To achieve our aims, it is important that we understand the composition of our Board and Committees, our Leadership Group, the wider workforce and our customers by the key protected characteristics, comparing this data with the profile of the population living in the communities we serve. We use this data at local level, enabling our colleagues to plan for their regional activities and their neighbourhood plans.

We remain committed to being open and transparent by publishing this data and the charts on the following pages show this comparison by sex, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, age and religion or belief.

Key Equality and Diversity Metrics

This is what the profile of our colleagues and governance community currently looks like.

Key

Gender

Compared to the wider population in the areas in which we operate, Riverside has a higher proportion of females in our wider workforce and customer base. The composition of our Board and Committees and Leadership Group broadly reflects the wider population.

Sexual orientation

A high proportion of colleagues have shared their data, and compared to the wider population, our Leadership Group and wider workforce have a higher proportion of colleagues identifying as lesbian, gay or bisexual. Our governance community and customer base have a lower level of representation than the wider population.

Ethnicity

Compared to the wider population, we have a slightly higher proportion of colleagues from ethnically diverse communities across our wider workforce. Our governance community and Leadership Group are less ethnically diverse, as is our customer base, although this varies significantly geographically and by specific ethnic origin. For instance we have a higher proportion of Black/African Caribbean/Black British customers than the wider population we serve.

Age

Our wider workforce is generally well spread across the age bands, with lower representation in the youngest and oldest age bands. However, members of our Leadership Group are more represented in the 35-64 bands, and the governance community is concentrated in the 45-65+ bands. Our customer base is generally well spread across the age bands, but there is lower representation in the youngest band and a slightly higher representation in the over 65s.

Disability

We have a significantly lower proportion of disabled people in our workforce, Leadership Group and our governance community, compared to the wider population. A slightly higher proportion of our customers have identified a disability than the wider population we serve.

Religion

From the data we hold, our Leadership Group and wider workforce are relatively diverse in terms of their religious identities, our governance community less so, being more likely to identify as Christian or having no religion. Our customer base is also diverse, generally reflecting the identities of the wider population living in our communities.

The figures shown are for our population as a whole; it is important to note we do have significant regional variations.
All wider population figures updated to be weighted by Riverside and OHG stock by Local Authority.
‘Prefer not to say / Don’t know’ responses have been excluded.

Diversity and representation

Our ambition is that the diversity of our workforce and governance community reflects the customers and communities we serve. Our ways of working and pay structures ensure colleagues are paid equally for the work they do, however we still have pay gaps for gender and ethnicity, because women and ethnically diverse colleagues are not evenly distributed over our pay range. Our gender pay gap shows a median rate of 9.8% and our ethnicity pay gaps shows a median rate of 18.5%.

We’re looking to increase diversity within senior positions through our Ethnically Diverse Guaranteed Interview Scheme. The scheme has received Bronze Trailblazer status from Race Equality Matters and so far, representation of ethnic minority colleagues in the upper pay quartile has increased by 3% since the launch of the scheme in 2020.

You can read our latest Financial Statements, Gender and Ethnicity Pay Gap reports for more details on our pay gaps and what we’re doing to close them.

Leadership from the top

A genuine commitment to ED&I needs to come from the top and this year, our Group Board Chair Terrie Alafat has committed us to take on the National Housing Federation’s ‘Chairs’ Challenge’, a public commitment to take the Board on a journey to understand how diverse and inclusive we are now while developing a vision for the future.

We are also committed to improving opportunities for all colleagues through mentoring and recruitment practices, with ongoing participation in:

• the Housing Diversity Network’s mentoring programme seeing another successful cohort of six mentees graduate, supporting them to realise their full potential
• another successful GEM graduate programme, helping develop 19 participants, 13 from ethnically diverse backgrounds, into future housing sector leaders.

What our people say about us

We regularly ask our colleagues to complete engagement surveys, asking participants to tell us whether they agree with certain statements, which we then use to measure and monitor colleague satisfaction.

Our most recent survey in November 2022 revealed that colleagues with protected characteristics scored positively when they answered ‘I feel proud to work for this organisation’ and ‘Our organisation treats everyone fairly and with respect’.

Statements relating to ensuring customers are included in decision making, communications from leaders, loyalty and pride in working for Riverside emerged as some of the highest scoring items for both male and female respondents.

While the survey showed some positive results from colleagues with protected characteristics, it highlighted some important issues of concern that we have used to feed into our ongoing action plan.