity – than any other review of its type. In scope, because it looks at the ethnicity and cultural backgrounds of FTSE 100 senior executives as well as their gender. In depth, because it does not stop at board-level diversity but describes the Top 100 leaders – effectively, the ‘pipeline’ – in each of Britain’s top 100 companies. In specificity, because it compares the performance of different industrial sectors on diversity, creating a series of league tables.

Our analysis yields some astonishing results, all of which we hope will help you to judge your company’s performance against the best of the rest.

Raj Tulsiani CEO, Green Park Group

Trevor Phillips OBE Chair, Green Park Diversity Analytics.

© Green Park Group, 2014

All rights reserved. Unauthorised reproduction of any part of this publication is prohibited.

London office: 15 Portland Place, London, W1B 1PT, UK

www.green-parl.co.uk

THE GREEN PARK LEADERSHIP 10,000A review of diversity amongst The UK’s most influential business leaders

CONTENTS

ExEcuTIvE SummARy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

InTrODUcTIOn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

LEADERSHIP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

The top 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

The top 20 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

comment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

THE TALENT PIPELINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

The top 100 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

comment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

SEcTOr AnALySIS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Gender diversity by sector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Ethno-cultural diversity by sector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 comment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

cOncLUSIOnS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The Green Park Leadership 10,000 maps the contours of gender and ethno-cultural diversity across the 10,000 most senior employees operating within the FTSE 100.

We make a distinction between the three layers of leadership: The Top 3 (chair, cEO and cFO); the Top 20 (Board and main executive directors); and the Top 100 (senior executives reporting to the cEO and board-level directors).

Our analysis falls into three main strands: Leadership; the Talent Pipeline; and Sector specifics.

Leadership

• Overall the top leadership of the FTSE 100 remains white and male, with just a dozen women amongst the 289 people occupying the Top 3 positions: chair, cEO or cFO. Just ten of the Top 3 posts are held by ethnic minority leaders.

• The next layer – the Top 20 – is more diverse, with about a fifth of positions occupied by women; but these are heavily skewed towards non-executive posts – about one in four nEDs are women, compared with about one in ten female executive directors.

• Strikingly, 53 companies show no minority presence at all amongst their Top 20 leaders. Discounting non-executive directors, we find 65 companies without an ethnic or cultural minority presence. In effect, two out of every three FTSE 100 companies have an all-white executive leadership.

• Women occupy about one in four of the Top 100 positions in FTSE 100 companies; leaders of minority origin account for just under one in seventeen.

The Talent Pipeline

• The talent pipeline shows that there are enough female and minority candidates available for the top jobs. Each FTSE 100 firm would, on average, need to replace just two men with two women to reach an overall 30 per cent target amongst FTSE 100 Top 20 employees.

• Each company would need to replace just one departing white executive with an appointable non-white executive to achieve an overall Top 20 target of 10 per cent minority participation.

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T H E G R E E N P A R K L E A D E R S H I P 1 0 , 0 0 0

• However, this could take a long time at current turnover rates; companies would need to take positive steps to reach those targets within a four-year cycle. To meet the 30 per cent female target within this time frame, assuming that no women left their posts, half of all new hirings would need to be women. Assuming no minorities left their posts, one fifth would have to be minority hirings to meet the 10 per cent non-white target.

• To meet the 30 per cent female target for full-time executive directors within four years would be tough in the case of gender, requiring two female hirings for every one man recruited to fill a vacancy in this category.

• conversely, to meet, in four years, a 10 per cent target for non-white full-time executive directors it would require only one minority hiring for every ten vacancies created.

Sector Analysis

• Gender and ethno-cultural diversity vary substantially by industrial sector and by level of seniority.

• Broadly speaking, sectors that are successful at promoting women to senior positions are not doing the same for minorities – and vice versa.

• At Top 20 level, the most gender diverse sectors are Utilities and Health; at Top 100 level, Media and Technology shine.

• The most ethno-culturally diverse sectors at Top 20 level are natural resources and Industrials; at the Top 100 level the best performers are Telecoms and Banking/Finance.

• The equivalent back markers for gender diversity are construction and natural resources at the Top 20 level; and Engineering and construction at Top 100 level.

• For ethno-cultural diversity, the least diverse sectors are Utilities and Engineering at Top 20 level; and Engineering and Transport at Top 100 level.

• Strikingly, Professional and Support Services appear to be relatively non-diverse on every measure.

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INTRODUCTION

Who really leads British business?

The iconic FTSE 100 is widely regarded as the best bellwether for the health of British business. The leaders of its companies are the single most influential group of people in the UK’s economy – individually critical to each business; and collectively important to the country as a whole.

That is why we analyse their decisions so carefully. It is why we argue so passionately about their remuneration and incentives; these talented individuals hold great responsibility and are entitled to great rewards – but only if they deliver great results. Their backgrounds matter too; we want to know that the people who hold our prosperity in their hands are properly qualified.

In the past decade there has been a growing consensus that our business elite is simply too narrow in its outlook, too prone to a herd mentality and just not switched on enough to the 21st century world.

At Green Park we know from experience that the top companies are alive to the need to broaden the mix of those who guide their fortunes. That is why we believe that comprehensive information about the diversity of our top business leaders matters. And we aren’t the only ones interested in diversity.

recent changes to the companies Act and other government regulations require firms to report on their boardroom diversity, particularly gender. Forthcoming legislation from the EU will extend these requirements to other characteristics. And in many other countries – for example, Australia, the USA, and canada where diversity information is assumed to be available as a matter of course – companies benefit from being able to benchmark themselves against their competitors.

Of course, true diversity in a company lies in the range of opinion, experience, education and outlook amongst its people – what we call acquired diversity. These qualities are hard enough to measure in individuals, let alone to analyse in a group. But we do know that a mix of inherent identities – gender, ethnicity, culture, religion, age and sexual orientation – is a great pointer to the extent of any organisation’s underlying acquired diversity.

That is why we came up with the idea of The Green Park Leadership 10,000 – the 100 most senior leaders in each of Britain’s top 100 companies. Based on publicly available information we have examined the backgrounds of over 8,000 FTSE 100 senior leaders.

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The Scope of the Review

A small number of excellent reports on diversity are already published. However these tend to focus on only one dimension, gender; and for the most part, they describe only the board-level or top executive layer. The Green Park Leadership (GPL) 10,000 takes diversity measurement on to a new level.

Its special features are:

• It is larger than any survey so far constructed for this purpose;

• It is three-dimensional, offering breakdowns of business leadership by gender, ethnicity and cultural background;

• It goes deeper, taking in the three top layers of leadership;

• It is sectorally specific; the size of our database allows us to compare different kinds of business in all three dimensions; and

• It is a current measure; the GPL 10,000 is based on the picture as of now, and it will track developments. We intend to publish updates every quarter.

In our presentation of the GPL 10,000 we make a distinction between three layers of leadership. The structure of companies obviously varies, but broadly speaking we categorise our 10,000 leaders as:

1 The Top 3: chair, cEO and cFO

2 The Top 20: Board and main executive directors, including Operating or Management Board members

3 The Top 100: Senior managers, reporting to cEO and board-level directors

Where appropriate, we make the distinction in the Top 20 between non-executive and executive board members.

In most of our reporting we use conventionally significant categories: male and female; broad ethnic identification; and religious affiliations.

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I N T R O D U C T I O N

Methodology

We have examined the backgrounds of 8,218 individuals in total.

We have examined 289 records for our Top 3 analysis, and 1,680 for our Top 20. As the Top 20 covers Global and Operating Boards, this figure of 1,680 includes the 289 chairmen, cEOs and cFOs from our Top 3. We have examined a further 6,538 individual records to achieve the Top 100 analysis. At the Top 100 level we have included only UK-based employees.

not all companies have 100 senior executives so the total number of files assembled is in fact fewer than 10,000. We are confident, however, that this database represents the cohort effectively, and that its size dramatically reduces the margin of error inevitable in any such exercise.

Our raw data is derived from several sources, many of which are publicly available, including annual reports, London Stock Exchange listing information, company websites and good old-fashioned research.

The analysis by gender and ethno-cultural background is derived from unique software created by Professor richard Webber, best known as the lead developer of two of the most commonly used consumer classification systems in the world, Mosaic and Acorn.

This software employs a database of 1.2 billion individual records globally. It uses 2.5 million family names and 0.8 million personal names to generate algorithms that can associate individual names with their gender, ethnic or cultural identity.

We have tested this against several samples where the ethnic and/or gender composition is known through other methods and achieved accuracy in excess of 95 per cent. For example, against a file of 40 million British adults, the software we use produces a population breakdown directly comparable to that of the 2011 census.

narrative analysis is produced by Green Park Diversity Analytics, chaired by former chair of the Equality and Human rights commission, Trevor Phillips.

Terminology

In analysing the ethno-cultural diversity of the GPL 10,000, we have looked at statistics for over 200 different classifications. To make the picture meaningful, and to approximate to common usage, we have combined these into five categories – three ethnic categories (White, Black, chinese/Other Asian) and two cultural/religious (Muslim and Hindu/Sikh) categories.

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For ease of reference, this is how our categories correspond to those used by the Office for national Statistics (OnS)1

OUr cATEGOry OnS cATEGOry

White White

Black Black/African/caribbean/Black British

Muslim Pakistani/Bangladeshi/Arab

Hindu/Sikh Indian

chinese/Other Asian chinese/Any other Asian

We are confident that these are, in practice, the best correlates for the identity groups concerned.

In a few cases where a group is identified both by national and cultural signifiers, we have chosen what we take to be the category that most strongly predicts outcomes. For example, Indian Muslims are categorised in the broad group ‘Muslim’.

People of mixed heritage tend to be counted according to their male parental origin, though the combination of personal and family name usually offers a strong indication of the most appropriate category.

The UK Population

In 2011 the majority of the UK population described themselves as belonging to the ‘White’ ethnic group (87 per cent, or 55 million).

The remaining 13 per cent (8.1 million) belonged to a minority ethnic group, representing one person in eight of the UK population.

The Asian/Asian British (including chinese) ethnic group accounted for 7 per cent of the UK population (4.4. million people). The Black ethnic group for a further 3 per cent. The remaining 3 per cent was composed of a variety of smaller groups.

Our database classifications – for both the overall and the working population – are consistent with those derived from the census.

1 http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/measuring-equality/equality/ethnic-nat-identity-religion/ethnic-group/index.html#1

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LEADERSHIP

The Top 3

The Green Park Leadership Top 3 looks at the composition of the group comprising the three most influential leaders in each of the FTSE 100 companies: chairman, chief Executive Officer and chief Financial Officer, or their nearest equivalents. We have been able to examine 289 individual records.

Gender Diversity

Looking at the gender composition of the group:

• All but 1 chair are male.

• All but 3 cEO/chief Executives are male.

• All but 6 cFO/Finance Directors are male.

These figures are broadly consistent with other surveys, for example that published by Boardwatch.2

Ethno-cultural Diversity

Looking at the ethno-cultural composition of the group:

• All but 3 chairs are white.

• All but 5 cEO/chief Executives are white.

• All but 2 cFO/Finance Directors are white.

Viewed from this perspective, the top leadership of the FTSE 100 remains almost exclusively male and white.

What are the prospects for change? For the most part, the successors to the Top 3 will come from their immediate reports, the rest of the Top 20 – so we turn next to the composition of that group.

2 http://www.boardsforum.co.uk/pdf/Press_release_January_2014.pdf

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The Top 20

The Green Park Leadership Top 20 constitutes the Boards and top management of the FTSE 100 companies. These include main Board members, the most senior executive directors (typically referred to as the c-Suite), and Operating Board members. In some companies these would be referred to as Board, Tier-1 and Tier-2.

We have been able to examine 1,680 records of individuals working at this level.

Gender Diversity

Overall, of the Top 20 employees in each FTSE 100 firm, one in five is female. no company’s published data shows an all-male Top 20 leadership. However, the distribution of the female leadership is strongly skewed towards non-executive posts.

Figure 1: Gender Diversity Amongst Top 20 Leaders 3

GENDER TOTAL NED ExEcUTIVE DIrEcTOr OPErATInG BOArD PERcENTAGE

Male 1229 522 281 426 80.2%

Female 304 172 33 99 19.8%

Grand Total 15333 694 314 525 100%

Figure 2: Gender Diversity Amongst Top 20 Leaders by Function

GENDER TOTAL NED ExEcUTIVE DIrEcTOr OPErATInG BOArD

Male 80.2% 75.2% 89.5% 81.5%

Female 19.8% 24.8% 10.5% 18.5%

Figure 2 shows that whilst the aim of 30 per cent women directors may well be within reach, the preponderance of female non-executive directors means that this target is unlikely to represent a similar distribution of influence. nEDs, whilst important to governance, play a relatively indirect role in the leadership of major public companies, like those in the FTSE 100.

In practice, roughly one in every four nEDs is female, compared with just one in ten executive directors.

3 In a small proportion of cases, it was not possible to establish gender with absolute certainty. Therefore the total in the table is lower than the total number of 1,680 board members profiled.

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L E A D E R S H I P

Put another way, of the 304 Top 20 women in the GPL 10,000, 56.6 per cent are nEDs, 32.6 per cent are Operating Board members, but only 10.9 per cent are executive directors. The equivalent figures for the 1,229 men are 42.5 per cent, 34.6 per cent, and 22.9 per cent, respectively. This is shown below.

Figure 1: Gender Diversity Amongst Top 20 Leaders by Function


Overall, some one in twenty of the Top 20 Leaders comes are non-white. This compares to a presence of a total 13 per cent ethnic minority in the UK; and a foreign-born proportion also of 13 per cent (7.5 million).4

4 http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/census/2011-census-analysis/immigration-patterns-and-characteristics-of-non-uk-born-population-groups-in-england-and-wales/non-uk-born-census-populations-1951---2011---full-infographic.html

Top 20 leaders: Women

n non-Executive Director (56.6%)

n Executive Director (10.9%)

n Operating Board (32.6%)

Top 20 leaders: Men

n non-Executive Director (42.5%)

n Executive Director (22.9%)

n Operating Board (34.6%)

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Figure 4: Ethno-cultural Diversity Amongst Top 20 Leaders5 6 7 8

BAcKGrOUnD TOTAL NEDExEcuTIvE DIrEcTOr

OPErATInG BOArD OrIGIn %

White 1593 741 321 531 94.8%

Black 22 125 2 8 1.3%

Muslim6 19 5 8 6 1.1%

Hindu + Sikh7 29 9 6 14 1.7%

chinese + Other Asian 16 11 0 5 1.0%

Grand Total 1679 778 337 564 99.9%8

Overall, the representation of minorities amongst the Top 20 Leaders in the FTSE 100 lags well behind the minority presence in the population as a whole, despite the fact that many of the individuals represented here are drawn from a global workforce, and that at this level we have included leaders not based in the UK.

The most striking finding in our analysis is that 53 companies show no minority presence at all in their Top 20 leaders. More surprising still is that if we set aside the nEDs and consider only executive directors and operating boards, i.e. full-time top executives, we find 65 companies without the presence of an ethno-cultural minority. In effect, two out of every three companies are all-white in their executive leadership.

Given the small numbers of non-white executives at this level, differences between ethno-cultural groups at the various levels inside the Top 20 are relatively insignificant.

Figure 5: Ethno-cultural Diversity Amongst Top 20 Leaders by Function

BAcKGrOUnD TOTAL NEDExEcuTIvE DIrEcTOr

OPErATInG BOArD OrIGIn %

White 94.6% 95.2% 95.3% 94.0% 94.8%

Black 1.3% 1.5% 0.6% 1.4% 1.3%

Muslim 1.1% 0.6% 2.4% 1.1% 1.1%

Hindu + Sikh 1.7% 1.2% 1.8% 2.5% 1.7%

chinese + Other Asian 1.0% 1.4% 0% 0.9% 1.0%

Grand Total 1679 778 337 565 99.9%

5 This figure represents 11 individuals6 There is a possible objection that a Muslim origin and an African origin may overlap. We believe that a further margin

for error is African and European origins. Our belief is that the fact that the anticipated error is expected on both ends (e.g. over and under-calculating Muslim origin numbers), and is reduced to a small percentage, means it will not skew the narrative or broad composition of the numbers in any way.

7 Hindu and Sikh are taken together as few Sikhs were found in our analysis8 There was one individual whose origin could not be processed by our system.

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L E A D E R S H I P

However, these figures do suggest some questions for further investigation.

On the face of it there is little difference in ethno-cultural participation in each of the functions. But detailed examination reveals two telling features:

• First, broadly speaking, non-white leaders are less likely to be executive directors than to be either nEDS or Operating Board members, with the exception of Muslim leaders. We believe that the Muslim exception may reflect the high number of Muslims in the leadership of natural resources companies (see sectoral analysis below).

• Second, amongst non-white nEDs, only three are chairs. This reinforces the overall picture of a low level of representation with a low level of influence.

We can, even with the relatively low numbers of non-white leaders in the Top 20, discern some interesting features about this group. Figure 6 below shows the status of Top 20 non-whites according to different ethno-cultural groups. The total cohort is 88 people, so this represents a reasonable sample.

Figure 6: Ethno-cultural Diversity Amongst Top 20 Leaders by Group and Function

WHITE BLAcK muSLIm HInDU/SIKH cHInESE/OTHEr ASIAn

NED 46.5% 54.5% 26.3% 31.0% 68.8%

Executive Director 20.2% 9.1% 42.1% 20.7% 0%

Operating Board 33.3% 36.4% 31.2% 48.3% 31.3%

These figures suggest that there are might be significant differences in the profiles of different groups; for example, chinese and other Asian background individuals are entirely absent from the executive director layer, whilst Muslims are more likely to end up in that group than as nEDs. In future studies we may wish to explore this more.

Comment

Our gender and ethno-cultural analyses show that our top companies are well off the pace when it comes to the diversity of their top leadership. A strong case can be made that this simply reflects the legacy of a less-enlightened past, and that in the gender case at least, the prospects for the future are far brighter.

However, those prospects can be gauged to some extent by examining the composition of those most likely to become Top 20 leaders in the near future – the so-called ‘pipeline’.

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The orthodox expectation would be that fairer hiring practices at senior levels will increase demand, and that this should be a powerful driver for change in the numbers.

But an equally significant factor is the availability – the supply – of female and minority leaders. This is at least as good an indicator of the likelihood of future changes in the diversity of the Top 20, all other things being equal.

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THE TALENT PIPELINE

So how much pressure is there in the ‘pipeline’? Are there more female and minority senior leaders waiting to compete for Top 20 places in the near future?

We have therefore extended our analysis to consider the composition of the Top 100 leaders in the FTSE 100 (or in smaller companies, the most senior reports to the Top 20).

The Top 100

This analysis looks at the executive layer below the operating board. At this layer we have included only UK-based employees. This is partly because of the very different circumstances from which these employees might be drawn in other jurisdictions; and partly because many of the functions at this level are not easily comparable internationally.

The employees in our Top 100 rank from director level to c-suite employees. Typically their titles include Senior Vice President, Executive Vice President, Managing Director and Heads of Departments, Products, and regions.

We have examined a total of 6,538 additional individual records to achieve the Top 100 analysis. For clarity of exposition, we look at those records in isolation from the Top 3 and Top 20.

Gender Diversity

Figure 7: Gender Diversity Amongst Top 100 Leaders9

mALE FEMALE TOTAL

number 4727 1480 62079

Percentage 76.2% 23.8% 100.0%

This table shows that whilst the frequency of female Top 100 leaders is slightly greater than across the Top 20 (approaching one in four compared with one in five), it cannot be said to represent a major widening of the available pool.

9 6207 is smaller than our sample size of 6,538 because there were some individuals whose gender could not be processed by our system.

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Figure 8: Ethno-cultural Diversity Amongst Top 100 Leaders

WHITE nOn-WHITE

Grand Total 93.8% 6.2%

compared with our overall figure of 5.1 per cent non-white representation in the Top 20, this 6.2 per cent figure for the Top 100 does not hold out much promise of improvement at the higher levels in the near future.

One additional factor that might influence the prospects of change would be the distribution of diversity across the FTSE 100 – some firms might be extremely diversity-rich, for example, thus providing the likelihood of changing the Top 20 quite rapidly. So what is the range amongst the companies we examined?

In fact the range of non-white participation across firms varies between 0 and 33 per cent. This includes one outlier, Standard chartered, with a 33 per cent minority presence – possibly attributable to its extensive global spread and its concentration of operations in Asia and the Middle East.10 Otherwise the non-white participation range is just 0–15 per cent.

A further variation might be revealed by comparing the profiles of different ethno-cultural groups; Figure 9 suggests, there are some differences in the degree of presence of different groups, albeit within a small number.

Figure 9: Ethno-cultural Diversity Amongst Top 100 Leaders by group (excl. Top 3 and Top 20)

GrAnD TOTAL BLAcK muSLIm HInDU + SIKH cHInESE + OTHEr ASIAn

Grand Total 6538 0.3% 2.2% 3.1% 0.6%

In contrast to the range we see in the Top 20 (between 1.0 and 1.5 per cent), the larger Top 100 leadership group shows a ten-fold span in participation ranging from the African group (0.3 per cent) to the Hindu/Sikh groups (3.1 per cent).

Comment

Our Top 100 analysis above shows that whilst both women and minorities are still some way from achieving parity, there are some positive signs to be seen from consideration of the pipeline, particularly in relation to gender balance.

10 Employees may work their way up the system outside the UK and then move to British HQ.

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T H E T A L E N T P I P E L I N E

There are relatively more women in the Top 20 than in the Top 3; and more in the Top 100 than in the Top 20. Amongst ethno-cultural minorities, the pipeline looks less promising, with very small differences between the Top 3, Top 20 and Top 100.

But the prospects for the pace of change are only moderately encouraging – particularly when it comes to executive leadership and the Top 20 level. Taking gender progression, it is possible to work out that in the case of the Top 20, assuming that no woman leaves her post, the next 207 vacancies that arise would have to be filled by women to reach a target participation rate of 30 per cent. That is, on average, each firm would have to fill their next two vacancies with women – on the face of it, not such a challenging target.

However, assuming that merit applies, it is unrealistic to suppose that such a scenario would play out in practice. So what proportion of vacancies would have to be filled by women to achieve the target in a reasonable period of time – say, four years? Based on an annual turnover rate of one in ten (the chartered Management Institute estimates a figure of 9.2 per cent11), we calculate that even if only half of all men leaving were replaced by women, the 30 per cent target would be achieved within four years.

Similar calculations for an ethno-cultural participation rate of 10 per cent within the Top 20 suggest that it would take just 80 replacements of departing white executives by minorities to hit the target (less than one for each company in the FTSE 100). If just one in five vacancies in the Top 20 were filled by ethno-cultural minorities, the 10 per cent target would be reached be reached within four years.

However, if we ignore the non-executive directors and apply these calculations to the cohort of just under 340 full-time executive directors the picture looks much tougher, at least in relation to gender diversity. reaching a 30 per cent executive target would involve appointing women to every one of the next 80 or so available vacancies; based on a 10 per cent turnover rate, to achieve the 30 per cent outcome over a four year period would mean appointing two women for each man appointed.

On the other hand, it looks much easier to get to 10 per cent minority participation of ethno-cultural minorities at the Top 20 level. Assuming that none of the current non-whites at this level leave their jobs, to double their current total of just over 5 per cent would mean adding another 16 non-whites at executive director level – or, the appointment of a non-white executive to one in every ten vacancies arising during the next four years.

But the test of whether such a scenario is viable depends entirely on whether there are candidates available to be appointed. This varies dramatically by industrial sector, with their very different histories and cultures.

We therefore now consider the picture in each industrial sector in some detail.

11 http://www.mbsportal.bl.uk/taster/subjareas/hrmemplyrelat/cmi/147639salarysurvey13.pdf

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SECTOR ANALYSIS

The large number of files available to us allows a uniquely granular analysis of the leadership of major British companies. not only can we, for the first time, create a picture of the ethno-cultural diversity of our top companies; we can also compare firms in different sectors on both gender and ethno-cultural background.

For this analysis, we have used a conventional division of industrial sectors based on the sectors used daily by The Times newspaper. Given the small number women and ethno-cultural leaders in the Top 3, we have profiled only the Top 20 and the Top 100 in each sector.

We examined a total of 8,218 records. The number in each sector varies according to the size of and the number of companies in each sector. However, no sector showed fewer than 35 individual records and only two fewer than 100.

Gender Diversity By Sector

Across all sectors, the average female participation in the Top 20 was a little under one in five. Figure 10 reveals a substantial spread of female participation between sectors, ranging from the 24.7 per cent in Utilities to 14.3 per cent in the construction and Property sector.

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S E C T O R A N A L Y S I S

Figure 10: Gender Diversity in the Leadership Top 20 by Industrial Sector12

SEcTOr (rAnK)GRAND TOTAL FEMALE mALE FEMALE % RANK

GRAND TOTAL 168012 304 1229 19.8

Banking and Finance 321 63 224 22.0 6

construction and Property 128 17 102 14.3 15

consumer Goods 162 31 119 20.7 8

Engineering 102 17 82 17.2 13

Health 100 23 71 24.5 2

Industrials 21 5 16 23.8 3

Leisure 88 16 62 20.5 9

media 67 14 50 21.9 7

natural resources 251 32 189 14.5 14

Professional and Support Services 147 27 108 20.0 10

retailing 118 24 83 22.4 5

Technology 33 6 27 18.2 11=

Telecoms 33 7 23 23.3 4

Transport 32 4 18 18.2 11=

Utilities 77 18 55 24.7 1

The figure for construction is undoubtedly the consequence of the traditional male dominance in the sector. It is important to note however, that Telecoms, ranked fourth, has a similarly engineering-based heritage.

Professional and Support Services appears surprisingly low in the ranking even accounting for the fact that this group includes outsourcing firms, some of which are involved in heavily male-skewed occupations, such as maintenance and security.

Analysis of the Leadership Top 100 by gender reveals a very different ranking.

12 This grand total is greater than the number of female + males. This is because there are individuals whose gender could not be determined by our system(s).

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Figure 11: Gender Diversity in the Leadership Top 100 by Industrial Sector13

SEcTOrGRAND TOTAL FEMALE mALE FEMALE % RANK

GRAND TOTAL 653813 1480 4727 23.8

Banking and Finance 1241 268 904 22.9 9

construction and Property 293 38 245 13.4 14

consumer Goods 703 209 455 31.5 3=

Engineering 431 46 367 11.1 15

Health 500 129 349 27.0 6

Industrials 49 9 40 18.4 11

Leisure 360 106 231 31.5 3=

media 500 163 309 34.5 1

natural resources 643 109 494 18.1 12

Professional and Support Services 716 134 551 19.6 10

retailing 450 128 297 30.1 5

Technology 35 10 21 32.3 2

Telecoms 200 31 163 16.0 13

Transport 117 29 84 25.7 7

Utilities 300 71 217 24.7 8

A comparison of the rankings in figures 10 and 11 suggests that the barriers to female advancement to the top tiers are much higher in some sectors than in others.

Media companies for example, are richer in gender diversity amongst the Top 100 than any other sector, yet they rank only 7th amongst the Top 20. The Technology, Leisure and consumer Goods sectors show a similar pattern.

By contrast, the Telecoms sector appears to be relatively less hostile to female advancement; the Top 100 shows a participation rate of 16 per cent (rank 13th), whilst the Top 20 has a rate of 23.3 per cent (rank 4th).

13 Again, the grand total is greater than the number of female + males because there are individuals whose gender could not be determined by our system(s).

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Figure 12: Gender Diversity Top 100 and Top 20 Rankings by Sector

SEcTOr TOP 100 rAnKInG TOP 20 rAnKInG

media 1 7

Technology 2 11

consumer Goods 3 8

Leisure 3 9

retailing 5 5

Health 6 2

Transport 7 12

Utilities 8 1

Banking and Finance 9 6

Professional and Support Services 10 10

Industrials 11 3

natural resources 12 14

Telecoms 13 4

construction and Property 14 15

Engineering 15 13

There is no obviously consistent relationship between the two rankings.

However, it may be significant that the top five companies in the Top 100 rankings tend to be largely consumer-facing businesses, whilst those in the lowest five tend to sell their products and services to other businesses or public sector purchasers. So one explanation might be that companies unconsciously place some emphasis on their Top 100 leaders being closer in profile to the ultimate customer than their Top 20 bosses; since individual consumers are far more likely to be female than managers in other businesses, it follows that there would be a significant difference in corporate type between the most and least gender diverse companies.

Ethno-cultural Diversity by Sector

Across all sectors the average non-white participation rate in the Top 20 is around one in twenty. The range of participation lies between 0-10.4 per cent.

Given the size of the samples, this analysis compares only white executives with non-white as a group. More granular study, perhaps using longitudinal series to achieve larger samples, and separating different ethnic groups, may reveal more in future.

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Figure 13: Ethno-cultural Diversity in the Leadership Top 20 by Industrial Sector

SEcTOr WHITE % nOn-WHITE % RANK

GRAND TOTAL 94.9 5.1% -

Banking and Finance 93.5 6.5 4

construction and Property 98.4 1.6 13

consumer Goods 93.8 6.2 5

Engineering 99.0 1.0 14

Health 92.0 8.0 3

Industrials 90.5 9.5 2

Leisure 97.7 2.3 11

media 95.5 4.5 7

natural resources 89.6 10.4 1

Professional and Support Services 96.6 3.4 8

retailing 98.3 1.7 12

Technology 97.0 3.0 10

Telecoms 93.9 6.1 6

Transport 96.9 3.1 9

Utilities 100.0 0.0 15

This table shows two striking outliers:

• natural resources companies, with an average of about one in ten of their Top 20 leaders from non-white backgrounds reflect the geography of their operations – principally Africa and the Middle East.

• By contrast, the participation of non-white leaders in the Top 20s of the Utilities companies is zero.

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Figure 14: Ethno-cultural Diversity in the Leadership Top 100 by Industrial Sector

SEcTOr WHITE % nOn-WHITE % RANK

GRAND TOTAL 93.8 6.2 -

Banking and Finance 91.0 9.0 2

construction and Property 96.2 3.8 12

consumer Goods 92.9 7.1 5

Engineering 97.2 2.8 14

Health 91.8 8.2 4

Industrials 93.9 6.1 8

Leisure 94.4 5.6 9

media 93.4 6.6 6

natural resources 93.5 6.5 7

Professional and Support Services 96.6 3.4 13

retailing 95.1 4.9 10

Technology 91.4 8.6 3

Telecoms 90.5 9.5 1

Transport 97.4 2.6 15

Utilities 96.0 4.0 11

At the Top 100 level, the most ethno-culturally diverse sectors are Banking and Finance, and Telecoms; the least diverse, Transport and Engineering. With future studies we may investigate these sectors in further depth.

As in the case of gender, Professional and Support Services figure poorly in both tables.

A comparison of the Top 20 and Top 100 rankings reveals no strong relationship between the two. In the case of the Top 100, there appears to be a slight tilt towards hi-tech business sectors, but the numbers are probably too small to establish more than a weak relationship.

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Figure 15: Ethno-cultural Diversity Top 100 and Top 20 Rankings by Sector

SEcTOr TOP 100 rAnKInG TOP 20 rAnKInG

Telecoms 1 6

Banking and Finance 2 4

Technology 3 10

Health 4 3

consumer Goods 5 5

media 6 7

natural resources 7 1

Industrials 8 2

Leisure 9 11

retailing 10 12

Utilities 11 15

construction and Property 12 13

Professional and Support Services 13 8

Engineering 14 14

Transport 15 9

Comment

Overall, the tables showing gender and ethno-cultural diversity by sector show a wide spread of gender and ethnic diversity across sectors, with only two strong patterns evident:

• First, companies with a history of largely male workforces unsurprisingly tend to be male-dominated at the Top 100 level, though some are slightly more gender-rich at Top 20 level, e.g. Utilities and Telecoms.

• Second, companies with a consumer-facing business tend to be more gender diverse in their Top 100; but this does not necessarily translate into more gender-diverse Top 20s. By contrast, companies whose principal customers are other businesses tend to be male-dominated at both Top 20 and Top 100 levels.

Perhaps the most significant finding is that hardly any sector has been successful in diversifying in both the gender and ethno-cultural dimensions. If we consider the Top 100 rankings in each case (a more reliable indicator than the Top 20), the tables at Figure 11 and Figure 14 show that amongst their top fives they have only one sector in common, Technology. Amongst their bottom fives they share only Engineering and construction and Property.

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In short, sectors that are successful recruiting and promoting women are not, by and large successful in doing the same for minorities; and vice versa. Whether this reflects history, lack of effort or some structural factor we cannot tell from this study. We intend to examine this intriguing finding in more detail in due course.

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CONCLUSIONS

The analysis of over 8,000 individuals’ backgrounds yields a rich source of insight into the composition of the UK’s most influential business leaders. As we repeat and refresh the analysis over time, it will no doubt reveal new and intriguing patterns.

The comparison of the Top 20 and Top 100 leaders shows that there is much room for optimism about the availability of talent, and suggests that the widely-canvassed targets of 30 per cent for women and 10 per cent for minorities at the top levels should be achievable – but that they won’t be reached the next few years without positive effort.

Our sectoral analysis shows, for the first time, a complex picture, in which the diversity of our business leadership is strongly influenced by the type of business, and the level of seniority. This implies that in some sectors progression is far more difficult than in others – and the difference isn’t always obvious, such as when we compare the likelihood of female progression in the Media sector with that in Telecoms.

This kind of granular analysis, however, will help individual companies to focus on the real problems they face, as opposed to the presumed difficulties. Whilst the analysis does allow us to rank individual firms, we have chosen not to identify any in this report.

It will be possible for companies to compare themselves to the overall FTSE 100 averages and to their sector averages if they take the trouble to collect their own data; but as many companies have discovered, this is an expensive, time-consuming and intrusive business using the traditional methods. We are, of course, able to make our information available to companies who would like to develop their own strategies for improvement.

We expect, over the coming months to publish further iterations of this study, as well as more detailed studies of specific sectors and functions.

At Green Park Diversity Analytics, we believe that more diverse businesses will be stronger and more sustainable businesses. To improve our performance the more we know about where we are now and how we got here, the better. It is in the interests of everyone – shareholders, managers, employees and customers – to ensure that we do all we can to use the kind of insights we offer in this analysis of the GPL 10,000 to build those more diverse enterprises.

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