Gender Pay Gap
What is the gender pay gap?
There is current UK legislation on ‘gender pay gap’ and ‘equal pay’, both of which seek to highlight and address disparity of pay women receive in the workplace in the UK.
- The gender pay gap is a measure of the difference in the average earnings of men and women regardless of the nature of their work across an organisation. It is intended to illustrate where there is a greater proportion of men who may on average hold more senior positions with higher pay. The gender pay gap is expressed as a percentage of men’s earnings on a ‘snapshot date’ which is 5 April each year, and is reported on a mean and a median basis. Larger percentage variations are normally an indicator that more women are employed in lower paid grades and there are more men in the more senior grades.
- Equal pay legislation deals with any pay differences between men and women within an organisation who carry out the same jobs, similar jobs or work of equal value. We analyse and report to the Board’s Remuneration Committee on equal pay every six months and we do not have an equal pay gap.
Our Gender Pay Gap on 5 April 2023
Over the past year we have seen an increase in the proportion of women in each quartile of pay in our UK business. However, we have as yet achieved gender parity only in the lowest quartile of pay and the largest overall movement of gender representation is in the bottom half of the pay distribution; it is encouraging nevertheless to see a 5-percentage point improvement in the proportion of women in the upper quartile of pay.
As a result, the median gender pay gap has reduced to 17%, from 31% in the previous year’s data. Our median bonus pay gap is 24% compared to 48% last year.
However, the overall low proportion of women in our two most senior grades combined with continued high growth in headcount has resulted in our mean gender pay gap being 35%, an increase from the previous year’s 25%. Our mean bonus gender pay gap is 53% compared to 50% last year.
Activities and Plans
Over the past year we have improved the proportion of women employed in our UK business from 30% to 36%, and the number of women in our three most senior grades (Principal, Director and Vice President) in the UK from 18% to 19% (an increase of 5%), through a series of targeted recruitment initiatives. We are also working on a tailored retention and accelerated career development programme to achieve a better balance of women in senior leadership positions.
Management consulting, like many professional services, has found it historically difficult to retain women through various phases of life, which leads to the gender pay gap we see across our industry in the UK and globally. Despite these challenges, the Board continues to be committed to close our gender pay gap.
