Co-op is committed to being a diverse and inclusive employer. We believe this means being fair and open in how we pay all our colleagues, which is why we continue to voluntarily publish our ethnicity pay gap data. We know that to achieve fair pay, we must have a representative and proportional workforce that reflects the diverse communities we serve.

The report shows we’ve more than doubled ethnic minority representation in our leadership population since 2020. As a result, we’ve seen our pay gap reduce, and we’re on track to achieve 10% representation by 2025.

See below the key takeaways:

• Our pay gap is reducing - Our mean (average) pay has decreased from 3.1 % (2021) to 0.9%, and our median (middle) gap from -4.6% to -6.1%
• Better representation – We’ve increased ethnic minority representation in senior leadership from 3% to 8% between 2020 and 2023
• Our pay gap is reducing for ethnic minority female colleagues – We’ve reduced the mean pay gap for ethnic minority female colleagues from 16.3% (2021) to 13.5% (2023)
• Most of our colleagues are on a fixed rate of pay - 78% of our pay-relevant colleagues (people included in the ethnic pay gap calculations) are on fixed rates of pay for their job. This means that colleagues are on a set hourly rate of pay.

We know we’ve still got more to do, and inclusion remains at the heart of our people strategy, underpinning everything we do at Co-op to support our colleague member-owners.

Find out more and read the full report here.