Ethnic monitoring is the process you use to collect, store, and analyse data about people’s ethnic backgrounds. You can use ethnic monitoring to:

• highlight possible inequalities;
• investigate their underlying causes; and
• remove any unfairness or disadvantage.

In employment, monitoring lets you examine the ethnic make-up of your workforce and compare this with the data you are using as a benchmark. It also lets you analyse how your personnel practices and procedures affect different ethnic groups.

In service delivery, monitoring can tell you which groups are using your services, and how satisfied they are with them. You can then consider ways of reaching under-represented groups and making sure that your services are relevant to their needs, and provided fairly.

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Why monitor?

Without ethnic monitoring, an organisation will never know whether its equal opportunities policy is working. There is a risk that people will just see the policy as paying lip service to racial equality. If this happens, the policy could lose credibility and commitment among the staff who have to deliver it, as well as the people who are affected by it. To have an equality policy without ethnic monitoring is like aiming for good financial management without keeping financial records.

Ethnic monitoring can tell you whether you are offering equality of opportunity and treatment to all ethnic groups. It can also tell you how and why you are falling short of this ideal. You can then concentrate on finding solutions and making changes, rather than using guesswork or assumptions. For example, an organisation that encourages job applications from under-represented ethnic groups may be wasting its time and money (and possibly doing more harm than good) if the real reason for their under-representation is that they are already applying, but being rejected, for whatever reason.

Ethnic monitoring has wider benefits too. In employment, ethnic monitoring can spot barriers that are preventing you from making use of available talent. It also helps you to avoid what could be costly complaints of racial discrimination, by making sure that you pick up and tackle problems at an early stage. The costs of discrimination claims can include legal fees, compensation payments, and management time, not to speak of the emotional distress for those involved as well as possible wider damage to staff morale.

Finally, ethnic monitoring can help to improve your reputation as a good and fair provider of goods or services, and as a good employer.

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Public sector organisations

The amended Race Relations Act 1976 gives public authorities a general duty to promote race equality and good race relations.

• The duty to promote race equality

The duty applies to all the public authorities listed in schedule 1A to the Act, and in appendix 1 of the statutory Code of Practice on the Duty to Promote Race Equality.

• Publications: Code of practice on the duty to promote race equality

Employment

Most public authorities bound by the general duty also have a specific duty to promote race equality as employers.

If you are one of these authorities, the duty says that you have to monitor, by their ethnic groups, all your employees, and all applicants for jobs, promotion, and training.

If you employ more than 150 people, you also have to monitor the number of employees from each ethnic group who:

• receive training;
• benefit or suffer disadvantage as a result of performance assessments;
• are involved in grievances;
• have disciplinary action taken against them; and
• end employment with the authority.

We strongly advise you to monitor other aspects of the employment process as well. This will help you to meet the employment duty more effectively and to meet the general duty and other specific duties. For example, if you want to assess the impact of your selection policy and procedures, information about the number of job applicants will not be enough. You will also need to know how many applicants from each ethnic group succeed and how many do not, at each stage of the selection process.

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Policy and service delivery

Public authorities that are bound by the employment duty must set out how they will monitor the impact of the policies they have adopted, or are proposing to adopt, on promoting race equality. This applies to all functions and policies that are relevant to the general duty. The code of practice defines functions as the full range of a public authority’s duties and powers. It defines policies as the formal and informal decisions a public authority makes to carry out its duties and use its powers.

Educational institutions

Educational institutions bound by the general duty also have specific duties, as follows.

• Schools must assess the impact of all their policies on pupils, staff, and parents from different racial groups. They must also monitor the way their policies work. The duty expects schools to place special emphasis here on pupils’ attainment levels.
• Further and higher education institutions must assess the impact of all their policies on students and staff. They must also monitor, by racial group, student admissions and progress, and staff recruitment and career development.

The general duty

The general duty does not say you must monitor policy and service delivery. However, you will find it difficult to show that you have met your duty to eliminate unlawful racial discrimination, and promote equal opportunities and good race relations if you do not have any monitoring data. So, if your authority is bound only by the general duty, you should not assume that monitoring is something that you do not need to worry about.

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Private sector organisations

Equal opportunities policies, by themselves, will not bring about racial equality. Organisations must have a system for checking whether their policies are being carried out and whether they are working.

Although it is not obligatory under the Race Relations Act for private sector organisations to keep ethnic records, without them it would be difficult to establish the nature or extent of any inequality, the areas where action is most needed, and whether measures aimed at reducing inequality are succeeding. Without ethnic records it is virtually impossible to know whether or not people are being racially discriminated against.

The most reliable and efficient way of monitoring the effectiveness of a basic equal opportunities policy is to carry out regular analyses of the workforce and job applicants, by ethnic origin.

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