REVEALED: THE GENDER PAY GAPS OF WELSH FIRMS
How to make sense of gender pay gap reporting: why the statistics don’t tell the full story but what you need to know. Alexandra Christen, an employment lawyer at Cardiff based law firm, Capital Law, explains
SOME businesses in Wales pay men an average of 40% more than women, it has been revealed.
But, as the deadline passed for companies with more than 250 employees to disclose data on their gender pay gaps, the picture across Wales was mixed with many firms where the gap was far smaller than the average or does not exist at all.
There are also 53 companies in Wales which pay women more than men. And some businesses pay men an average of 40% more than women.
But, as the deadline passed for companies with more than 250 employees to disclose data on their gender pay gaps, the picture across Wales was mixed with many firms where the gap was far smaller than the average or does not exist at all.
There are also 53 companies in Wales which pay women more than men.
Geldards Resources Limited, a law firm based in Cardiff, has the biggest pay gap of companies registered in Wales.
Of their 327 employees 236 are women and 91 are men.
In a report accompanying its figures it says many of the roles in its lower pay quartile are predominantly secretarial, facilities and business support positions and over 80% of these roles are held by women.
The company said it was “committed to taking all steps possible to close the gender pay gap and being an employer that works for everyone”.
It added: “Whilst we recognise that there is work to do overall this performance shows that we are moving in the right direction and there is no underlying bias driving gender pay differences in the firm.”
Watkin Jones and Son Ltd, a construction company based in Gwynedd and responsible for many of the student accommodation blocks in Cardiff, has the sec- ond largest gap at 42.3%.
Cardiff company CH4 Gas Utility and Maintenance Services Ltd, which employs between 250 and 499 staff, also has a gap of more than 40%.
Hoover, Bridgend College and Tenovus Cancer Care are other examples of companies with gaps of more than 30%.
Councils in Wales do not have to submit their pay gap but are obliged to publish pay details in other forms.
Some however entered them into the Government system.
It means that Swansea, Caerphilly and Newport councils all appear in the top 10 list when it comes to biggest companies with a gender gap.
In a table of the country’s largest employees, in terms of staff numbers, South Wales Police comes top with a gap of 20.2%. Also in the top three are Cardiff University and Swansea council.
Cardiff University was also not obliged to publish the figures but said it did so as part of a “commitment to transparency about pay”.
There are 53 companies where women have higher median pay than men, including Wales and West Utilities, the WRU, Castell Howell Foods, and Ffilm Cymru, with the biggest gap at St David’s Foundation Hospice Care, where women’s median pay was 43% higher on average.
St David’s Foundation Hospice Care chief executive Emma Saysell said: “St David’s Hospice Care is committed to being an equal opportunities employer in terms of recruitment, pay and progression within the organisation.
“We are proud of our history of promoting female employees within the organisation and welcome this initiative as a further tool in understanding the relationship between gender and pay within the hospice.”
The figures are all based on an average and GS Yuasa Battery Manufacturing UK Ltd appear second on the list of having a higher median rate for women.
However the company employ just two women. One is in the top 25% of the company’s earners and the other is between the top 25% and top 50% of earners.
As the manufacturing process involves working with lead they cannot employ young people and women of reproductive capacity.
It says it is increasing its efforts to attract female employees in areas of the business where women of nonchild-bearing age can be employed.
The National Assembly for Wales has a pay gap of 23.3% in favour of women.
The Welsh Rugby Union also has a higher hourly median rate for women.
It has 305 relevant employees made up of staff as well as players, coaches and medical personnel.
The negative figure for the median gender pay gap is due to the median hourly rate paid to women being higher than that paid to men.
When payments made to a total of 40 players and team management from the senior men’s national squad, including national dual contract players, were removed the median difference was reduced to 11.8% in favour of women.
A separate report was compiled for stadium staff, under the company name of Millennium Stadium Ltd, and there was no gender pay gap between the stadium’s 937 staff.
IS THE data reliable? There’s a huge amount of trust involved in this. It is up to individual companies and relevant public bodies to navigate the complex legislation and calculate their own gender pay gaps. The data is not fact-checked before it is filed and in some instances companies have had to re-publish figures that were initially filed incorrectly.
In the vast majority of cases the results show a gender bias in favour of men. Is this actually the reality? Yes, unfortunately it is, and there’s no way around it, on average men are paid more than women in the UK.
However, it’s important to do your research here. Strictly speaking a Gender Pay Gap Report need only contain six pieces of information. But these statistics do not tell the full story, and are easily misconstrued.
This is because the data gathered is a relatively blunt tool. For example, the statistics only tell us the average gender pay gap, as well as the average bonus pay gap, the percentage of men and women who receive a bonus and the proportion of men and women operating within each quarter of a company’s pay structure.
Therefore, the real value in the report lies in its supporting narrative (more on which below).
So how much can we rely on the data to understand a company’s pay culture?
The top line figures will not tell the whole story and a large gap could be caused by a number of factors, not all of which will necessarily be discriminatory.
Essentially top line figures tell us nothing – the data needs to be broken down by job type (i.e. full time/ part time), sector (i.e. manufacturing/head office), region and so on to give more context and explain the figures.
Additionally, employees on maternity leave receiving SMP, or on sick pay receiving SSP, are not counted within the pay data. Just two of many examples of factors that could immediately skew the data.
Conversely an organisation’s overall pay gap could be small but the figure could be skewed by anomalies (i.e. a small number of highly paid women leading to a low overall gap), but this may mask a bigger gap across the rest of the organisation.
Be sure to study the data to search for warning signs, or to see past the initially worrying headline statistics (some of which may be borne out, others may be less troubling with greater insight). Are there more women than men in lower-grade jobs (in most cases there will be)? How does that proportion look as you move further up the pay-scale? Are there more men or women in senior, high-paid roles? And what about the bonus gap?
The narrative is key
Interestingly the narrative is an optional element of the report. However, businesses would be foolish not to take advantage of this opportunity to state their case. Despite this there has been huge divergence in the way businesses have opted to present their data.
Some businesses have provided large amounts of qualifying analysis. In some cases this has been an attempt to try and explain some often concerning top line statistics (for example Easyjet’s report confirms a mean pay gap of more than 50% which it states is largely due to the fact that there are more male pilots, who earn a higher wage, than female pilots). While others have provided extensive explanations as to why they don’t actually have gender pay gaps (big ticks for these companies).
Meanwhile others have been fairly dry in their approach, simply including links to home pages and lists of internal policies, much of which doesn’t actually say an awful lot in reality.
What should the narrative say? It’s vital that businesses dig down into their data and use the report to put their top line figures in context (utilising ONR statistics here is a good idea, as is comparing the figures to those of others in the same industry).
Businesses should explain how they intend to address pay inequality and diversity as a whole, as well as outlining what has (hopefully) been done to date.
For example, if a pay gap exists but the business can show that it has been closing over recent years, then this presents the figures in a more favourable light. Equally it will help if the business is able to point to existing initiatives it is taking to close the gap.
Internal communications will be crucial here. Employers should have a strategy for how they communicate their report to staff/stakeholders so they are not left to learn about their employer’s pay gap from the press.
The gender pay gap and equal pay – there’s an important difference
There’s been so much talk about equal pay and the gender pay gap that the difference between the two has been blurred, causing confusion. To clarify, under the Equality Act 2010 females are entitled to be paid the same as males who are doing equal work (and also receive the same workplace benefits).
However, the gender pay gap debate observes a broader approach, and measures the difference between the average earnings of men and women in an organisation, irrespective of roles or seniority. It is expressed as a percentage of men’s earnings and currently sits at 18.1% in the UK, meaning that for every pound earned by a British male, a British female earns just under 82 pence.
If men and women receive equal pay, will the gender pay gap cease to exist?
It’s complex, but not necessarily. Even if a business is considered compliant with equal pay legislation they are still likely to have a gender pay gap. For example, even if men and women are paid the same at each pay grade, if the organisation has a predominantly male led senior team, while junior positions are held mainly by women, it will have a considerable gap between the average earnings of its male and female employees. Clearly if an organisation did have an equal pay issue, this would be a contributing factor towards its gender pay gap.
So while the equal pay debate is crucial, it’s actually the gender pay gap that needs to be addressed on a wider cultural and societal level. Two of the main contributing factors towards a gender pay gap are an under representation of women in senior roles, or in certain specialisms (like STEM). However, these are issues that cannot be addressed by companies alone and will involve a wider contribution from society.
Essentially not only do organisations need to think far more broadly about how they can attract, retain and advance more women up through the talent pipeline but there needs to be a joined up approach, encouraging women to take up STEM subjects at school for example and removing any gender bias that might exist outside the workplace.
Perhaps one of the most troubling and frustrating aspects about some of the gender pay gap reports has been the companies that have used their lack of gender parity in senior roles as a justifiable reason for their pay gap. The irony of the fact that this is the very issue to be addressed should not be lost on anyone. Especially women.