The NMC has reported rising discrimination against its black and minority staff this year in its annual report on race equality.
The report, called Workforce Race Equality Standard survey, found 11.9% of black and minority ethnic (BME) and 7.8% of white respondents experienced discrimination at work this year. This is an increase from 9.2% of BME respondents and 5.3% of white respondents in 2020.
The NMC also found in its ethnicity pay gap report, released at the same time, that its pay gap decreased from 28.7% in 2020 to 23.7% in 2021. This gap is not because of unequal pay for similar roles but due to the under-representation of BME staff in senior roles, it said.
But while only 5.2% of employees said the NMC provided equal career progression and opportunities in 2020, this significantly jumped to 35.3% in 2021.
Meanwhile, the gender pay gap report revealed the mean gap increased from 3.4% to 4.9% this year, although this is below the UK gender pay gap of 14.4%. This is because of a reduction in men working in lower-paid roles and a small increase in those more highly paid, it said.
And its first disability pay gap report revealed disabled staff are paid 3.4% more on average, although only 5.4% of colleagues declared a disability compared with a UK figure of 18.9%.
Andrea Sutcliffe, chief executive of the NMC, said the organisation is committed to creating an ‘inclusive, positive working environments’ for colleagues, and is ‘glad more of our colleagues feel confident about equal career opportunities at the NMC than they did last year’.
She added: ‘We’ve also made small progress in some areas of our pay gaps. For example, our mean ethnicity pay gap has decreased slightly. But it’s still much too big, and we’re disappointed to see our mean gender pay gap has increased.’
Ms Sutcliffe continued: ‘We know we’ve still got a long way to go to address career progression, and the issues highlighted in our pay gap reports. We’ll get there by working with our colleagues to become a role model for equality.’
The NMC said 48.7% of its staff responded to the survey, which ran from 4 to 21 May this year.
