Each year employers with over 250 employees are required by law to look at and publish details of their pay data to reflect any imbalance between males and females. While as an organisation Great Places has pay ranges which reflect the size, scale and complexity of each job alongside the nature of the experience, skills and expertise required to do it successfully which apply to everyone doing that job regardless of gender, the pay data tells us about the distribution of monies within the payroll. It allows us to determine the split of money across males and females at each level and thereby whether our recruitment, learning and progression is fairly distributed between men and women in the organisation.
At Great Places we take this a step further, we also look at the balance of pay by ethnicity and also between colleagues that are disabled and those that are not. This is something that the Government are considering making mandatory too.
Full details regarding the pay gaps at Great Places are given within these pages, however in summary, we have a good gender balance and overall, the average pay for women is slightly higher (0.85%) than for men at Great Places.
Like many organisations, ethnicity is our largest pay gap at 17%, and we have focussed activity to reduce this over the next few years. This year we have taken many measures to improve the inclusivity of our recruitment practices and we are rolling out training to all leaders and managers on cultural curiosity/intelligence.
Our disability pay gap is 2%. We have a new exciting partnership in place with Pure Innovations which gives us access to some training for managers and support for candidates applying for employment and for existing colleagues who have, or develop, a disability.
Before looking in detail at the Great Places pay data, here is some information about the national picture, by way of context.
Nationally, the data tells us that there is still a gap between the pay females receive compared to males but that the gap is closing. It is currently 7.7%; for every £1 earned by a man, a women earns 91p. 78.4% of companies and public bodies in the UK on average pay men more than women. Most notably, the gender pay gap remained higher in the public sector organisations where the gap was 14.4%, with 87.6% of public sector organisations paying men more than women in comparison to just over three-quarters of private companies.
In terms of ethnicity, the best national data we have is from the Office of National Statistics in 2022 which suggested that Black, African, Caribbean or Black British employees earned 5.7% less per hour than white employees. Ethnically diverse employees earn on average £13.53 per hour compared £14.35 per hour for white employees.
In 2023 the Office of National Statistics confirmed that the disability pay gap in the UK was 12.7%. Disabled employees were estimated to have earned roughly £13.69 per hour while other employees were likely to have earned £15.69 per hour. They noted that the gap had “remained broadly stable” since 2014.
The way in which pay has to reported under the legislation is very specific. We have to look at the average pay (the mean) and also the median (the middle value if all salaries are put in a list from highest to lowest). Using the two figures gives greater understanding; just using an average would mean one or two high salaries could skew the data. We also have to report on the payment of bonuses.
We also have to split the data into four quarters; the 25% of highest-paid colleagues, the next 25% of colleagues (the upper middle), the 25% of colleagues below that (the lower middle) and then the lowest paid 25%. The data reported here is as at 5th April 2024.
This year we ran our SHE (Sharon Hayes Empowerment) programme, inspired by Sharon Hayes, our late Director of Tech Services. This gave 12 aspiring females working in traditionally male-dominated areas the opportunity to work towards an ILM Level 2 Award in Leadership and Team Skills, with the support of an in-house mentor. We look forward to their progression in 2025 and beyond.
Ethnicity is our widest pay gap and we are committed to reducing it. We are a leading member of the Greater Manchester Housing Providers BOOST programme which is aimed at changing the culture of our organisations so that ethnically diverse talent can emerge and thrive. We are using the learning from this to drive change. As part of this, we have reviewed our Recruitment and Selection Policy and implemented a series of changes to support greater inclusivity. We are also upskilling our leaders and managers in culturally curiosity/intelligence and developing workshops on diversifying working networks and proactive allyship.
We have entered a partnership with Pure Innovations to support us to give the best colleague experience for existing colleagues with disabilities, long term conditions or who develop these during employment. We are also working with them to develop employment pathways into working at Great Places.
Great Places is committed to reducing our pay gaps and ensuring they are reviewed annually. As an organisation we take equality, diversity and inclusion seriously with a clear strategy in place to embrace the value of our differences, creating a culture of inclusion and ensuring fairness for all of our people. Aligned to our EDI and our People Strategies, we will continue to create an environment that provides equal opportunities for all colleagues, irrespective of disability or long-term health conditions, to reach their career progression potential.
Over the next 12 months we commit to delivery of our new Great People Strategy which includes commitments to:
