Fujitsu’s commitment to diversity and equality: Owning our ethnicity pay gap and doing something about it

Published on August 23, 2021 in Responsible Business

We are Fujitsu. We have a strong Japanese heritage and are a very purpose-led, people-centric business. Our purpose – a key part of ‘The Fujitsu Way’ – is to make the world more sustainable by building trust in society through innovation.

We know that we can only truly achieve this purpose by bringing together diverse perspectives and ideas, that reflect society. We need to ensure we attract, retain, and progress the careers of diverse talent and provide an environment where all of our people can be completely themselves at work.

Whilst we are proud of our progress in diversity and inclusion, we recognise that we can, and must always, strive to improve and achieve true diversity, equality, and inclusion for everyone. We want to be transparent and clear about our goals; this is why we have taken the decision to publish our UK ethnicity pay gap for the first time next month.

Unlike reporting of the gender pay gap, which is a legal obligation for all UK organisations with more than 250 employees, ethnicity pay reporting is not a legal requirement. Whilst we know we don’t have to do this, we want to publish our ethnicity pay information to be transparent, open, and upfront about where we are today and where we need to take action to ensure people of all ethnicities can thrive.

Taking time to hear and act

Publishing the ethnicity pay gap is part of a series of measures informed by the views of people across Fujitsu. Last year, our UK Cultural Diversity Network held a series of roundtables to hear and understand the experience and perspectives of people of all ethnicities.

These sessions, all attended by our senior leaders – who were there to listen and learn – proved to be a powerful catalyst for change. We found that we need to do more to support career progression for people of diverse ethnicities, we need more visible senior leadership role models, and we need to ensure that our culture is truly inclusive of all ethnicities.

As a result, working with our networks and people across the business and guided by our commitment to Business in the Community’s (BITC) Race at Work Charter, we formulated our Ethnic Diversity Action Plan.

As part of this Action Plan, it’s important to us to be transparent with our people and set a benchmark against which we will measure progress. The ethnicity pay gap gives us that benchmark.

How the ethnicity pay gap is calculated

Very simply, the ethnicity pay pap shows the difference between the average pay for our people in Fujitsu UK who have told us they are of an ethnic minority background, and those who have told us they are of a white background.

It is worth pointing out that this may be confused with equal pay, but these two measures look at different things. In the same way that a gender pay gap is not the same as unequal pay between men and women, the ethnicity pay gap is not the same as unequal pay between different ethnicities for doing the same work.

The ethnicity pay gap measures the difference between average earnings, irrespective of people’s role or seniority.

We’ve created this short video to help explain what the gap is and the difference with equal pay.

Closing our ‘seniority gap’ and setting out our four-part action plan

Our data today demonstrates that our ethnicity pay gap is driven by a seniority gap.

Very simply, this means that we have a greater proportion of colleagues from an ethnic background occupying more junior roles. This is compared to a greater proportion of colleagues from a white background occupying more senior roles. Ensuring there is more ethnic representation at more senior levels will be key to eradicating the pay gap.

Underpinning this commitment to ensure people of all ethnicities can succeed, we are focussing our efforts on four key areas:

Education – supporting our people to gain an understanding of the lived experiences of people of all ethnicities and how we each have a responsibility to create an inclusive workplace.
Leadership – achieving more ethnic diversity in leadership and educating all leaders.
Culture – creating a culture that both nurtures and thrives on ethnic diversity.
Measurement – measuring our progress and publishing data to hold ourselves accountable.

This Action Plan is dynamic. We will continue to develop it as we learn what works and what needs to be improved. We will also continue to gain feedback from our people, Cultural Diversity Network and Ethnicity Steering Group, to ensure we continue to incorporate and act on our employees’ experiences.

We know that today we don’t have all the answers, but we are committing to keeping our momentum until the pay gap is eradicated and we have an even more diverse and inclusive organisation.

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