UK gender pay gap 2023
We are fundamentally a people-based business. We recognise the significant benefits that derive from a more inclusive and diverse organisation. From entry-level roles to senior leadership, we’re committed to driving gender equality across our global business.
Gender equality is just one element of our commitment to create a truly inclusive workplace where all employees can thrive.
Whilst this report only reviews the status of our UK employees our focus on developing a culture underpinned by inclusive policy and practice has global reach.
What is the UK Gender Pay Gap?
- Since April 2017, the UK Government has required all UK companies with a headcount of 250 or more to annually publish figures on their UK gender pay gap to encourage greater focus and prioritisation on closing the gap.
- UK gender pay gap reporting calculates the difference between the hourly pay of men and the hourly pay of women in our UK business. Hourly pay includes base pay, allowances and any bonus and other incentive pay.
- The gender bonus gap is the difference in the bonus pay received by men and women.
- Tracking the evolution of the gap across multiple years is key to assessing progress.
- We have calculated our gender pay gaps using the methodology as required by the regulations for publishing UK gender pay gap information.
- The data in this presentation is based on a snapshot date of the 5th April of each year to match the reporting period required by the Government.
MEAN GENDER PAY GAP
The mean gender pay gap is the difference in the average hourly pay for women compared to men, within a company.
MEDIAN GENDER PAY GAP
The median represents the middle point of a population by taking all salaries in the sample and lining them up in order from lowest to highest to identify the middle salary. The median pay gap is the difference between the hourly pay rate for the middle woman compared to the middle man.
Does having a pay gap mean women are not paid the same as men?
It is important to note that a gender pay gap is not the same as equal pay. Equal pay is the concept of paying men and women equally for equivalent work. The gender pay gap report does not report on equal pay as it does not compare pay between men and women for specific roles. We monitor equal pay and are committed to pay equally and fairly across job roles and reward our people based on their performance and contribution.
Our figures
For reference, the ONS reported that the median gender pay gap among all employees in the UK reduced to 14.3% in 2023, from 14.4% in 2022. This is an improvement on the gap of 17.4% in 2019, prior to the pandemic.
Our 2023 calculations take into account voluntary salary sacrifice pension, childcare vouchers and Cyclescheme contributions.
We run an identical bonus scheme for men and women which includes a qualifying period from date of joining before bonus payments are made.
Employees who choose to pay their bonus into their pension are still included in the calculation.
Pay Quartiles
Understanding our UK Gender Hourly Pay and Bonus Gap
Whilst the hourly pay gap for 2023 has improved over 2022 figures a gap still exists. Our pay gap is primarily caused by three main factors;
- There are more men than women working at every career grade in the UK at Cambridge Consultants. In the 2023 data period 72% of our workforce were men and 28% were women.
- More women than men are employed in our administrative support roles.
- We have been more successful at recruiting women early in their career than those with more experience and so have fewer women in senior roles in the company than men. This is not uncommon in the technology industry and is something we are actively trying to address. The biggest impact this has is on the bonus pay gap.
As noted above, our reported gap is significantly impacted by the ratio of men to women across the organisation, particularly those at senior leadership level. Within wider diversity aims we are working to increase gender diversity in new hires and support progression.
The number of women in the organisation overall increased by 14.7% whilst the number of men increased by 19.3% during 2023. Our success in increasing the number of women in more junior roles, in particular the relatively large increase at ‘lower-mid’ level, will impact our overall Gender Pay Gap figures.
Building on our success in recruiting women into our lower quartile roles, which continues to show a close to 50:50 split, the proportion of women in the lower mid quartile has increased by 6%. This increase has been as a result of new hires and progression. Whilst the proportion of women in the upper mid quartile decreased by 2.8% the proportion of women in the upper quartile increased by 1.4%, again due to a combination of progression and new hires.
We have identified an increase in our bonus median gap this year, increasing from 36.6% in 2022 to 40.2% in 2023. Our annual performance bonuses make up the vast majority of the monetary value calculated under ‘bonus’ for the purpose of this report. Annual bonuses are calculated as a percentage of base salary and the bonus target percentage increases stepwise with seniority. Therefore, if the median man and median women sit in roles with different bonus targets, whilst the hourly pay gap may not be that large, the bonus gap will be more so as bonus achievable is a greater proportion of that increased pay.
What is Cambridge Consultants doing to address the gap?
We recognise the importance of addressing the gap and that it will take time to create long-term, sustainable change. At CC we strive to create an inclusive culture that ensures equity of opportunity for all of our people.
Excelling at ED&I @ CC
To help us achieve our organisational ambition, and to enable us to successfully innovate, we recognise that it is vital we excel at ED&I. It is also the right thing to do! In 2023 excelling at ED&I was articulated as one of our 5 company goals.
Our strategic priorities for the year ahead are to:
- Communicate, educate and drive engagement to support our ED&I ambition
- Use data from the ED&I survey to define priorities and implement action through our Global ED&I Steering Group and our employee engagement networks.
- Embed appropriate ED&I infrastructure within the “moments that matter” across the employee lifecycle.
Statement from our CEO
“At Cambridge Consultants, we are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where all individuals feel valued, respected, and empowered to thrive. Diversity is critical to an organization like ours which must think outside the box every day.
Let’s promise we’ll continue to break down barriers and challenge stereotypes. To strive to create opportunities for women to excel in every aspect of our business. To create a more equitable and fairer world for future generations.”
Monty Barlow, CEO
Increasing our understanding and setting strategy:
Last year we carried out a specific Equity, Diversity and Inclusion survey for the first time which had the following aims:
- To better understand our workforce profile
- To demonstrate to our employees that we are serious about ED&I
- To improve our understanding of different demographic groups
- To listen to our employees and gather information and opinions
Having had many years of grassroots activity supported at the highest level we are now working at improving our understanding of where to focus our efforts. To better facilitate the execution of our ambition, we have prioritised establishing a Global ED&I Steering Group, and established a framework to better support and connected our employee engagement Networks. The Steering Group will align effort on specific investment initiatives and activities within our networks to be increasingly intentional with how we approach the challenges we face as an organisation. We are delighted that our culture of inclusion has been further reflected with the founding of additional communities to actively support marginalised individuals and/or groups
Early age/Outreach:
It is well recognised that there is a skills shortage for STEM employers. The latest government workforce data, as of September 2023, shows the percentage of women making up the Core-STEM workforce in the UK has decreased from 26.9% in 2022 to 25.2% in 2023 with women engineers accounting for 10.4% of the engineering workforce*.
We recognise the importance of early years intervention in encouraging greater diversity in STEM. That’s why we actively focus on initiatives to encourage more young people to enjoy STEM in early life through our STEM Outreach programme. By partnering with outreach organisations, community schemes, and schools – providing financial support and volunteer time – we aim to provide opportunities to children who would otherwise be likely to miss out (for example due to socio-economic deprivation, disabilities or learning differences, or young carer responsibilities). We ensure that our teams of volunteers represent an inspiring and diverse group so that every young person can see a future route and role model for themselves, rather than prematurely ruling themselves out of STEM due to feeling that it is not for them.
* Source: WISE Campaign: https://www.wisecampaign.org.uk/updated-workforce-statistics-september-2023/
Attracting diverse talent:
We have invested in an applicant tracking system which enables us to have a more data-driven approach to the hiring process. It will enhance our ability to collect and analyse recruitment data and aims to reduce potential bias from the hiring process.
We have focused activities on exploring different recruitment channels to access more diverse talent pools and have developed job descriptions and advertising campaigns to ensure that we include language that appeals equally to men and women. We continue to be mindful of the composition of our interview panels and aim to achieve greater gender equality in our interview line-ups wherever possible.
Early Careers
We continue to focus on widening our Internship and Graduate recruitment activities. By expanding the number of academic institutions and University Societies that we work with we are trying to improve the diversity, in background and experience, of our new recruits. We encourage our women to represent CC at careers events to try to inspire and also encourage potential new recruits.
We regularly attend Women in STEM events and have established a partnership with Gradcracker, a company who focus on supporting and developing careers in STEM.
Commitment to increase number of women in senior roles
We are committed to driving diversity at every level of the organisation, including greater representation of women in senior leadership roles. In the last year we have seen
We are introducing Succession Planning conversations to focus us on becoming more pro-active in identifying and progressing talent through the company, with an emphasis on under-represented groups.
Our new Emerging Leaders programme is setting us up for future success by empowering our line managers to become future focused, inspiring leaders. We passionately believe that our line managers and leaders are vital to our success and this programme is one mechanism we are investing in to unlock the potential of line managers, their teams and the business. Indeed the first cohort of diverse leaders across our business to undergo this programme were challenged as part of their training assignment with cocreating solutions for some of the challenges that had been identified through the ED&I survey, creating allies to champion diversity and inclusion.
We are also piloting a reverse mentoring scheme for senior leaders in the business to bring about greater understanding, transparency and diversity of thought to leadership decision making.
Work/life balance
Our aim is to create gender parity in the workplace and encouraging more equity across all parents is one way we’re achieving this. We demonstrate a progressive approach to New Parent Leave, and in January 2022 we launched our global New Parent Leave policy to provide strong support, assisting new parents with building family relationships and balancing work and career opportunities. This policy is gender neutral giving all new parents, whether by birth, as a result of adoption or by surrogacy arrangement, 13 weeks paid parental leave, regardless of gender or sexual orientation.
We have introduced the right to request flexible working from the day that someone joins our business.
We continue to adopt and promote agile and flexible working practices to help all employees balance their personal commitments.
Employee engagement
Our Women’s+ Network that was launched in 2021 has become established and aims to create an empowered community of women and allies working together to promote equity and inclusion in the workplace. Through our coordination with other Networks we will continue to explore cross-cutting topics around mental health, parental support, disability, ethnicity and LGBTQ+. Additionally, we have a Women’s Health Special Interest Group to raise awareness and consider ways in which we as a business can create more equity in health and wellbeing through our strategy consulting, product development and service design.