pay

A few gender pay comparisons

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  1. Conservative Campaign headquarters reported that women’s median hourly rate is 15.7% higher than men’s, whilst the Labour Party recorded a median hourly rate for women 4% lower than men’s.
  2. The CBI reported that women’s median hourly rate is 15.1% lower than men’s, compared to Unite the Union’s gender gap of  29.6% lower in favour of men. The GMB’s Women’s median hourly rate is 32.4% lower than men’s and Unison’s women’s median hourly rate is 15.8% lower than men’s.
  3. The Royal College of Nursing has a median gender pay gap of 13.7% lower than men, whereas the General Medical Council has a median gap of  6.7% in favour of men. The Nursing and Midwifery Council has a women’s median hourly rate of 3.7% lower than men’s and the British Medical Association has a gap for women that is 13.6% lower than men’s.
  4. The Rugby Football Union reports that women’s median hourly rate is 6.6% lower than men’s, at the Football Association the women’s median hourly rate is 12.1% lower than men’s and the England and Wales Cricket Board has a Women’s median hourly rate which is 17% lower than men’s. At the Jockey Club, women’s median hourly rate is 23% higher than men’s.
  5. The Guardian News and Media has reported that women’s median hourly rate is 12.1% lower than men’s, The Times newspaper has a women’s median hourly rate is 12.7% lower than men’s. Associated Newspapers (home of the Daily Mail) has a Women’s median hourly rate is 15.4% lower than men’s, whereas at The Economist Women’s median hourly rate is 29.5% lower than men’s.
  6. The University of Cambridge has a gender pay gap where women’s median hourly rate is 15% lower than men’s, at the University of Oxford women’s median hourly rate is 13.7% lower than men’s. The University of Sunderland reports  that women’s median hourly rate is 20.9% lower than men’s, the gap at the University of Portsmouth is for women’s median hourly rate to be 23.3% lower than men’s.
  7. Bravissimo has a pay gap where women’s median hourly rate is 6.2% lower than men’s, Ann Summers has a women’s median hourly rate which is 21.6% lower than men’s. At Victoria’s Secret, women’s median hourly rate is 19.4% lower than men’s.

NB: The company median hourly pay gap for the UK is 9.8% in favour of men.

That’s not a gap, not if you look from over here…

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The BBC ran an article this weekend highlighting the gender pay gaps of a number of companies that had already reported. The original article is here.

Already we’re starting to hear some interesting responses to the debate that it has raised:

It’s the wrong metric
The situation is complex
We shouldn’t confuse this with equal pay
Women aren’t as good at asking for raises
Sorting this could be bad for women

The over intellectualisation of the situation runs a massive risk of missing the unmistakable point:

The world of work has been designed to be discriminatory.

That’s not to say that individual organisations have gone out to structure their workforce in particular ways to discriminate against any specific group, just that the world of work over a number of decades has become biased in many different ways and we have been complicit by failing to interrogate it with the level of granularity that it required.

It is absolutely right to say that the issues are systemic in nature, for example the gender imbalance between pilots and crew isn’t (I would imagine) the result of direct discrimination. But, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t wrong and that it doesn’t need tackling.

My biggest fear on this issue is the level of mansplaining that is taking place to justify the figures. We are immediately looking at criticising the data, rather than embracing it. At the same time, we need to support and not belittle companies that are publishing gaps. Ultimately progress will be achieved over the next two or three years and that is when we should be judging people based on progress.

The factors that have led to the current situation are multi-faceted and complex. The solutions will be equally complex and multi-faceted. You don’t change a system overnight. But we will make absolutely no progress unless we accept the basic truth that we have a problem.

And that problem isn’t just about gender, it’s about race, disability, it’s about socio-economic background and ultimately it is about fairness. So let’s not try to explain it away, let’s walk forward together with confidence, courage and a single unifying purpose, to make our organisations better and fairer, for now and for the future.

Cohesion is the next big thing

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You want to know what the next big thing for business is going to be? Of course you do, we always want to know the next big thing. Right?

But this time it’s serious. I’m serious.

The next big thing is cohesion.

When we talked about the future of work being human, we were almost there. But not there enough. I’ve been writing on this site for seven years, talking about being the need to be more human focused, but it isn’t quite right. We’ve been distracted by debates around AI and technology and missed the main point.

The future is something much bigger and much more important.

In my forty-four years, the political, economic and social environment has never felt more fragmented, more fragile and frankly more perilous.

As organisations, as employers we have an obligation to bring something to the party that is greater than the simple exchange of labour for money. We have an obligation to bring something that creates more than we extract. That binds and helps communities to heal.

This isn’t simply about corporate responsibility, used by too many organisations as a social-conscious healing makeweight. This is about endeavouring to change the existence of the communities in which we operate through our work, our practice and our existence.

This is about creating workplaces that are safe, both in terms of physical and mental wellbeing. Where individuals are respected for who they are, regardless of similarity or difference. That the rules of tolerance and respect are adhered to by all.

This is about building long-term and meaningful partnerships with employees, either individually, collectively or through their organised representation. Ensuring that decisions are made for the benefit of all stakeholders.

This is about developing skills and education for the long-term, both in the workforce and the community – recognising that we have a power to teach and to give, even to those who may not work for us.

This is about looking after those that work for us, on a financial and emotional footing. Ensuring that people are fairly paid for their labour, that the pay is representative of their skills and their contribution, not their gender or their race. That they need not worry in times of sickness or difficulty.

This is about ensuring that we are commercially successful so that we can invest back into the infrastructure that supports employees, creates new jobs and allows us to share that success both directly and indirectly.

And it is about leadership that recognises the importance of every single individual that works in an organisation and genuinely respects the roles and the participation of everyone.

Cohesion is going to be the next big talking point in the world of HR. Don’t forget you read it here.

Inclusion means acceptance

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I’m going to let you in to some secrets, just don’t tell anyone you heard this from me….

  • Not everybody wants to work flexibly. Some people like being in the office every day.
  • There are people who come to work each day for the money. They don’t care who for.
  • Some people don’t want to be promoted, their ambition is to be left alone to do their job.
  • Self development doesn’t have to be about work. Some people learn all the time without you.

I could go on….

The thing is, just because we think it’s valuable, doesn’t mean it is.

As HR professionals, as professionals in the world of work we have to be incredibly careful that we don’t affirm our own and our professional biases on the workplace. We happily argue that we need to be more flexible, that we need to develop flexible organisations, but then we tell people that we’ve benchmarked our pay and that we are a median to top quartile payer and look with disdain at anyone who suggests they should have more. Why is one more important to us than the other?

We talk about inclusivity, without realising that means we need to create the environment that allows people to value the things that we don’t. That it means we need to accept that not everything will conform to the HR 101 Model Workplace and that we will need to accommodate a genuine breadth of needs and requirements.

Who says the person that needs extra money in order to pay for their family to go on holiday is more unreasonable, less worthy or more indulgent than the person who asks for flexible working to spend a day at week at home with theirs?

Who says that the person that comes in at 9 and leaves at 5 and doesn’t want to attend any of the learning and development courses, but spends their evenings learning different languages, has less potential than their colleague that takes any opportunity to advance their career?

When we think about the world of work, when we think about our organisations and workplaces, we need to check ourselves and ask which lens we’re looking through. Are we really making decisions that allow all to benefit? Or just the ones that we agree with.