A survey regarding diversity in the FTSE 100 senior leadership has been conducted by Green Park Business Leaders Index (formerly Green Park Leadership 10,000), since 2014. The survey charts the progress being made by the UK’s major private sector businesses to achieve greater ethnic and gender diversity at senior levels. This year, along with an analysis of industry sectors, for the first time it includes a breakdown of gender and ethnocultural diversity by job function.

The survey found that just 11 of the C-suite leadership roles were filled with individuals from an ethnic minority background - C-suite refers to the top tier, or executive-level roles within a company, such as Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Chief Information Officer (CIO) - and for the first time since 2014, there was not one black chair, CEO or CFO in any FTSE 100 company. This is even though, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), around 13% of the of the UK’s working-age population is non-white.

The survey also noticed that there is very little diversity in some functions, as they are dominated by a particular gender or ethnicity. Curiously, one of the least diverse functions is Diversity & Inclusion - where 85.4% of the leadership roles are occupied by females and 62.5% are white females. In this function, ethnic minority males are the least represented at 6.3%.

The HR function is also dominated by white females at 55%, while white males dominate the roles with traditionally more direct routes to the top, such as Finance, Operations and Digital roles.

Additionally, the report looked at gender diversity and found that 47.8% of non executive directors were female, about twice as many than were executive directors, at 27.7%. However, on the increase was the number of women in the top three roles, which had risen from 23 to 36 - an uplift from 4.3% to 12.2% since 2014.