The gender pay gap looks at the difference in the average pay of men and women. Because different jobs pay differently and the number of males and females performing these jobs varies, a gender pay gap is likely to exist in any organisation.
It is important to understand that there is a fundamental difference between ‘Gender Pay Gap’ and ‘Equal Pay’ - the latter is focused on whether males or females are paid the same for doing the same type of work.
A key outcome for the reporting requirements is for organisations to take accountability for looking at their own gap, to understand the reasons behind it and to work out how best to address these. It is also accepted that this is not an issue which can be solved overnight.
All organisations who are required to report (i.e. those employing over 250 employees) are required to calculate the gender pay gap in the same way and use the same terminology. The calculations are based on ‘median’ and ‘mean’ gaps and are reported in pay ‘quartiles’.
- Median - The ‘median’ gender pay gap is the difference in pay between female employee in the middle of their line and the male employee in the middle of their line
- Mean - The mean gender pay gap is simply the difference in average hourly rate of pay between men and women
- Pay quartiles - The salaries for all employees, male and female, are sorted by size and divided into equal quarters. The report shows the percentage of male and female employees in each quarter
Bonus payments are considered in the same way and are calculated independently from base salaries.
The Home Group results were taken as at 5 April 2020.
There’s no legal requirement for us to report on our ethnicity pay gap (although there’s been consultation from government which we are hopeful will change this) however we think it’s equally important to be clear where we stand on this and set an open, honest and transparent example which is why we’ve followed the gender pay gap reporting process for our ethnicity pay gap this year too.
All colleagues who were identified as being ‘relevant’ were included in the analysis, however contractors were not as the majority were not in scope according the reporting requirements and/or there was insufficient data available.