Insurer Zurich UK has reported a mean disability pay gap of 17.6% for hourly pay as at April 2020.
The organisation published its disability pay gap figures for the first time based on the 65% of employees that voluntarily disclosed this information. There is no legal obligation to publish these figures, however, Zurich UK has decided to benchmark this data in order to measure its progress.
Its median disability pay gap as at April 2020 is 14.6%, which has increased by 1.8 percentage points from 12.8% since April 2019. In order to provide a more comprehensive picture of employees' experience in future years, the organisation now intends to make staff aware why it is important to disclose disability information.
In addition, Zurich UK has signed up to The Valuable 500 network, which commits Zurich UK to put disability inclusion on its leadership agenda. It has also been awarded a Disability Leader status by the UK government, which recognises employers that have helped support employees with disabilities.
Zurich UK offers a number of initiatives to support employees with disabilities including: a flexible-working policy, which empowers staff to work where, when, and how they choose to, and an accessibility and inclusion network, which is now in its sixth year and has 120 members. This was introduced to promote the inclusion of employees with disabilities and support the mental health challenges they may face.
This publication of its disability pay gap data follows Zurich UK becoming the first insurer to publish its ethnicity pay data in July 2020.
Richard Peden, chief compliance officer at Zurich UK, said: “Over the past three years, we have been leading the way in promoting awareness of disabilities and inclusion and creating a more inclusive workforce. This also includes our focus on doing everything we can to best support our customers with disabilities.
“We are incredibly proud of our track record of being the first insurer to be awarded Disability Confident Leader status, as well as being first to sign up to the Valuable 500 and publishing our disability pay gap information. We are working to better understand the experiences of employees with disabilities. Collating and publishing this data will enable us to monitor trends so that we can put in place the actions needed to tackle the issues.”
