Addressing gender pay gaps
The Government Equalities Office have published guidance for employers on “Reducing the gender pay gap and improving gender equality in organisations”. In brief the guidance offered suggests the following actions.
- include multiple women in shortlists for recruitment and promotion
- use skills-based assessment tasks in recruitment
- use structured interviews for recruitment and promotion
- encourage salary negotiation by showing salary ranges
- introduce transparency to promotion, pay and reward processes
- appoint diversity managers and/or diversity task force
- improve workplace flexibility for men and women
- encourage the uptake of shared parental leave
- recruit returners
- offer mentoring and sponsorship
- offer networking programmes
- set internal targets
Whilst the majority of these actions are being observed to a greater or lesser extent at TMBC, the council’s gender gap profile suggests that it is the lack of men in lower graded jobs that is the cause of the extent of the gap. TMBC have contracted out several services (for example, refuse, street cleansing, leisure centres) where there are often lower paid jobs filled by men in the majority, which goes some way to explain why TMBC’s pay gap is higher than some comparative councils across Kent.
All recruitment literature for jobs is written in such a way to attract male, as well as female, applicants. This will be continually monitored and considered each time a new role becomes vacant.
During the past few years, like many organisations across the UK, the council has had to change the way it deploys its workforce by offering a far greater degree of flexible and remote working. This has included staff working remotely from home and working their hours more flexibly. The council adopted it’s new ‘Remote Working Policy’ in December 2022.
The remote working policy allows the council to offer the majority its workforce a far greater degree of flexibility in which to carry out their role.
As well as the new remote working policy, the council has a longstanding ‘Flexible Working and Time Off Policy’ which details a number of different flexible working approaches and initiatives to enable staff to undertake their role. The Government Equalities Office states that flexible working can help address an organisation’s gender pay gap. The Government Equalities Office states that “Well-designed flexible working is key to enable women to reconcile work and caring responsibilities. It can enable women to remain in work and stay in roles that reflect their skills, thereby potentially reducing the gender pay gap”.
The council is confident that it does not discriminate at any stage of the recruitment process. Ring fencing lower graded jobs where we have a higher proportion of female staff specifically just for men is not considered an appropriate course of action to take.
The council would like to see the gap reduce by as much as reasonably possible each year.