BBC revelations can be catalyst for pay reform
WHEN the BBC released the salaries of its top-earning stars, it wasn’t the size of their pay packets that sparked public and media outcry, but the gender pay gap the revelations exposed.
The numbers suggested men made up two-thirds of those earning more than £150,000 and the public broadcaster’s seven highest earners were all male.
The disclosure led to demands for the public broadcaster to take action, including from some of its highestprofile stars. But the uncomfortable truth is that this shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise to any of us. Gender pay discrimination is not new and is being silently played out at workplaces up and down the country every day.
The BBC’s gender pay gap, while unacceptable, is nearly half that of the national average. Almost half a century after the UK introduced its Equal Pay Act, women in full and part-time roles are still working for around 18% less per hour than men, with the average at the BBC being around 10%.
As the group managing director of a leading independent communications consultancy, who also happens to be a woman and a mum, it seems ridiculous that in 2017 we still need to make the case for other women to be treated, and paid, fairly.
We should all know by now that not only is gender discrimination wrong, but from a business perspective it makes no sense. There is plenty of research affirming that companies with more women in senior positions outperform those that are male-dominated. And surely no-one can argue that they shouldn’t be paid the same.
The good news is that some global firms such as Apple have recognised the importance of gender equality, acknowledging that an “innovative company must also be diverse”. Last year, the multinational announced that it had achieved pay equity in the US “for similar roles and performance”, with female employees earning one dollar for every dollar male employees earn. It is also striving to make sure that the workforce is representative of the wider global community, and 37% of the company’s new hires in 2016 were women – a figure that was up by two per cent on 2015.
The company still has a long way to go, however, with its global workforce being 68% male in 2016. But this isn’t a problem that can be solved overnight and, as a trend-setting company, its bold move to publicly address the issue could spur other employers to do likewise.
At Freshwater, I am proud to be part of an ambitious, fair-minded business that believes in promoting talent rather than gender. I am the group managing director, have a seat at the board, and am supported by a hard-working senior management team – more than half of which are women. We have a mixed-gender workforce that is happy and productive, benefiting from a defined salary structure that allows the best to progress. We are also extremely proud to be Living Wage employers as, according to the Fawcett Society, a UK charity campaigning for gender equality, 60 per cent of workers earning below the living wage are women.
None of this has happened by chance. Freshwater is in this position because of choices we have made based on the kind of employer and business we want to be. Unfortunately, we are not a reflection of our occupation group as a whole. Last year, the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) teamed up with Women in PR to research what contributes to gender pay inequality in our industry. It found a £12,316 average difference between male and female earnings in public relations (PR). Even after factors such as seniority and education were removed from the figures, the ‘true’ gender gap remained significant, at £5,784.
Of course, most employers will claim to have gender policies and procedures in place to protect their female employees, but something is clearly amiss. Analysis by Deloitte in 2016 suggested, based on current progress rates, that it will take the best part of another half a century to close the gender pay gap in the UK. Given that poverty is increasingly linked to low wages rather than unemployment, families across the UK simply cannot wait that long.
From April 2018, businesses with more than 250 employees will be required to publish their pay structures. While I welcome any initiative that encourages employers to be more transparent about their practice and rethink their ways, the reality is that most UK employers are not that big and more will need to be done to encourage all firms, whatever their size, to address this problem.
Hopefully the BBC’s gender pay gap revelations will be the catalyst for addressing the problem once and for all. There is no need for it, no excuse for it and, frankly, it’s just bad business.
Angharad Neagle is group managing director of Freshwater UK, the Cardiff-headquartered integrated communications consultancy.