Gender Pay Gap Report 2019

Introduction

The University of Buckingham is committed to the celebration of diversity and the application of inclusive practices for its staff and students. In common with the rest of the HE sector, the key challenge for the University is in recruiting women to senior roles. Over the last 12 months, the University has taken important steps towards ensuring that women are better represented at senior levels within the institution, with a number of key appointments; these won’t, of course, appear in our gender pay reporting  for another 12 months. The University will continue to identify ways in which it can improve the representation of women at senior levels over the next 12 months.

An HR User Group has been formed; this group is overseeing a programme of work to develop further our HR policies and processes across the institution to ensure that they are more robust and transparent. To address the gender pay gap, work will focus particularly upon reward and recognition policies and recruitment strategies. This will help to remove barriers to the progression of women within the University in a clear and transparent way, attract a wider and more diverse pool of talent for vacancies, and ensure that pay is determined by the role undertaken and level of contribution.

Gender Pay Gap Legislation

Gender Pay Legislation requires employers with more than 250 employees to publish data clearly demonstrating how large the pay gap is between their male and female employees. There is also a requirement to publish the proportion of staff within each pay quartile.

The gender pay gap differs from equal pay: equal pay observes the pay differences between men and women who carry out the same jobs, similar jobs or work of equal value in the same employment and it is unlawful to pay people so employed unequally because of gender. The gender pay gap, by contrast, shows the differences in the average pay between all men and women across the entire organisation, regardless of the level/grade at which they work; the gender pay gap therefore represents the distribution of men and women in different roles at different pay grades.

This report covers 710 employees (424 women (60% of the total workforce) and 286 men (40%)) employed during the period ending 5^th April 2018.

The University’s Gender Pay gap results shown in this report are also available through the government website as required by legislation.

Results

Below are the University’s 2018 Gender Pay Gap results with the 2017 results for comparison:

Comparing 2017 with 2018 shows an increase in the gender pay gap. The most significant reason for this is the distribution of female staff across the pay quartiles. There are 72% of female staff in the lowest pay quartile (compared with 55% in 2017); the increase is attributed to the recruitment of more apprentices and the fact that many of the roles within this quartile are more predominantly part time, providing most flexibility for women with family responsibilities who are more attracted to these roles. There is a slight reduction in the number of female staff in the second pay quartile (from 70% to 68%) and a significant increase in female staff in the third quartile (from 48% to 57%). The distribution of female staff in the upper quartile has remained broadly static from 2017 to 2018. The higher proportion of female staff in the lowest quartile, along with the higher proportion of male staff in the upper quartile is the root cause of the gender pay gap.

The university operates in 3 employment markets: academic (which is global and national), professional services (which is largely regional) and non–managerial/operational such as catering and domestic services (which is local).

Given some job types seem to be naturally more appealing to female employees, the greatest challenge for the University remains the distribution of male and female staff across different levels and roles. Whilst changes are taking place to increase the number of female staff at a senior level, as highlighted in the actions below, it is the large number of female staff in roles which are graded within the two lowest pay quartiles that is causing the distortion we see in the gender pay gap.

Actions

• Staff training & development – a new online PDR policy and process is being implemented which will assist in the development of staff and their career progression, alongside performance improvement and engagement. A project is being developed to create effective school and divisional plans to guide the implementation of adjustments to organisational structures, ways of working more efficiently and effectively and to address professional development requirements for staff.
• Recruitment – the University is reviewing and implementing new ways to improve recruitment processes to ensure a more diverse pool of applicants. We are committed to ensuring that more women are employed in senior roles and are making good progress towards this objective.
• Recognition and reward – We are reviewing our policies and processes in this area, to link to our work on enhancing staff development and PDR, and to ensure greater transparency to support staff in longer-term career planning and enhancement; this will also support the progression of women to more senior roles.

Family Friendly Support – Positive policies are in place around adoption leave, flexible working and parental leave. Women are still taking up the majority of primary carer roles within families, meaning their capacity to return to the traditional 9am – 5pm, full time roles is reduced and as a result ,there is an over representation of women in lower graded, part time work. Further work to develop flexibility in the work place for staff at all levels will mean that women are more able to progress and more able to earn higher salaries.

Conclusions

The University is committed to ensuring that its processes, policies and practices are transparent, fair, diverse and inclusive. There is an imbalance of men at senior levels across the HE sector more broadly: there are a number of reasons for this, both institutional and societal, the result being that the University retains a large number of long-serving male employees with salaries, in many cases, above the levels of more recently recruited staff. Whilst there is a disproportionate representation of women in posts graded in the lower quartiles, as can be seen in the actions above, efforts are being taken forward to increase the representation of women at senior levels, which will continue to emerge over time.