News

Gender Pay Gap 2022

Our gender pay gap for 2021/2022 is 36%. This has reduced by 9% since 2017 when the gap was 45% and we are pleased to see the progress.

A major factor in the extent of our pay gap is the lower number of women in senior roles. Up to and including Associate Director, our gender pay gap is essentially 0% (0.32%). However, the pay gap at more senior levels, in the upper quartile, is largest at 24% and reflects the findings of the Office for National Statistics (ONS) that ‘the (%) difference in pay between the sexes is largest among higher earners’.

Similar to last year, an approximately equal percentage of men and women received a bonus this year. There remains a disparity between the levels of bonus men and women receive, and the mean bonus gap is similar to 2019/2020 at 60%.

Closing our gender pay gap is a strategic priority and we continue to take steps to encourage diversity of leadership. In April 2022, women held 37% of Director roles, compared to April 2021, where 29% of Directors were women. Our aim is to increase female representation at Director level to 50% and at Senior Director level to 30% (20% as at Dec 2022). This year we were pleased to welcome greater female representation into our leadership team, as part of our commitment to authentic personal growth and progression based on merit, performance, contribution, and business needs.

As part of our ‘Catalyst for Change’ programme, our leadership and management teams are engaging in capacity building workshops to continue to develop a Diversity & Inclusion mindset and incorporate behaviours into our culture, decision making and implementation of our company strategy. Our leadership and management teams are working more closely with Embrace, our co-owner Diversity & Inclusion initiative, and have taken part in a reverse-mentoring programme.

We continue to seek feedback from co-owners regarding our progress with Diversity & Inclusion, and in closing our pay gap, and regularly review our action plan to make progress in these areas.

The gender pay gap reporting legislation requires us to take a snapshot of our pay data in April each year and include all employees who were receiving their full pay at that time. Anyone on reduced pay, such as SMP at that point, is removed from the calculation of mean and median pay. As an employee-owned business, all co-owners, including senior leadership, are included in our reported figures.