Commentary on the Data
For Gender Pay, we’ve seen an increase of 2.7 percentage points in our Mean Pay Gap from the 2022 calculation of 9.7% to 12.38% in 2023.
The reason for this increase is due to one-off payments made to colleagues in the two prior years. Without these we see a more consistent outcome over the past three years. Our 2021 gender gap report included a ‘Thank you’ payment we had made in April 2021 (3% to eligible colleagues in lieu of pay increases). In April 2022, we made £900 cost of living payments to most of our colleagues. These both had a positive impact on the numbers reported in our gender and ethnicity pay gap reporting in both those years. If we removed both the ‘Thank you’ payment in 2021 and the £900 cost of living payments in 2022, the pay gaps are both more aligned to this year’s number.
Our mean and median gender pay gap figures are based on hourly pay.
The mean gender pay gap figure shows the difference between the average hourly pay of men and the average hourly pay of women.
The median figure is the difference between the middle man and middle woman in a list of hourly pay ordered from highest to lowest.
Our mean gender pay gap for 2023 is 12.38%
Our median gender pay gap for 2023 is 22.2%
Our ongoing commitment to implementing a robust diversity and inclusion strategy means we have a solid understanding of the underlying business drivers behind the gender pay gap, and the measures we can continue to drive forward to ensure we make positive progress.
This year, as part of our commitment to gender equality, we enhanced the support we provide to our colleagues to work flexibly and manage their work-life balance. We offered increased support for working parents and carers, with revised family policies addressing and improving issues relating to shared parental leave, paternity pay and fertility treatment.
For Ethnicity Pay, we’ve seen an increase of 0.2 percentage points in our Mean Pay Gap from the 2022 reporting of -5.3% to -5.5% in 2023.
Our ethnicity pay gaps remain similar year-on-year, and at this time remain positive to those from minority ethnic backgrounds[1].
It should be noted that our ethnicity pay gap data is based on 71% of our colleagues who have voluntarily shared their ethnicity information, in contrast to our gender pay gap which is based on almost all colleagues’ data.
We’ll continue to encourage more of our colleagues to share this information to improve our understanding of race and ethnicity in our workplace and future reporting.
We’ve seen increases in the proportion of minority ethnic colleagues in all pay quartiles, except the Upper Mid pay quartile. The ethnicity pay gap data excludes our partners (Full Equity Members and Fixed Share Members), consistent with statutory gender pay gap reporting.
While it’s positive to see increases in the proportion of minority ethnic colleagues, we recognise that we need to do more to understand the make-up of our workforce by ethnicity, and to increase the overall proportion of colleagues from minority ethnic backgrounds, including at partner level.
Career progression of minority ethnic colleagues is one of the five pillars of our D&I strategy, and we are regularly looking at ways to improve this, via recruitment, progression, and retention.
Our mean ethnicity pay gap for 2023 is
[1] For the purposes of this report, as in previous years, we have compared all colleagues who have selected a minority ethnic background (including White minority ethnic groups), with those who have selected ‘White British’. We’re using the term ‘minority ethnic’ following consultation with IM Respect, our ethnicity, culture and faith network.