March 8, 2022
Wellbeing, skills and diversity data absent from majority of FTSE 100 firms’ annual reports

- Inclusion/make-up of the workforce: While 93 percent of companies provide evidence of investment in inclusion and diversity, only one in five (22 percent) FTSE 100 employers reported the ethnic breakdown of their workforce, up from just 10 percent in 2019. Nine companies disclosed their ethnicity pay gap, up from three in 2019. Just 6 percent of firms provide information on the cost of their contingent, non-permanent workforce.
- Skills and training: Almost all companies (97 percent) mention investment in skills or training, but only a few provided concrete evidence of this. Only 37 percent reported their number of apprenticeships and internships, 35 percent disclosed hours of training, and 16 percent disclosed the cost of training. Only 11 percent provided data on their internal hire rates, an important indicator of how well companies train and develop staff.
- Reward: Overall, there is a lack of reporting on pay and reward beyond gender and ethnicity pay gap reporting. Only 15 percent of employers discussed their pension policy in the people section of their annual report, despite pensions being a key part of the employment offering.
- Wellbeing: Only 13 percent of annual reports discussed mental wellbeing in relation to health and safety or risk assessments. This suggests that mental health and wellbeing is still not treated as seriously as physical wellbeing, and its link to stress, absenteeism, productivity, as well as the importance of supportive workplace cultures, is not widely understood.