Understanding the numbers
It’s important to remember that the gender pay gap and equal pay aren’t the same thing. The gender pay gap looks at the difference between the average pay of all men and women across an organisation, regardless of seniority or job role. Whereas equal pay looks at the pay difference between a man and women doing the same role.
Our gender pay
& bonus gap
Our goal is to close our pay gaps. We remain transparent when it comes to our data and hold ourselves accountable for improving levels of representation.
We have three main areas of focus to help us achieve this:
- hiring – broadening our hiring practices to be more inclusive;
- allyship – such as sponsoring events and running inclusive communication training;
- development – ensuring we support and prioritise under-represented colleagues
The data shows we have narrowed our median gender pay gap from 21.7% to 14.9%. Our mean gender pay gap has also narrowed from 16.3% to 13.5%.
Our median bonus gap is 0% having narrowed from -20.7%. Conversely, the mean sits at 26%, showing a 10.6% widening of the gap.
Why we’ve seen these shifts in the numbers
Our gender pay gap is driven by a greater number of men than women in more senior roles. However, we have seen an increase in the number of women in our upper-middle pay quartile, now at 37% compared to 34% last year.
Having more men in the upper pay quartiles compared to women means that when we give increases based on a percentage, it’s of a higher value for men than women, which in turn affects our overall mean.
Similarly, the mean bonus gap is 26% in favour of men, due to the higher proportion of men to women in our more senior roles. The median, however, is 0%. This is because the median positioned male and female colleagues this year were both participants of the ‘company’ bonus scheme.
When it comes to our bonus schemes, it’s important to understand that we have two. The ‘company’ bonus scheme is linked to company performance alone and all colleagues receive broadly the same equivalent amount. Our ‘personal’ bonus scheme payout, for more senior colleagues, changes dependant on salary and is linked to both company and personal performance.
Our strategy has been to focus on increasing the number of women at every level in the business, in particular our most senior roles. In the 12 months since April 2023 we’ve hired 86 new starters, 52% of which are men and 48% women. Of those women, 22% were recruited into the upper and upper-middle pay quartiles.
This year we ranked number one in the tech sector for women in leadership positions and featured in the Top 10 for FTSE 250 Women Leaders for the fourth year in a row - meaning we're already exceeding the targets set by the review.
We’re making progress, and we need to maintain the momentum and keep pushing forward. Using our strategy - which centres around allyship, hiring and development - we’ll keep listening to our people and using the data to improve, whether it’s by reviewing our inclusive hiring policy, introducing our Female Leadership Forum or any number of other initiatives that we know make a difference.
Our ethnicity pay & bonus gap
The mean ethnicity pay gap has narrowed in previous years, however this year we’ve seen a 17.7% change, bringing the mean to 0.2% in favour of white colleagues. A smaller proportion of colleagues share their ethnicity data, as it’s not a mandatory requirement, so the slightest of shifts in the numbers can result in fluctuations. We use the same methodology as our gender pay gap when calculating the ethnicity pay gap figures.
According to those who have disclosed their data, colleagues within an ethnic minority group make up 13% of the business. This is compared with 18% of the population England and Wales, according to the latest Census data. We continue to be committed to not only increasing overall numbers across the organisation, but also broadening representation at all career levels.
One of the factors impacting the shift in the mean percentage is the more even distribution of colleagues within an ethnic minority group across the pay quartiles, coupled with the narrowing of the gap for other ethnic minority groups.
The median bonus gap is -57.4%, compared to 8.9% in 2023, now therefore in favour of colleagues from an ethnic minority group.
Our bonus data showed our median positioned white colleague was on the ‘company bonus’ and our median positioned colleague from an ethnic minority group was on a ‘personal bonus’, which is why we’re seeing the shift. Our mean gap has narrowed during the year.
83% of colleagues from an ethnic minority group received a bonus in 2024, which is up on 78% in 2023. The number of white colleagues receiving a bonus in 2024 remained at 91%.
Having voluntarily published for four years, we are encouraged by the government’s intention to make ethnicity pay gap reporting mandatory. Both our median and mean figures have been getting closer to zero since we began publishing our data, and we’ll keep putting in the work to stabilise our statistics and make positive changes.
How we’re working to make positive change
We’ve implemented a number of initiatives across three focus areas, hiring, allyship and development, and have more in the pipeline to help us improve our data across the board:
Through allyship
We’re continuing our sponsorship and participation in key events like Black Business Week and Black Inclusion Week, which we sponsored earlier this year.
We’ll continue to foster the smaller scale partnerships like hosting the Change Maker Programme launch event for Communicate Inclusively and a panel discussion on social mobility.
We’ll expand our speaker series, inviting more experts in the fields of diversity and learning. So far this year we’ve invited LVL London to run sessions exploring inclusion in the workplace and gender equality, and founder of Trans Pride Brighton Sabah Choudrey to share insights into intersectionality and trans identities, as well as many others.
To compliment the new statutory leave requirement for carers in the UK, we teamed up with Carers UK to provide a new digital platform for our line managers and carers.
As part of our ongoing commitment to create an inclusive and supportive workplace, we’re running a series on Female Health, including topics such as Menopause. Our goal is to ensure that everyone feels supported and has access to the resources they need.
Eighteen female pupils under the age of 15 attended an event we hosted in partnership with charity Reach Out to promote STEM careers. We also sponsored and attended Reframe Women in Tech and Women in Tech Unfiltered in conjunction with our continued headline sponsorship of the Manchester Tech Festival.
We’ve continued our partnership with Innovate Her to introduce young girls to the world of tech, as we know there are fewer women going into technology-based roles. Through our associated partnership with a school in Greater Manchester, it’s seen a 300% increase in girls taking computer science in the next academic year.
Through hiring
We’ve hired the second cohort of technology apprentices with 75% female and 50% from ethnic minority groups, and we plan to continue the scheme into its third year.
We’re continuing our partnership with Flexa Careers to further establish our employer brand as a company that embraces flexibility to drive diversity hiring.
In the first half of 2024 we hired 98% of colleagues through direct hiring, not agencies, as we can see the impact this can have on our metrics. Of all the new hires, 48% were women - up from 35% in the last reporting year.
We’re working with partners like Shecancode and Women in Data for targeted hiring in diverse communities to enhance the number of female hires in tech.
We’ve deployed a number of inclusive hiring practices, the newest of which is Metaview. This tool uses AI to produce a summary from interviews which is shared with hiring managers. This helps to improve information recall following interviews and heighten face-to-face engagement as notes don’t need to be taken.
As a result of these initiatives and others implemented across our DEI strategy, we were shortlisted for the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development 2024 Award for ‘Best Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Initiative (EDI) for Inclusive Hiring’.
Through development
We’re continuing our focus on retaining and progressing the careers of women across the group into senior roles.
We’re doing this through our mentoring programme (active since 2022) and by providing access to external coaching opportunities, such as Ezra, with 65% of participants being female.
This year we launched our Female Leadership Forum to give female leaders access to key-note speakers and networking opportunities that build an internal community.
The content of our launch event, which saw 57 women in attendance, and subsequent authentic leadership session, is based on feedback directly from women in the business. This includes the session we ran on women’s health in the workplace.
We’re in the fourth year of our group-wide mentoring programme and are seeing more balance in the number of male to female applicants. In our most recent cohort, we’ve seen 59% female mentees, 50% mentors. We ensure that all applicants know they can request for, or offer support and guidance on, how to enhance career development and progression as a woman and/or as an individual within an ethnic minority group.
We’ve put extra focus this year on the availability of Headspace not just for colleagues but for their families too as part of their benefits package.
Late last year we launched renowned content library LinkedIn Learning. We’ve taken the opportunity to push educational content to the organisation that’s relevant to current events and initiatives like intersectionality for Pride.
Completion of annual equal pay and real Living Wage audits ensure we don’t fall behind and we’ll be launching refreshed inclusive communication training with partners Pearn Kandola shortly.
Following a review of feedback from those returning from parental leave, we’ve introduced individual support from the People Team for those on leave to further explain entitlements and support available, as well as for line managers to ensure consistency in their communications. We’re also piloting a coaching scheme for colleagues returning after more than six months leave. We hope this will better support colleagues through this adjustment period.
We confirm that the gender and ethnicity pay calculations are accurate and meet the requirements of the legislation.
