Our commitment to reduce Gender Pay Gap

We have a long-term commitment to being an ‘Employer of Choice’. That means assuring women that careers and opportunities exist in our organisation and that as women you are welcomed, respected and included.

This year’s pay gap, is an improvement on 2019. We do see women paid slightly higher than men in our organisation in managerial posts but we are overly represented by men at all levels (83.4%) and the picture is not the same at the mid-point in our organisation men are paid slightly more (14p).

If we are to address gender pay gap issues, in a sustainable way we must address the attraction and retention of women to the Service and protect career progression routes to higher paid, senior operational and non-operational roles within the organisation. Our plan to achieve these objectives includes the following steps some of which we have already
implemented:

Our continued commitment to a structured inclusive recruitment strategy incorporating planned positive action activities across all roles, which will attract underrepresented groups, including females.
As part of our ‘Employer of Choice’ strategy we are reviewing our branding and our attraction package, with an emphasis on our flexibility as an employer.
Continue to raise awareness of inclusion and diversity within our workforce, with a commitment to increase disclosure rates across protected characteristics.
Continue, through national collaboration, to develop our understanding of physiological differences between men and women in operational roles, within an ageing workforce, to better support both genders in their roles.
In 2018 we created a new Leadership Framework and developed in 2019 comprehensive talent benchmarking, which includes mentoring and coaching so we are able to offer development opportunities to all members of staff, including women, to support their career. We have yet to have fully considered sponsorship within this programme but this will be considered in 2020.
We have been able to consider roles within the service in a little bit more detail in 2020 but have not identified any significant trends. We will look at this further over the coming year ahead of the 2021 report.
We will continue to review our policies to ensure that they offer advantageous terms and conditions to improve retention, and we will take a greater look at retirement profiles and retention in 2021’s report.