What causes our gender pay gap?
We’re in a strong position when it comes to attracting, developing, and retaining females, and have a female-dominated workforce.
We’re one of the only law firms with over 50% women at partnership level and are consistently recognised as one of the best Workplaces for Women by the Great Place to Work Institute. This ranking is based on the views of females about their workplace experiences.
The gender pay gap is a simple measure, calculating the difference between men and women’s average pay, irrespective of their role and seniority. This means that when calculating the gender pay gap, any pay differences between men and women are much broader than when looking at equal pay. Equal pay relates to the Equality Act 2010, which requires employers to give males and females equal pay if they’re employed to do like-for-like work.
The demographics of our colleague population are the main contributing factors for our gender pay gap and gender bonus gap:
- A higher proportion of females work in certain sectors of our workforce, for example in less-senior, high-volume roles, including paralegal, document production and contact centre roles, impacting the overall mean pay gap.
- A few high earners have an impact on our overall mean pay gap. Our gap reduces if we remove the Top 10 Earners from the number (seven males and three females).
- 19% of our colleagues across the business are part-time. 92.5% of our part-time colleagues are female, and, across our Associate and Senior Associate population (where bonus percentages are higher due to the construct of the bonus scheme), 89% of our part-timers are female, compared to 11% who are male. These factors impact our bonus gap because our bonuses are based on a percentage of an employee’s actual salary. This will be lower for part-time workers due to fewer hours worked in comparison to full-time employees.
What do we have in place to ensure that our pay gap remains as low as possible?
Diversity, equity and inclusion is a key pillar of both the Responsible Business strategy and our People Plan. We’re committed to providing an equitable platform for all our colleagues to thrive, and have several policies and procedures in place to support this:
We use gender-neutral language and consider the images and branding used in advertising roles and careers within the organisation. We also partner with third parties to advertise our vacancies to individuals from minority and underrepresented groups.
Our Hiring Manager guidance supports inclusive recruitment to give every candidate a level platform to showcase their potential by providing advice, templates and tips for avoiding unconscious bias and to give all candidates equal opportunities throughout the hiring process.
Our Flexible by Choice policy supports colleagues to work flexibly, depending on client and business needs. This was recognised as a key reason that Females stay at Irwin Mitchell in a 2023 report.
As well as enhanced Maternity and Paternity leave policies, our Family Leave policy includes Adoption, Fostering, Surrogacy and Shared Parental Leave, as we recognise that everyone’s situation is personal. This policy provides greater freedom for colleagues to do what is best for them.
We use our D&I dashboard to monitor the outcomes of colleagues from different backgrounds and use this to inform strategy and initiatives.
Our seven diversity network groups play a vital role in shaping initiatives by harnessing the lived experiences of individuals within the business.
Our reciprocal mentoring programme, which pairs senior leaders with more junior minority ethnic colleagues, has been relaunched with over twenty pairs taking part, with additional structure and guidance provided to participants.
Further details on our commitment to inclusion and responsible business can be found in our Responsible Business Report 2024.